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Refusing the Gaze: Identity and Translation in Nirmal Verma's FictionAuthor(s): Prasenjit GuptaSource: World Literature Today, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Winter, 2000), pp. 53-59Published by: Board of Regents of the University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40155308Accessed: 04/10/2010 05:22

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Refusing the Gaze:

Identity and Translation in Nirmal Verma's Fiction PRASENJIT GUPTA

propose to examine issues of identity raised in liter-

ary works when a postcolonial, 'Third World" pro- tagonist travels in the "First World." Nirmal

Verma's short stories often revolve around an Indian1

protagonist in Europe, sometimes in London, sometimes in Czechoslovakia, sometimes in an unnamed continen- tal city. Verma (b. 1929) spent many years in Europe,

Nirmal Verma, circa 1985

mostly in Czechoslovakia during the 1960s, where he translated Czech literary works into Hindi.

My essay will also touch on issues of translation with

regard to Verma's fiction. Verma is held to be significantly influenced by European and U.S. fiction,2 and his Indian characters, mostly male, are often located in the West; thus, it might be argued that he writes in a translated

manner about transplanted men. Given this, what are the implications for rendering Verma's work from Hindi

("back," in some sense) into English? However, the "translation" of European modes of

writing is more than simple borrowing. By applying an existentialist manner to Hindi fiction (and I return to the

question of this "borrowing" later), Verma redefines the mode by writing in Hindi: his writing now takes on a

postcolonial edge; one pattern of identity problems is converted into a quite different pattern. 3 Given that some of the political value of his writing thus derives from its being written in Hindi, what is the political effect of translating it into English? Does this defuse its

postcolonial charge? I first consider some notions of identity as suggested

by one of Verma's short stories, "Jalti Jhari."

"Jalti Jhari." The two questions of identity and trans- lation in Verma's fiction converge in one of his best- known short stories, "Jalti Jhari." The title of this story means (or is a translation of) "The Burning Bush." The

figure of the burning bush appears in chapter 3 of Exodus:

1: Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the

priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the

desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. 2: And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame

of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

3: And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

4: And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

5: And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is

holy ground. 4

The biblical reference is made explicit in the action of the story, where the metaphor of the place where one stands - as well as the "burning bush" - is used to

explore the question of identity. The anonymous setting and the narrator's lack of purpose at the beginning of the story introduce the rootlessness that is to pervade it.

I had come to that city for the first time. I thought I'd stay there a few days and then go on, but some unexpected busi- ness forced me to stay longer. I remained at the hotel all day and every time I felt bored I wandered over towards that spot. Even in a strange city travellers seek out a favourite corner. . .5

It is on an autumn day that the narrator leaves the hotel to mail some letters, and on his way back he goes

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY • 74:1 • WINTER 2000 • 53

to an island: "Like the blades of a pair of scissors, the two branches of the river had cut it out between them"

(63). There he sees some boys playing under a bridge (who "probably didn't even see me") and an old fisher- man gazing off into the distance. The fisherman, too, participates in the preliminary erasure of the narrator's

identity: "He had looked at me and laughed . . . but I wondered if even then he had really seen me"

(65). The narrator

begins to feel "strange- ly uneasy," and when he sees the fisherman rise to leave, he feels he himself is "in some intricate and mysteri- ous way dependent upon [the fisherman] - as if by his leaving I

would lose something which had been living in me for a

long time" (66). The narrator thus attempts to establish a connection between his own identity and the fisher- man's, but the connection is only realized - too late -

in the moment of its rupture. A few minutes later, the narrator decides to change

his position, and he, "going over to precisely the spot where the old fisherman had been sitting, sat down." Is this a merging of identities? No, it becomes clear later. This is when he first notices the footprints in the mud: "The impressions of his shoes were still visible in the mud - they were not very long but rather wide and a little crooked in the front. They seemed quite ordinary to me and I did not look at them much longer" (66-67). 6 A little later, he begins to feel "confused"; his sense of dis- location is made even more explicit.

