5

It is more than a year since my ‘last post’. I was planning to write about driving. But now I don’t even remember what aspect of driving I wanted to ‘blog about’. In fact in between I was wondering what I should do with this blog. Because of one thing or other I could not do my blogging on a regular basis. But I did not like the idea of ‘quitting’. I knew one of these days I was going to come back. And here I am.

One thing that kept me away from blogging was a question – what should I be doing (writing/ blogging) here? I looked upon blog as an extension of my personal dairy. But that was a misconception. Now I know blog is something different. And I want to explore the possibilities of this new medium seriously (though blogs have somewhat lost its popularity to ‘twitter’. To put it crudely – Blogs are like letters or e-mails while twitter is like SMS. I mean no offence. And I am an ‘active twitter’).

Being a self confessed bibliophile one thing I like talking about (and thinking about) is books.

One of the first books I read was a (Malayalam) translation of Leo Tolstoy’s novella “A Prisoner in Caucasus”.

The story is about two Russian army officers – Zhilin and Kostlin - who get captured by Tartars and their attempt to escape. And then there is Dina, he little Tartar girl who helps the prisoners.

(Incidentally the first three books I read were translations. One was Macbeth. The other was Robin Hood. I still have the Robin Hood with me. But lost the other two.) In those days - I am talking about the 70s – we used to get a lot of translations from Russia. Especially Russian folktales and classics. Those books, neatly produced by Progress Publishers Moscow have elegant typefaces, beautiful illustrations and used a language style which was different in a refreshing way. The translators – Omana and Gopalakrishnan – used Malayalam words effectively to evoke a Russian feel. They simply transcreated the Russia in the readers’ minds. But this particular book I am talking about was not from Progress Publishers. Was it a “Balan Publications”? A publishing company owned by Mathew M. Kuzhiveli? I am not sure. It was a thin volume. It has a maroon colour cover. The name of the translator was not there. Or I have not noticed it. (I was in the second or third year at school then and did not know the importance of the role of a translator)

I would have read that book a number of times and reread certain portions again and again. (After reading a book I still try to reread it soon. And then go back to certain parts which I enjoyed most). But then that book went missing.

A few years ago in an article, MT (Yes… the one and only M T Vasudevan Nair) mentioned about a translation he did during his Victoria College days to get some pocket money. And the book he translated was “A Prisoner in Caucasus”!

I am trying to find out more about it. All about that research – in a later blog.