In a place that has multiple languages and multiple uses and names for language, one Pune-based group by the name of OQ Works has decided to translate a well-known Marathi play, Vijay Tendulkar's Kamala (1981), into English. Does this signify how a regional issue is still relevant to what is debated and discussed among the educated, internationally connected audience of Pune's English media?
Tendulkar wrote prolifically in Marathi since the 1950s, often reaching issues that were taboo and off the chart at his time, such as women's rights and domestic conflicts. In Kamala, the journalist Jaisingh Jadhav bought Kamala a tribal woman from a market in a remote village in Bihar for 250 rupees and held a press conference for her in Delhi, thus attracting massive controversies that eventually compromised his career. Kamala, nonetheless, is not entirely about the public sphere. Jaisingh's wife, Sarita, discovered that her life mirrors that of Kamala, unable to voice her own opinion and is confined to the realms of her house as a housewife...
Even now many upper-class, educated mothers in both developed and developing countries are sacrificing their professional ambitions to raise a family, and the fact that such thoughts are spoken in English reminds us that it is not only a question relevant for those in the local, Marathi-speaking sphere. In many places, perhaps, mothers are waiting for their husbands and sons to return from far-flung travels, while waiting for chances to engage the world outside of their own house and neighborhood themselves.
Maybe, to provide an alternative ending or even at least to provide a lens into unforeseen disaster, Sarita should have held a press conference about her confined life instead as she had once aspired in a dialogue with her uncle....
Tendulkar wrote prolifically in Marathi since the 1950s, often reaching issues that were taboo and off the chart at his time, such as women's rights and domestic conflicts. In Kamala, the journalist Jaisingh Jadhav bought Kamala a tribal woman from a market in a remote village in Bihar for 250 rupees and held a press conference for her in Delhi, thus attracting massive controversies that eventually compromised his career. Kamala, nonetheless, is not entirely about the public sphere. Jaisingh's wife, Sarita, discovered that her life mirrors that of Kamala, unable to voice her own opinion and is confined to the realms of her house as a housewife...
Even now many upper-class, educated mothers in both developed and developing countries are sacrificing their professional ambitions to raise a family, and the fact that such thoughts are spoken in English reminds us that it is not only a question relevant for those in the local, Marathi-speaking sphere. In many places, perhaps, mothers are waiting for their husbands and sons to return from far-flung travels, while waiting for chances to engage the world outside of their own house and neighborhood themselves.
Maybe, to provide an alternative ending or even at least to provide a lens into unforeseen disaster, Sarita should have held a press conference about her confined life instead as she had once aspired in a dialogue with her uncle....
No comments:
Post a Comment