No one could know . . . that only a short while ago the old man had been sitting here, right at this very spot. I found some comfort in the thought that I was free of him. It was

entirely possible that the whole thing had been my mistake, a delusion such as often arises while wandering about a

strange city. (67)

Now the boys, "the smaller" and "the larger," walk toward him, and after a while they stand and look at him, "the gaze transfixing me just as a needle transfixes a worm which . . . finally quietens down, hypnotized, unconscious. It was like that; yes, exactly like that" (68). The narrator has lost consciousness of himself; he has lost, it will become clear later, his "solitude." When one of the boys, mistaking him for the fisherman, asks him if

he has caught anything, he denies that he is the fisher-

man; then he denies it again, but "this time my voice,

curiously, was not as firm as before" (69). A child's

questioning causes him to suspect his own identity -

that is how fragile it is. The smaller boy points out the

footprint as if it is proof of the narrator's identity. The narrator protests "in a weak and unsteady voice." The

narrator, feeling that the boy was waiting for him to step into the footprint, resists: "With all the strength I had I

kept my feet hidden in the grass." Soon the boys seem to lose interest, but before they

leave, the narrator is "stunned" to see the larger boy standing exactly where the old man had stood before he

left, staring at the same "unknown point" at which the old man had stared. The boy has taken on the role of the old man; he is the other, disconnected from the narrator. And once again, when the boys leave, they "had robbed me of something which had been a part of me" (70).

It is in this paragraph that Verma underlines our per- manent state of being alone and the importance of our solitude.

Once again there I was, alone; but after they'd left that for- mer feeling of solitude didn't come back. As long as we have that solitude to commune with, even when we're with oth-

ers, then, in any real sense, we're not alone. But now I had

only myself, alone, and I was frightened by the thought that those two had robbed me of something which had been a

part of me. (70)^

As long as we have our sense of solitude, we are not alone. It is when we lose this solitude that we lose

everything; and then we are utterly, irrevocably alone: "Now I was only with myself." This is a key notion in Verma 's fiction, and it is the reason, it seems to me, why solitude is so important to Verma's characters, why they often seek solitude, why even in the midst of a crowd

they often seem to be by themselves. The narrator is about to leave when he realizes that

once again he has company. Near the bush next to him,

barely three yards away, are two figures, a man and a

woman, who then disappear into the bush. Soon, the noises of passion reach him, and "a burning heat poured from the bush . . . twisting like a spellbound snake, it coiled around me" (72). 8 A little later they emerge (though he can only see the girl clearly), and she sits down "on the very spot where first the old man and later I had sat" (73).

"Did you see?" she asks him, staring off at the same

spot where the fisherman and the boy had looked earli-

er, "beyond the bridges and the church spires where the

As long as we have our sense of

solitude, we are not alone. It is

when we lose this solitude that

we lose everything; and then we

are utterly, irrevocably alone:

"Now I was only with myself. "

54 • WORLD LITERATURE TODAY • 74:1 • WINTER 2000

lights of the city stopped and the darkness began" (73). Then she asks whether he was "there" before, pointing at the bush. He asks about her companion - who can no longer be seen - but she implies that it is the narrator who was in the bush with her. This is the second moment of interpellation where his interlocutors seek to force an

identity upon him that is not his. Then "the bush trembled, as if something deep inside it were burning. ... I felt this was the second time that evening someone had demanded that I prove my 'truth'" (74-75). It seems that his "truth," like God, is in the midst of the bush. 9 But he cannot take the few steps necessary; and all the time she is looking at him: "While she looks, she is pushing me away, separating me from her" (75) as if they had been joined before, in the bush. The joining is, of course, illusory: once again, the moment of separation is doubly emphasized by sug- gesting a connection that never was. And then he runs, fol- lowed by her "cruel ghostly laughter." He is so disturbed that he cannot go back to the hotel; he spends the night in bars and on the streets, and finally, the next morning, "I left the city for good and moved on" {76).

The first look - the boys' - transfixes him "just as a needle transfixes a worm." In fact, a more literal transla- tion of the original "sui ki nok tale jaise koi kira dab jata hai"10 is "in the way some insect is pressed under the

point of a pin." This is surely a literal reference to the

entomologist's fixing and categorizing - locating and

identifying - act. The first look leaves him bereft of soli- tude; the second look, the woman's, drives him away, away from her, away from his "favorite corner," away from the city itself.

