Priya Sarukkai Chabria and Malashri Lal compressed

Sing of Life: Revisioning Tagore’s Gitanjali Priya Sarukkai Chabria In conversation with Malashri Lal Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s Sing of Life: Revisioning Tagore’s Gitanjali was published by Westland in 2021. In a candid conversation with academic and critic Malashri Lal, Priya Chabria explores her profound bond with “Gurudev” and the creative emergence of this book. Poet, translator and novelist, Priya Chabria has eleven books to her credit. She was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize and she has twice been awarded for her Outstanding Contribution to Literature by the Indian Government. She is Founding Editor of Poetry at Sangam http://poetry.sangamhouse.org/ and curates poetry festivals. www.priyasarukkaichabria.com. Malashri Lal, Professor in the English Department (retd), and Former Director of Women’s Studies and Development Centre at the University of Delhi, has a specialization in literature, women and gender studies about which she has sixteen books. Malashri Lal is currently Member, English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi, Govt of India. ML. Revisioning Tagore’s Gitanjali is an act of courage. I know that you revel in innovationsand keep faith in intuition. Some years ago, you had said at a conference, “As a practitioner I question the given in the present, turn up the soil of the past and peer into the starlit darkness of what may be.” In the context of your new book, you are either a rebel or an acolyte since Gitanjali is a much-revered text and only an utterly confident person would dare to play with it. What was your inspiration? PC. Thank you! In truth, I have never begun a writing project with less preparation. Like many Indians, I learnt Song 35, “Where the mind is without fear” in school; it remained like an underground stream in my consciousness. However, the Gitanjali suddenly thrust its full splendour into my life two years ago when my husband and I were holidaying in the Himalayan resort of Bir. While we waited for our coffee, he selected the book from a café bookshelf. When we left the café, we took the book to a photocopier’s for I was completely in its thrall. As I read, or rather fell into it, certain words from each of the Songs lifted like swans into my mind. Back in the hotel room, I noted these risen phrases in a notebook. In hindsight, I think as my eyes scanned the lines, Tagore’s Song Offerings seemed to open up and grant me a darshan of its living presence. The mutuality implicit in the idea of darshan – of seeing and being seen -- is how I now understand this experience. Rapture made me reckless. I didn’t pause to think how my experiment with a revered text would be received. The reason perhaps rests in this beautiful verse from the Mundaka Upanishad, translated by Tagore: “From joy does spring all this creation, by joy is it maintained, towards joy does it progress, and into joy does it enter.” ML. Priya, your work on Bhakti poets is well known, especially your book Andal: The Autobiography of a Goddess. The address to the deity is friendly and intimate as though in human form. Tagore belonged to the reformist Brahmo Samaj and believed in a formless divinity. Where do you find the romance of Bhakti in him though you do evoke his passion in your introductory essay? PC. Tagore possessed an esemplastic imagination which is intuitive and unitive; he saw the Whole behind the parts, the One within the many. We also know how he was deeply shaped by the Upanishads and the poetry of Baul singers who tread the pathless path towards the sacred. As you mentioned, the Bhakti marg can be approached by conceiving the divine as embodying a specific form which is the saguna paradigm. Andal gloriously follows this path as she passionately envisions the sacred as her Beloved, Krishna. However, bhakti also upholds the nirgunamode which draws from the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad’s identification of Brahman as neti-neti, or “not only this, not only that either”. The Gitanjali is awash with the immanence of grace even in its darkest moments. I perceive Tagore as a 20th century nirguna bhakti poet for the Gitanjali overflows with samadarshan or the levelling equity of the loving gaze. Take, for instance, Song 69 The same stream of life that runs through my veins runs through the world The same life that shoots through dust in blades of grass and breaks into leaves and flowers  The same life is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and death My limbs are made glorious by its touch My pride is the life-throb dancing ~ the same life the same life the same life in my blood ML. Let me turn to the craft or writing. The famous opening lines of Gitanjali are “Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure/This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life”. You have described Tagore’s lines as “prose” while many readers would modify that as “prose poetry”, specially because the original Bengali poems were written as lyrics. In Tagore’s address to the divine, there is a formality as well as the recognition of a hierarchy. You have changed this around. How and why? PC. I believe I’ve used both ‘prose’ and ‘prose-poems’ as mentioned in my book’s jacket. The celebrated sonorous musicality of the Bengali original doesn’t always