‘I BELIEVE that all writing is political ’

At Jayasree Kalathil’s London home, Kerala is never far away. Although this is her 18th year in the UK, she lives and breathes Malayalam literature. Formally an academic and researcher, Jayasree’s work ‘Moustache’, the English translation of S Hareesh’s Malayalam novel ‘Meesha’, recently won the prestigious JCB Prize for Literature.‘Moustache’ is her second translation work. Her first was N Prabhakaran’s ‘Diary of a Malayali Madman’, a book she wrote to keep herself busy while waiting in various government offices to settle her late father’s papers. Born in Kottackal in Malappuram, Jayasree was surrounded by books in her childhood. “My Amma loves books,” she says. “She used to give me pocket money to buy books from mobile bookstalls run by Prabhat. That’s how I hooked on reading.”Since the mid-90s, Jayasree has been working for mental health survivors. She moved to London in 2003. “I met my husband in India. A British citizen, he was working in an NGO in Odisha then. I was there for a brief period, writing for their website. The only reason I came to London is because we decided to get married,” she says. In 2007, she founded Survivor Research, a virtual collective of volunteers interested in mental health issues and how it affects black and minority ethnic communities in the UK. Today, she balances her time between literary writing, academic papers and running Survivor Research.How much of Jayasree Kalathil can be found in ‘Moustache’? Are you a mere translator or have you left something of yourself in the work?I believe any good translation is a collaboration between the writer and the translator. Bad translations happen when a work is translated text bytext. Translation is a creative process. I am loyal to the story and the storytelling, even more than to the author. But, I also like a certain level of freedom in the translations. I want to translate in a way that I believe is suitable for the book. I choose each word just like how the writer chooses his words, which is a carefully thought-out creative process. I always believe that there can never be an entirely faithful translation that is also readable in a different language. Because language itself has its own different syntaxes, music, etc. that you can’t translate to another language in the same way. So, there’s definitely a lot of me in ‘Moustache’. But the important thing is whether I’m telling the story in the same way that the author intended to tell in a different language.Meesha is a story rooted in Kuttanad. Having lived in London for so long, how did you relate to the original story?I have only visited Kuttanad as a tourist. So I had to do a lot of research. I extensively read its history and scientific reports on below-sea-level farming. I have also been a fan of nature, and have a collection of books on birds and fish. I read a lot of those books again. I also did a lot of image searches. Just looking at photos of paddy fields and fish, I was constantly surrounded by elements of Kuttanad. In fact, I went down a rabbit hole as I read more and more about the place.The essence of ‘Meesha’ is its colloquial elements — its‘Regionality’ is always a difficult challenge in translation. But my way is not to start by worrying about the regionality. My focus is on the author’s style of storytelling, his tone and music. There is no single recipe when translating regionality. Also, I don’t start at the beginning of the book and translate until the end. I pick and choose usually the bits I really like. And at some point, I feel this is beginning to sound like the original. It is almost like an iterative process of doing various versions of the same writing. I try not to mainstream the language. Rather than translating to standard English, I choose the English that suits the book. I believe this method is better than making a book legible to people reading in every part of the world. It is about focussing on the story and storytelling than anything else.What was the main challenge of translating ‘Meesha’?There is a whole chapter of folk songs in Meesha. That was the most difficult part. I kept it for the last. Despite trying many times, I was not satisfied. Although I wrote it in English, I was reading it in a Malayalam tune. That wasn’t working at all. I remember discussing it with Hareesh and he told me about how these folk songs are sung by different people in different ways. So he asked me to forget about the original rhyme and rhythm. That helped me overcome the challenge.How much was Hareesh involved in the translation process?We always kept in touch on WhatsApp. I sent him all the chapters. There were a couple of places where he had to share his angle. He was always there to ask ‘if this was what I meant’. But there wasn’t any time when we had any difference of opinion.Did the controversies regarding ‘Meesha’ bother you in any manner while translating the work?I don’t stand bullies. I was fully aware of the controversies. But for me, it is very important that I agree with the politics of the book I translate. And I believe every writing is political. I understood what Hareesh was trying to do, why he was telling the story, and why he chose a particular way of telling that story. The controversy was instigated by people who did not even bother reading the book. It came from just the dialogues between two random characters. If you want to be controversial about the book, there are way more other stuff that you would have been worried about.What are your ongoing works?I have just finished the draft for N Prabhakaran’s 'Thiyoor Rekhakal', which is scheduled to publish in April. I am working on a collection of Hareesh’s short stories named ‘Aadam’. I have also told my editor that I want to translate women’s books. We are completing the discussion to translate Sheela Tomy’s ‘Valli’, which was published last year. I am really looking forward to doing that.Who are the authors who have influenced you the most?I have always been a big fan of Rajalakshmi. I have always been interested in the topic of madness from a young age. Although Rajalakshmi doesn’t deal with madness in her works, the idea of women’s distress is quite central to her story. Besides her, I love Basheer, Kamala Das, Sara Joseph and N Prabhakaran. There are translators who dedicate their lives to one author. So, if I have to dedicate like that, it would be N Prabhakaran. I love his works.What is your writing process?I tend to wake up very early, by 4-4.30am. By the time the world wakes up, I would have done 4-5 hours of writing. I read in the afternoon. I tend to not read similar works when I am writing. For example, when I translate something like ‘Moustache’, I might read more poetry rather than similar kinds of fiction. I work on the computer, but print out the drafts and do the corrections on paper.