The characters in "The Burning Bush" have been read as "simultaneously representing real and imaginary fig- ures, conscious and subconscious projections of the pro- tagonist."11 The "cruel ghostly laughter" of the woman

might indeed betoken a ghost. However, the characters could also be read as various faces of the "Other," as various gazes of the Other that seek to define the narra- tor's identity in the moment of, and by the act of, its dis- location, its distortion. Just as the Lord's voice, emerging from the burning bush, charges Moses with his mission, to go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of

Egypt, so too does the woman, emerging from the

"burning bush," seek to force upon the narrator his "moment of accountability" (75). But unlike Moses, the narrator here declines the charge - he does not enter the bush, since that would fix the "truth" the woman seeks to impose upon him, just as earlier he did not step into the footprint in the mud; he does not say, as Moses does, "Here am I," and chooses instead to run, rejecting

whatever truth or falsehood lies within the bush. Verma's unnamed narrator refuses the fixing and identity- shaping gaze; he refuses to step into the footprints that await him (and it's not easy to resist: even a child's gaze takes all his strength to withstand); he refuses to enter the burning bush; he struggles to throw off the interpel- lation; he moves on. His character may be read, in a

postcolonial context, as the uncolonized, the uncoloniz- able. This, then, is the substantial postcolonial charge that Verma's work adds to the European concept of exis- tential angst, and even if some of his themes are viewed as derivative, this highly significant aspect of his work cannot be ignored.

The refusal to meet the gaze has been interpreted as an "existential choice": "Feeling that he is being called

upon to prove his 'truth,' the narrator decides to open his eyes, to see what he wants to see, to be accountable to no one. That is his existential choice; the result is

inconsequential."12 Inconsequential? Surely not. Verma's character has asserted his right to determine his own

identity, to seek it elsewhere, other than where these

gazes direct him. In the first encounter, it is his solitude that the narra-

tor loses. But that is not all; along with his solitude he comes close to losing himself, his identity. In his refus-

ing the imposition of another identity, his voice turns weak and uncertain; he wonders, it is implied, whether he might in fact be the old fisherman. It is his solitude, Verma seems to suggest, that is the nucleus of his self-

knowledge, and the loss of the first cannot but affect the second. Solitude is part of one's identity; identity is formed (at least in part) in relation to solitude.

This contradicts much psychoanalytic theory, which holds that identity is formed in response to an Other.

Perhaps, Verma might say, both solitude and the Other are determinants of identity;^ and this story suggests that some individuals are (sometimes) free to refuse the

fixing power of the Other's gaze and to move on, to seek their identity in solitude.

I turn now to a brief consideration of the role of land-

scape and geography in Verma's fiction. As a founder and leading practitioner of the "New Story" movement in Hindi, Verma is one of a set of writers concerned with the problems of dislocation.

It is in this last story [Verma's "Parinde"] that one can find the clearest expression of the existentialist problems which seem to preoccupy the new generation of Hindi story-writ- ers. Some of the recurrent themes of this new writing are the

meaninglessness of life, solitude, exile, death and the aware-

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY • 74:1 • WINTER 2000 • 55

ness of nothingness. . . . Nirmal Verma has raised the out- sider's problem to its metaphysical level, giving it its real dimensions. ... It is the eternal problem of man faced alone with the unknown, desperately questioning everything and himself for an answer to his anguish, searching for a way out of the dark.H

As in 'The Burning Bush/' Vermars protagonists are almost always disconnected from other characters in the

text, failing to make the human connection that will bring them mean-

ing:1^ "Nirmars charac- ters remain completely alien to each other.

They remain distant from one another. No one has any ties to any- one else."16 What is

more interesting, however, is their disconnection from the landscape, especially considering that Verma often describes it in lyrical terms.

Outside one could see the forests enveloped in a blue haze, and lofty mountains, range upon range. When the curtain fluttered in the breeze the room was drenched with a dream- like fragrance, wafted from afar.1?

They could see the lights over the dam in the distance. The river glimmered with the misted puddles of light. . . . The statues of the saints were concealed by the dark. Tramlight wavered on their heads, bent perpetually in prayer.18 The last rays of the sun falling on the tall grass were merg- ing into early darkness of the evening. Sometimes we spot- ted an animal in flight - an antelope or a herd of deer. . . .