come through in his translation, though the beauty of his thoughts and imagination takes our breath away! The Gitanjali’s luminous relevance and living presence is, I think, best conveyed to contemporary readers through the directness of ‘you’ than the archaic ‘Thou/ Thee’. Ideally, my preference would be to use, were it available in the English, an endearing synonym of intimacy such as ‘tu’ in the Hindi against the formal ‘aap’ and the everyday ‘tum’. Also, since I translate sacred verse, ‘you’ channels the skin-wrapping, transformative ardour of bhakti. In short, Sing of Life is a leap of faith where one hopes one has hit the right note. ML. Your abiding interest lies in gendered narratives and I completely agree with you that Rabindranath broke past the stereotypes of man and woman, and he cherished the idea of a companionate relationship. You mention “an osmosis of gendering, in which male and female identities pass through the membrane of the imagination.” In Gitanjali how did you organise the gendered differentials that do appear occasionally in the text? PC. Malashri, I don’t remember pondering over this issue. Numerous references from the enchanted worlds of nayika-nayaka bedha of Sanskrit literature, alongside bhakti and Tamil Sangam poetics where male poets often adopted women’s voices perhaps guided my intuitive choices. In Song 52 Tagore sings, “You depart. I find /on the bed a petal / I find / your sword heavy as a bolt /of thunder,” This points us to the concept of the wandering abhisarika nayika of Sanskrit poetics who plunges through the stormy night, physical and metaphorical, to meet her Beloved. Or this heartrending image, from Song 41, “Raise me / a beggar girl / like a creeper in a summer breeze.” We also know Tagore’s encompassing vision shoots beyond the human, as he sings in Song 69. “The same stream of life that runs/ through my veins runs through the world.” His humility and tenderness move one deeply. ML. Rabindranath’s humanism was never far from a practical philosophy of living. According to him, religion and spirituality were deeply linked to an empathy for people. Educationist and a social reformer, Tagore used poetry as a means to elevate the ordinary to the planes of extraordinary sensitivity. Does this reflect in your transcreations of Gitanjali? PC. I agree with your position but it’s finally up to readers to decide! Part of the allure of the Gitanjali / Song Offerings is his abiding faith in the power of art as a means of spiritual revival. “Art is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real”, Tagore declares. Time and again, he writes about the act of writing, and of making music. Take Song 75, in my second stepped transcreation, “from the words / of a poet/men take/ meanings/ their last/ meaning / points/ to you”. All I can honestly say is the time I spent with the Gitanjali was transformative. ML. Your version of Gitanjali is endearingly modern in its imagistic layout and crisp word play. Though different from the original there is a distinct reflection peering through the stirred-up waters. How conscious were your choices in vocabulary and cadence? PC. For me, ‘revision’ suggests two verbs at the same time. ‘Revise’ in order to strike a chord in the language of today; and, ‘re-look /re-present’ which is more radical and indicates a deeper exploration of the text. Thus, both meanings come into play. Sing of Life is a tribute, therefore rigour and minimal intervention was my mantra. I did not add a single word of mine nor change the order of Tagore’s words though his prose embroidery fell away. In a sense, Sing of Life is an excavation. As mentioned earlier, archaic pronouns, valid in Tagore’s time, were substituted with the colloquial. I also employ the present tense throughout. The lack of punctuation in my revisioning is an attempt to render Tagore’s fullness of experience. Complete sentences suggest I’ve ‘got’ it all; that would be hubristic. Also, pauses and silences invite the readers’ reflection into the Gitanjali’s meditative and mysterious spiritual energy. ML. I get the impression of you writing as though in a trance, a poet’s mind possessed by a strange and alluring visitation. How else can one explain the transference, so meaningful yet so startling? But, let me offer the possibility of a larger context since you are deeply embedded in Sanskrit aesthetics and traditions of retelling. In such a format, “revisioning” is an act of tribute to a “guru”, an intellectual predecessor. The Mahabharata, The Ramayana, the GeetGovinda and many other great literary texts have inspired fresh writing linked to the old. Your tryst with Tagore—was there such a transition? PC. You are absolutely right! I situate the Gitanjali asa 20th centuryextension of wisdom literature which sings of aligning itself with cosmic harmonies; it sings of the same landscapes of love, loss and longing, despair, beauty and transcendence. I agree that in the subcontinent we are used to multiple versions of sacred texts in simultaneous circulation. Sing of Life is an offering in this tradition. Besides, every twenty years or so, new translations and interpretations of the classics can be written to enrich a new generation’s understanding and appreciation. Other than hymns used in sacred rituals, most world classics continue their journey through time in this manner. This also prevents