Translating with Ketaki Kushari Dyson


(1940 - 2026)

Ketakidi enthusiastically took me in hand, reading, commenting on my translation of BB and many others, holding what she called ‘one-on-one workshops’ over the phone, she in Oxford, I in Delft (virtual meetings were a thing of the future then). She was, needless to say, a hard taskmaster. An important lesson I learnt from her about translating is the issue of cultural context: to an English person, a bog is not a marshy waterbody that buffaloes wallow in on hot summer days, but a lavatory. She sent me her latest works to read, and when I could not make it to the Kolkata performance of her play, Night’s Sunlight, she invited my mother. So it was that I never got to meet Ketakidi in person, but Mamoni did.

Not just poetry; she was interested in people, and we talked about husbands, mothers and sons (mine then on the way ). Soon after, my son was born (she absolutely loved the photo I sent of him at 7 days), I moved countries, was swamped by the demands of a new career, and we lost touch. With Hotmail gone, all the emails we had exchanged over a few years were lost. But this very year, when the Kamini Baba had planted after Mamoni left blossomed, the words that sprang to my lips were, দোলনচাঁপায় ফুল ফুটেছে. That book she wrote during the period we were in touch, about the garden lily used to balmer climes finally blooming in her English home after many years.

Here is a poem she helped me translate, extremely displeased when I attempted to gloss over or tone down the apparently untranslateble মুখশ্রী মায়া মিলাক মিলাক, and set me homework in the middle of my postdoctoral research. She was pleased with the end product.

Ketakidi was brilliant, angry and a little bit mad.

To a Dead Woman : Buddhadeva Bose
translated from Bengali to English by
Nandini Gupta

''I will not forget" — vows so arrogant
life does not forgive. So, let leave vain promises.
A fleeting spark you were, may your liberation spread along
unimagined pathways, the enchantment of your lovely face fade,
fade into the grass, the leaves, the dance of the seasons,
                the oceans, the blue of the sky.
In this night, in the solitude of my heart I keep aflame
only these words—You were here, once you were here.