Indian writer-translator Rakshanda Jalil was the guest at An Author’s Afternoon, organised by Prabha Khaitan Foundation, at Taj Bengal in Kolkata recently. IBNS-TWF correspondent Souvik Ghosh pens down Jalil’s words on her education, teaching profession, Urdu and her PhD. topic. Excerpts…
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Q. What were your early influences towards Urdu because we don’t come across many who are fond of their languages growing up in Delhi or UP?
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We had to speak in English outside the house, of course. But I used to speak very domestic Urdu. Even now, I speak Urdu very fluently but I don’t have critical idioms. I did indeed come from a home where neither parent had studied Urdu formally but we had Urdu books in the house. I went to a school where there were a whole bunch of languages on offer as a third language option. Urdu was one of them.
Q. Why did you take more than a 20-year gap in doing PhD after M.A.?
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A. In those 20 odd years, I was reading randomly and was also translating. I think the choice of the thesis, which was the Progressive Writers’ Movement, revealed itself to me because by then, I had read so many people that I hadn’t consciously thought of as progressive writers. I want to add that there is a great joy in reading for the sake of reading when it is not tied up to gainful employment, promotions and jobs. There is a great joy and liberation in reading for the sheer pleasure of it.
Q. Do you feel like having an obsession with Urdu?
A. A lot of people wonder about my so-called obsession with Urdu. Everybody wondered why I fell for Urdu even after doing a Masters in English and teaching the language. I am not obsessed with Urdu. But I think I am uniquely placed for having access to both languages. I enjoy accessing Urdu literature and making it accessible to those who don’t have it. So I developed the skill and honed it over the years since 1992 when I first published Prem Chand’s Urdu Short Stories. We think of him as a Hindi writer but actually he started out as a Urdu writer. So it was not an obsession but a continuing interest. I find Urdu as a mine and it will keep giving me something or the other if I keep mining it decades after decades.
Q. How do you see the visible cleansing of Urdu from writings and songs in recent times?
A. I think the Urdu writers, film lyricists have done a huge service in keeping Urdu alive in difficult times. Every time there was a war with Pakistan, Urdu became the enemy. It was strange. There was no logic behind it. So it’s the film industry that kept Urdu going. We owe a huge salute to all the filmmakers, who kept the language alive. When Doordarshan had not started, transistors used to play the film songs. Through those transistors, these words used to pierce through the popular imagination. They were cutting across the interiors where government policies could not go.