Hindi poet Anamika on why feminism has changed in India today

In an exclusive chat with Mid-day Online, the poet, who is also a novelist and translator delves into why she chose to write in Hindi, the role of translated works, reading in different languages and working on feminist literature

Indian poet Anamika absolutely loves the essence of the Hindi language. It is also the reason why she chose to write in the language that she calls the ‘language of the streets’ instead of English. Hailing from Bihar, the beauty of the language, for her, is reflected in daily life, and one that is hard to ignore, especially around the country. “I chose to write in Hindi because the milieu I belong to, the people I have grown up with, the environment I come from, the characters I draw from, are all people who walk on the streets - and English is not their mother tongue,” the writer reminds.

The author, who is also a teacher of English literature at a college associated with Delhi University, adds, “You know my characters, the idiomatic vigour of their speech - it all depends on what kind of environment you are from and what kind of people you feel like having a dialogue with.”  

The love for these very stories has been evident in her work that has spanned decades and for which she was befittingly rewarded in 2020. The Indian writer became the first female poet to win the Sahitya Akademi award for her work, ‘Tokri Mein Digant’, and it wasn’t something that people or she herself had expected, Anamika reveals, but definitely loved it. Some of her other works include poems such as ‘Khurduri Hatheliyan’ and ‘Doob-Dhan’.

Role of translated works
Over the years, her works have also been translated into English like ‘My Typewriter is my Piano’ but being a translator herself, it is one that is very close to her heart and one that she believes has true potential to help the masses get access to more literature from other languages.

She explains, “Now with the translation industry doing comparatively well, everybody has access to celebrate literature in many different ways. We also have South Asian centres in different foreign universities. I recently went to Poland, and they have a whole centre established for Indian literature and they wanted my help translating from Hindi to their language or their language to Hindi. So, it’s great to see minds coming together and reaching out to each other and see what kind of human oneness we have,” she adds. An emotion, she experienced when at the Jaipur Literature Festival where we met her earlier this year for an exclusive chat that was nothing short of poetry. It is such festivals that she believes play a role in building a subliminal bridge between ideas, people, and books.

While there are many kinds of challenges plaguing the translation industry, Anamika, believes in looking at the positive side of it. For her, improvement in how it has been picked up not only in text but also through small theatre companies is encouraging, especially those that have turned her novels such as ‘Dus Dwaare Ka Peenjara’ and ‘Tinka Tinke Paas’ into Marathi and Malayalam productions. On a much larger scale, the contributions of the Sahitya Akademi and Bharatiya Academy, she believes, have been doing their bit in promoting it.

She shares, “When I was growing up, Russian poetry was carried in two editions of original and translated versions. We should be making similar versions for Indian languages. Translation and collaboration are the best way forward. Work is being done in translating books, but it is not sufficient. We should have translation centres everywhere in every city in India, for the celebrated books and lesser-known ones by younger writers.”

Reading in different languages
While having such centres is important, she also hopes that more people translate even if it is very basic because if there is a taste for otherness, it works well. At the same time, reading such works is equally important and more so by everybody who thinks it is difficult, believes Anamika.

“If you are not exposed to a particular language, you develop a fear around it. There are people who have told me it should be in the Roman language because not everybody is exposed to that kind of script, but you can fall in love with a language only if you are exposed to it,” she adds. Knowing more languages has never been bad for anybody and so she stresses that while knowing the mother tongue is important, children should also learn other languages that can help them speak and read in them.

Feminism in literature
Anamika’s poems explore a wide variety of themes but one that she is known for is her feminist poetry, which has been translated into varied Indian as well as international languages.

More recently, she is also working on a research paper called ‘A Comparative Study of Women in Contemporary British and Hindi poetry’, which is being done at Teen Murti Bhawan in Delhi. With so much writing on the subject, the writer is not one to pick on the problems, even if they are aplenty. In fact, Anamika reveals there has seen an improvement in the way feminism is approached today. She explains, "Men are not beyond repair. I see a feminist in every person I teach. The feminists who have created the context have humanised you over the years. Earlier, the kind where there were firebrand feminists, people weren't listening to what they were saying so they had to cry loud and clear but now the issues are well-known. So you know why we can afford to be calmer, because they have paved the way for us. So, it is easier to talk to you in a calmer tone because they have done the worst work, and I now I have to just touch your heart and make you see."

The writer adds, “Sisterhood or the women's movement is not a monolith. You can have women from all sections of society and there are certain body-centric crimes that unify us. The body is the prime sense of torture even now like beating or burning somebody alive, trafficking, and pornography.” So, even if women belong to different classes and castes and religious sections, Anamika says, it is such subjects that unite women and their language and that brings them together. “It is what is unique about Indian feminism along with mythological and folklore construct that we can dwell upon,” shares the writer. 

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