great works from being obscured by gatekeeping tendencies. They need to avatar over and over again, even as the original remains the source of inspiration. ML. It is believed that W.B. Yeats’s “Introduction”and endorsement firmly planted Gitanjali in the West, leading to the Nobel Prize and its attendant fame. According to the citation the Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West." In reading Gitanjali as a modern poet, post-colonial and non- Bengali, do you think the poem can stand without the approval of the west? PC. Yes! The phrase in the citation, “expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West” underlines its colonial underpinnings and tendency towards Orientalism. The Gitanjali is a part of world literature. Today Tagore is an institution and, I believe, a Rs. 200 crore industry --which would surely have made him flinch! His words remain significant to us in multiple ways, and the Gitanjali is a glistening gem that revolves in our consciousness, emitting light. ML. Translated material is, I think, written for those who cannot read the original language. Bengalis consider Tagore sacrosanct. Until a few years ago, translations were disallowed or discouraged. In 2011 with Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth year turning into a global celebration, translations started appearing in plenty. Yours is not a translation but an innovative rendering of the original English version of the Gitanjali. So, it is several steps removed from the primary source. Who is your target audience? PC. In truth, everyone. I say this because of a conversation I overheard years ago, when in my mid-twenties. This was in Delhi after a show of an experimental film during a festival. The person was in front of me, I never saw his face and his clothes were shabby. He said, in Hindi, “I never knew a film could be such a profound meditation”. Hearing that statement demolished my youthful snobbery once and for all. However, perhaps the Gitanjali resounds today with an added resonance and urgency. It rings like a gong struck on a mountain peak which travels through the smoke of pyres and our enormous and unnecessary suffering. It awakens hope, however remote that may currently seem, by presenting to us the parallel and porous universe of enchantment and sanctity. All of us want to alleviate the surrounding darkness and pain. Sant Tukaram sang, “Words are the only treasures I possess, Words are the only jewels I share”. Strangers and friends have messaged me about how this book has helped them heal. What more can a writer ask for? ML. I greatly admire your works of speculative fiction, especiallyClone. Is it too audacious if I suggest that some cloning has happened in Sing of Life? The genetic code remains of the Gitanjali but some power within has manifested as a dominant force and it can change the future. With you being the first person to “revision” Tagore in this fashion, do you perceive an altered future for Gitanjali? PC. Thank you for your very kind words! As I wrote in the Introduction to Sing of Life, “I believe a great poem is one that often serves as a draft or raft for someone else’s poem. Or that is how it should be: A spark or shift in another’s consciousness.” The Gitanjali has much to offer; classics stand the test of time, each age needs new translations, interpretations and revisionings. But let’s end with Tagore’s words, from a letter he wrote to his niece, Indira Devi Chaudhurani from Bolpur on the 19th of October, 1894. “We know people only in dotted outline, that is to say, with gaps in our knowledge which we have to fill in ourselves, as best we can. Thus, even those we know well are largely made up of our imagination…But perhaps it is these very loopholes, allowing entrance to each other's imagination, which make for intimacy; otherwise, each one, secure in his inviolate individuality, would have been unapproachable to all but the Dweller within.” Similarly, a text as rich and mystical as the Gitanjali gifts each reader gaps and silences to fill in as they make it their own. Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an award-winning poet, writer, translator and curator. Her books include four poetry collections, most recently, Sing of Life: Revisioning Tagore’s Gitanjali; speculative fiction novels Clone, selected as Best Reads by Feminist Press and Generation 14; literary non-fiction Bombay/Mumbai: Immersions and translations from Classical Tamil Andal: The Autobiography of a Goddess, winner, Muse India Translation Prize. Her story Slo-Glo won the Kitaab Experimental Story Award; she’s recognised for her Outstanding Contribution to Literature by the Indian Government. She channels Sanskrit rasa aesthetics and Tamil Sangam (2-4BCE) poetics into her work and has collaborated with dancers, filmmakers and photographers. Founding Editor, Poetry at Sangam. http://poetry.sangamhouse.org/. Malashri Lal, Professor in the Department of English (retd.), University of Delhi, has authored and edited sixteen books including Tagore and the Feminine: A Journey in Translation (Sage 2015) and the most recent, co-authored with Namita Gokhale, Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt (Harper Collins, 2020). She continues to serve on juries for book awards. Malashri Lal is currently Member, English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi. 207 208 209 21