Gray birds took off in swarms from ponds covered with blue moss and then swooped down together like expert divers and disappeared into the tall grass. *9

The characters in the stories often seem distant from the

landscape in spite of being framed within it. There is almost the sense that they are imprisoned in the land-

scape; this is even expressed literally in the story "The World Elsewhere," where the protagonist is accosted by a child in the park:

'You are caught!' She was all excitement. 'You cannot

escape now.' I didn't understand. I stood still where I was. 'You've been caught . . .', she repeated, 'you are standing

on my land.' I looked around. There was the grass, the flowers, empty

benches on one side, three evergreen trees and an oak tree with a heavy trunk in the centre. There was no trace of her land anywhere.

'Sorry,' I said and turned to leave.

'No, no ... you can't go,' the little girl stood barring my way. Her eyes were shining. 'They won't let you go.'

'Who won't let me go?' I asked. She pointed to the trees, which now took on the appearance

of tall and sturdy guards. Unwittingly I had fallen into their invisible trap.20

This sense of being trapped in an alien landscape, though not always stated so explicitly, is a familiar one in Verma's fiction. I read this as the protagonist's resis- tance to being located geographically: a refusal to be tied to his landscape, to be spread-eagled and pinned down on the collector's mounting board. This is related to the refusal of the Othering gaze; it is the slipping out of the

landscape's grasp. Many times, as in "The Burning Bush," the protagonist chooses to run. The short story "Exile" ends like this:

Fear seized me as I left the house and I broke into a run. When I finally pulled myself together I had a good silent

laugh at myself, standing still in the dark street. There was no one around, in front or behind. India was a long way ahead and he a long way behind.

I began walking on steady feet towards the tram stand.21

Not only is identity not formed through interpellation by the Other; it is also not formed by the character's

relationship to the landscape, by his position on the

mounting board. The character wishes to place himself

away from the twin forces of the land and the people: India is a long way ahead, "he" (an acquaintance) a long way behind; and the narrator is steady as he goes. Once

again, it seems, it is solitude that will give him his identity. I turn finally to the matter of the "translated" nature

of Verma's writing and its implications for translating his work into English. Two questions arise, one from the reader familiar with Western writing, the other from the Indian reader of Nirmal Verma. The first question is this: if Verma's work is ("merely") a rehearsal of European existentialism with non-European protagonists, why bother to translate it into English? There is plenty of such fiction already available in English; why add Verma? When the "original" already exists, why bother with the translation of an "imitation"? why translate Verma?

The second question follows from the fact that the choice of Hindi as the language of his work is a signifi- cant one for Verma. He says:

This choice of Hindi has been a terrific blessing to me - it has connected me to various vital movements of my times. . . . In one word, I can say that Hindi related me to my social sit-

56 • WORLD LITERATURE TODAY • 74:1 • WINTER 2000

The characters in Verma s

stories often seem distant from

the landscape in spite of being

framed within it. There is

almost a sense that they are

imprisoned in the landscape.

uation. . . . Hindi, as a suffering language, brought me into contact with suffering humanity: a language which itself was

deprived of any official patronage brought me into contact with the people deprived of so many rights.22

Given this clear awareness on Verma's part of Hindi's

position as a " suffering language/' and the consequent

political value of his choice of Hindi, it is no doubt true that to translate his work into English without comment would indeed defuse some of its postcolonial charge. The translator must explicitly consider (in an introduc-

tion, for example) the implications of Verma's choice of Hindi. And perhaps translation into English would in

any case deprive the work of some of its political value, but it might be possible in the act of translation to find

strategies that compensated for such loss by enabling (or forcing!) an increased awareness of the source culture in the Western reader of Verma's work in translation. This

brings me back to the first question: why translate Verma for the Western reader?

