Greetings from Delhi! Blog marathon begins. Post 1

with my author friends at Kolkata

 Hi all,

This is my first post for my blog marathon that starts today. Many of you, wait for my blog marathons, and have written to me telling me how you like to start your day with my posts. I feel happy to be connected to you, and become a part of your daily lives! Thank you for the privilege.

I am typing this from the skies—from 35,000 feet above sea level. I shall post this later today, when I get a wifi connection.  I left home at 6.45 am this morning and I am headed to Delhi for the times lit fest which is taking place at India Habitat Centre. The other authors in my panel are Ravinder Singh (who is also a friend), Andaleeb Wajid and Seema Anand. The great thing about litfests for authors is that we get to meet our fellow authors.  But for events like these, we would be cocooned in our solitary writing wells.

Travel is exhausting. I had just got back from a wonderful session at Kolkata. From Kolkata, I had flown directly to Kochi, where I was the chief guest at the inauguration of  a book store by Mathrubhoomi books. I also met a wonderful Malayalm writer there. His name is Santhosh Echikanam. He has written many stories, poetry and also movie scripts. He gave an excellent speech and I loved listening to what he had to say. He promised me that he would send me his stories translated to English.

Regional language literature is very RICH, compared to English literature. The language I am most comfortable in, is English. I studied in different schools, as my father had a transferrable job. Hence English was the default language. Hindi was a second language, and Sanskrit was the third language. So I never had a need to learn any other language apart from these three. (And I think  reading ad writing three are aplenty!)

 However, I LOVE to read translated works from other languages—be in German or Malayalam or Hindi. I recently read Mridula Garg’s The Last Email which was translated from  Hindi and I LOVED it.

At the mathrubhoomi event, imagine my delighted surprise when I was gifted the English translated books of Vaikom Muhammed Basheer and Sankunni.  I had heard a lot about both these writers. They are award winning, world class writers. However since they wrote in very high literary Malayalam, I was unable to read them. Now, thanks to the translations I could!

So that’s just what I did. I  finished Vaikom Muhammed Basheer’s  Childhood friends  (Balyasakhi) in one single sitting. He book wrenched out my heart! What a brilliant story it is. ( I felt the translation did not do justice in certain places---but one can never get the full flavour as for certain words, there simply is no English equivalent!) I was totally in love  with the book, and the story. Even days after reading it, I am still thinking about it. It deeply moved me.

I shall post again tomorrow, when I will have more news for you!

I have just checked into my hotel at Delhi, and I am leaving for my litfest now.

Please leave me comments! I love to read your comments, as otherwise it just becomes a one-sided monologue from me. With your comments, we can make this  a dialogue.

Are there any translated books you have loved? Do you like translated books too? Also, do you know that many of my books have been translated to Tamil, Malayalam and Turkish?

Reply to me, in the comment box.

Bye and take care!

Till tomorrow, keep happy thoughts.

Love

Preeti