‘Translation’ from Soul to Soul

On September 27, 2011, before stepping into heaven, Maryam Gazala’s last wish was that her poems, which were being translated by Mona, should be published. On Saturday, it was a special occasion when Elizabeth Kurian ‘Mona’ launched a new translated poetry book named ‘Mirrors of My Soul’ which is a collection of select Hindi and Urdu poems of Maryam ‘Gazala’. The translated poetries have been taken and amalgamated from three books ‘ Shabnami Lamhe’, ‘Kshitij Ke Dehlees Par’ and ‘Kannch ki Chaadar’ originally.

“Her poetries are translation of her thoughts rather than words. Since its worth reading, I thought of translating them into English to increase its readability as we can reach out to a large number of readers,” shared Mona who met Maryam in Mumbai during her early professional days. Praising the poetess’ skill of writing in different languages like Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu; Mona talked about the challenge she faced as a translator while choosing poems from those three books.

“As I was translating it into English, it was important to maintain the universal appeal of the poem so that anybody could relate to it. Since keeping the essence of the thought is important while translating, it was a challenge to choose the correct word to deliver the same meaning as that of the original poetry,” said Mona.

The book ‘Mirrors of My Soul’ is the collection of 72 poems based on various subjects of human life about love, affection, justice, spirituality, philosophy to name a few. The name of the book justifies the image of a beautiful long brown haired woman wearing a blue gown, holding a mirror which portrays different emotions of her on the cover. The cover is bound to attract readers at its first glance. The art work has been done by a Nepal based painter Sushil Thapa.

Though the readers of ‘easy to read’ novels and short story books are gradually growing, poets are struggling everyday to get a publisher for their book. “I think poetry needs a certain level of intellect to read, understand and enjoy the beauty of couplets,” said the poet.

“Poets write out of their love and passion for it, but it is a challenge for them to translate their work into books. Since youth involvement is important to keep the tradition of poetry alive, kids’ needs to be encouraged for reading and writing poems in school instead of just memorising them for exams. This is how they will be able to develop the passion for poetry and will realise the impact of it,” said Mona.

She concluded the book release with a quote,

“In this country, poetry is an aged mother. She can support you with maternal love, but cannot put one morsel of food in your mouth. Therefore, worship her, sing her praises, but do not seek anything from her.”