Political Resistance in Translation. As I argue at

greater length elsewhere,23 the act of translation of Indi- an regional-language works into English (the colonial as well as a postcolonial language in the Indian context) is a political act as much as it is a literary one. It is impor- tant to resist the assimilation of the English translation of an Indian literature (Hindi, for example) - and by extension the assimilation of the Indian literature itself - into a Western tradition of English literature. One kind of resistance I call "political resistance/' which may be expressed by the choice of text to be translated (as well as by the intended audience and by the identity of the translator, aspects that I consider at length else-

where). 24 In choosing the text to be translated out of a politically

weak language (such as Hindi) into a strong language (such as English), political resistance should seek to

challenge easy stereotyping, should seek to resist expecta- tions on the part of the Western reader. This may be done by selecting for translation i) texts that underline the differences between the source culture and the target culture (and translating them in a manner that empha- sizes these differences, for example by "foreignizing" the target language,25 while still resisting stereotypical, received notions of difference by emphasizing unexpected differences), as well as 2) texts that underline the similari- ties between the two cultures. Following either of these two strategies in isolation results in a simplified, distort- ed view of the source culture; for effective political resis-

tance in the postcolonial Indian context, it is essential to

complicate the (Western) target culture's image of the source culture, to provide some representation of the

complex nature of the source culture. Such works by Verma as "Jalti Jhari" might be consid-

ered, if they are viewed as similar to European existen- tialist writing, to fall under the second category above. Thus the translation of Verma's fiction into English for a

Western audience would resist expectations of Hindi fic- tion as only depicting the "exotic Indian" face of the source culture and thereby underline some similarities of experience and existence in source and target cul- tures. This, then (apart from all consideration of Verma's eminent position in Hindi, and Indian, literature and his

consequent claim to representation in translation), is a

political reason for translating Verma into English. To go a step further: given the thematic overlap

between some of Verma's fiction and already familiar

European modes, is it possible, even so, to mark it as

belonging distinctly to another culture? Were this possi- ble, it would be an example of highly effective political resistance in translation, a translation that inscribed its difference even as it demonstrated its similarity to familiar modes, inscribed its difference even though it

belonged to the "similar" rather than the "different" class of cultural products - thereby complicating the

image of the text and of the source culture whence it came. We must look, therefore, for possibilities of stylis- tic and other linguistic innovation (what I call "linguistic resistance") in translating such work, innovations such

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY • 74:1 • WINTER 2000 • 57

that the translation may carry the distinctive impress of the source culture even as it displays the common con- cerns of the two cultures. In Verma's fiction, one might look for cases where, for example, an "Indianness" (or non-Westernness) of a principal character is somehow

brought to light in a story that might otherwise be simi- lar to a Western story.26

In the case of Verma and the existentialist tradition, it can also be argued that Verma's themes and concerns are not simply borrowed from the West, that they have

long been a central concern of some Indian philosophic systems.

The urge towards inwardness . . . marks all existential

thought from Pascal to Sartre. The same is seen also as the main concern in Indian thought. . . . The forlornness, the aloofness of the self, and the experience of anguish and

despair often presented as the prominent features of the human condition in existential literature, are conditions pre- ceding to any spiritual realization in Vedanta as well as in Buddhism. So, in effect, the European thought-current of the

early twentieth-century really found a kindred temper on the Indian sub-continent. 27

Thus, thematic congruences between Verma's work and modern European writings may have deeper roots; the one may not be directly derived from the other.28 In this particular case the congruences may stretch back in time for centuries rather than decades, but even if this were not so, and concerns, forms, or techniques had indeed been taken more clearly and directly from West- ern literatures, translations of such texts would in either case help emphasize these common themes and con- cerns and thus act as resistant to the easy exoticization of Indian culture. In the same way that Verma's protag- onist in "The Burning Bush" resists the identity-shaping gaze of his Western interlocutors, so too might Verma's translator help refuse the "Othering" gaze of a Western reader.29

Thus, while the political charge carried by the Hindi- ness of Verma's fiction may, for the Indian reader, be defused by the act of translation, it can be argued that the Western reader's increased awareness of the com-

plex variety of Hindi writing (providing thereby an increased resistance to the easy exoticizing of Indian cul-

ture) is a not insignificant benefit arising from the trans- lation of Nirmal Verma's works into English. WLT

University of Iowa

1 Often the protagonist's nationality remains unspecified, but in the stories set outside India it is clear that he is a foreigner. Given that the narrative voice is in Hindi, the Hindi reader

might be expected to assume that the protagonist is Indian. In some stories, the protagonist's nationality is explicitly stated. In

"Exile," for example, he is accosted by an Indian in a bar, who

recognizes him as a compatriot: "'Aren't you an Indian?' ... 'It isn't every day you come across an Indian here! I couldn't believe it when I saw you!'

