‘Weird, delightful, refreshing’: Anupama Raju on translating writer Paul Zacharia’s ‘imagination’
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Discovering Paul Zacharia’s writing, thanks to the Katha translation series that was very popular in the 1990s, was like being thrown into an alternate universe. Gods, biblical characters, supernatural beings, politicians, drunkards, lustful men and women, co-existed without complaint in this universe. It was immensely educational as it was entertaining. I found Zacharia’s imagination weird, delightful and refreshing. And very different from that of his contemporaries.
As a Malayalee growing up in Chennai, I started reading Malayalam literature in English translation. The brilliance of writers like Ayyappa Paniker, Lalithambika Antharjanam, Paul Zacharia, OV Vijayan, MT Vasudevan Nair and Mukundan held me spellbound.
Years passed, and I moved away from Zacharia’s universe, only to be thrown back into it when I moved to Thiruvananthapuram, the city he lives in. I was already writing and publishing poetry in English by then. And perhaps because of my unfamiliarity with the Keralite imagination and culture, I felt like an outsider in Kerala. That I’d not studied Malayalam, the language of my parents, fanned this awkwardness. I was fluent only in spoken Malayalam. Hence, translating literature from Malayalam into English appeared as a lifeline to Malayalam, Kerala, and my roots.
A matter of trust
When I got an opportunity to translate Zacharia’s short fiction, I was...