" ("Exile," tr. Kuldip Singh, in Nirmal Verma, The World Elsewhere and Other Stories, London, Readers International, 1988, p. 135).

2 See, for example, the introduction and chapter 1, "In the

Neighborhood of Pastiche: Nirmal Verma's Ek Chithda Sukh," in

Jaidev, The Culture of Pastiche: Existential Aestheticism in the

Contemporary Hindi Novel (Shimla, Indian Institute of Advanced

Study, 1993), for a discussion of the novel's "commitment to

High Modernism and existentialism" (49). Of Verma's first

novel, Ve Din (1964), laidev says: "Verma's ambition is to out-

Hemingway Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises" (48). 3 For this insight, as well as several other valuable connections

and suggestions, I am greatly indebted to Philip Lutgendorf. 4 The Bible: Authorized King James Version, eds. Robert Carroll

& Stephen Prickett, Oxford (Eng.), Oxford University Press, 1997/ P- 67-

5 "The Burning Bush," tr. Susan Neild, in Nirmal Verma, The World Elsewhere and Other Stories, p. 62. Subsequent page references are to this edition.

6 The footprint is an important symbol in Buddhist and Hindu religious representation. In early Buddhist art (2d~3d century B.C.), for example, Buddha is represented by the tree of

enlightenment, by his throne, and by his footprints. This is the "absent presence" that seems also to run through "Jalti Jhari." The Hindu gods Ram and Vishnu, too, are often represented by their footprints.

7 The source text I have (in Nirmal Verma, Meri priya kahaniyan [My Favorite Stories], Dilli, Rajpal & Sons, 1995) allows a somewhat different rendering. The following is my own translation and is a

fairly close literal (and therefore deliberately "rough") version: "I had been left alone there again, but after their departure the soli- tude as it had been before didn't come back. As long as solitude is with us, then really we are not alone. Now I was only with myself, and the thought seemed quite frightening to me that those two had snatched something away from me that had until then been with me." The translator's seeming interpolation - "even when we're with others" - may be an explanatory move.

8 This could be read as a Tantric reworking of the biblical

burning bush: the fire of the Lord's voice transmuted into sexual

energy. Can the coiled, "spellbound snake" be read as the ser-

pent of Genesis or the snake of kundalini - or both? "[The energy principle] is expressed in Tantric erotic metaphor as kun-

dalini, the latent energy stored at the base of the spinal column, which like a coiled serpent uncoils through the several parts (cakras) of the spine and finally reaches the nerve centres of the

58 • WORLD LITERATURE TODAY • 74:1 • WINTER 2000

upper brain (sahasrara)." See Margaret and James Stutley, Harp- er's Dictionary of Hinduism: Its Mythology, Folklore, Philosophy, Lit-

erature, and History, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1984, p. 299. 9 In one of his essays on the short story, Verma says: "When-

ever 'reality' appears in a story, it is always an enigma. Like a bird, it remains hidden in the bush. ... In English there is an

expression - 'beating around the bush.' The story writer can do only this; it is impossible for him to do anything more. If too much pressure is put on the bush, then the bird will die or fly away. . . . For the one who is a realist in a true sense, reality is

always hidden in the bush." Nirmal Verma, "Short Story Today," in Contemporary Hindi Short Stories, eds. Mahendra Kulasrestha et al., New Delhi, Amrit, 1984, p. 226.

10 Nirmal Verma, Meri priya kahaniyan, p. 158. 11 Joan F. Adkins, "An Analysis of Three Short Stories," Indi-

an Literature, 21:1 (January-February 1978), p. 63. 12 Adkins, p. 65. :3 This has been suggested by other writers as well: "I went

back even deeper into my profound inner exile, into journeying inside myself. The most important thing is what happens inside us, not to us." This is from Fadwa Tuqan's autobiography, A Mountainous Journey: An Autobiography, tr. Olive Kenny, St. Paul

(Mn.), Graywolf, 1990, p. 105, as quoted by Tetz Rooke, who adds: "The purely personal approach never precludes an

inquiry into other aspects of the identity. . . . What happens inside us is dependent on what happens to us. ... The relation-

ship is a dialectical one, and personal identity may best be understood as the synthesis of 'happens inside' and 'happens to,' a kind of balance that the individual has to achieve in order to arrive at a sense of selfhood, as the Swedish psychologist B.

Borjesson has argued." See Tetz Rooke, "The Most Important Thing Is What Happens Inside Us': Personal Identity in Pales- tinian Autobiography," in Identity in Asian Literature, ed. Lis- beth Littrup, Richmond (U.K.), Curzon, 1996, pp. 236-37.

X4 Catherine Weinberger, "The Outsider in New Hindi Stories," Indian Literature, 11:2 (April-July 1968), p. 72.

*5 As for example in the stories "The Dead and the Dying," "A Splinter of the Sun," "Maya Darpan," "Weekend," "The Dif- ference," and "The Man and the Girl" - in fact, most, if not all, of the stories in the collection The World Elsewhere and Other Stories, as well as in other collections.

16 "Nirmal ke patra ek dusre ke liye bilkul begane se rahte hain. Ek dusre se alag-alag se rahte hain. Koi kisi se sambandh nahin rakhta." Sarita Vashishth, Nirmal Varma ki kahaniyon ka videshi parivesh (The Foreign Environment in Nirmal Verma's

Stories), Dilli, Nirmal Pablikeshans, 1993, p. 86. l7 "Under Cover of Darkness," tr. Jai Ratan, in Nirmal

Verma, The World Elsewhere and Other Stories, pp. 1-2. 18 "A Room of Their Own," tr. Kuldip Singh, in Nirmal

Verma, The World Elsewhere and Other Stories, p. 236.

*9 "The Drought," tr. Jai Ratan, in Nirmal Verma, Such a Big Yearning and Other Stories, New Delhi, Indus, 1995, p. 185.

20 "The World Elsewhere," tr. Girdhar Rathi, in Nirmal Verma, The World Elsewhere and Other Stories, pp. 88-89.

21 "Exile," tr. Kuldip Singh, in Nirmal Verma, The World Else- where and Other Stories, p. 160.

22 Smitu Kothari, "The Challenge of an Outsider (The Weekly Interview: Nirmal Verma)," Illustrated Weekly of India, 20 November 1983, p. 59.

23 "Post- or Neo-Colonial Translation?: Linguistic Inequality and Translator's Resistance," Translation and Literature, 7:2 (1998).

24 Ibid. 25 See Lawrence Venuti, The Translator's Invisibility, London/

New York, Routledge, 1995. 26 Or for another example, see note 28. Of course it might not

be possible to achieve this difference-within-similarity in a

given work, and strategically it might even be best not to con- fuse the two kinds of text; in trying to make both points in the same text we may end up with none. The particularities of any given text will help the translator decide an appropriate strategy.

27 Sukrita Paul Kumar, "Tradition and the Emergence of the Modernist Temper in Post-Independence Hindi and Urdu Short Fiction," in On Literature, ed. Jaidev, Shimla, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1990, pp. 81-82.

28 And if there were some way in a particular translation

(perhaps in an introduction or a footnote) to underline the ancient Indian relationship to modern Western existentialism -

the two kinds of existentialism, their similarities and differences - it would be an example of the difference-within-similarity strategy of resistance described earlier. In this essay I have traced a couple of the Indian connections: the footprints as an "absent presence" and the coiled snake of kundalini that sets fire to the burning bush. Other such connections in the text

surely await the sensitive translator. 29 And, in fact, in the same way, Verma as a writer refuses

the reader's identifying gaze that seeks to locate him solely in either a tradition of Indian writing or a tradition of European existentialist writing.

Prasenjit Gupta is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa. In addition to his scholarly work, he writes

fiction and translates from Hindi and Bengali into English. His work has appeared in Translation & Literature, Exchanges, Asian Pacif- ic American Journal, Contemporary South Asia, Modern Poetry in Translation, and elsewhere. In 1998-99 he spent a year in India on a Fulbright-Hays grant, working with Nirmal Verma on translations

of a selection of his short stories.

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