ABSTRACT
This essay focuses on the translator’s understanding of Joginder Paul’s process of creation of a brilliant novella Khwabrau (1990/91; translated as Sleepwalkers in 1998 by Sukrita Paul Kumar and Sunil Trivedi) in which the actual fact of migration becomes the transformative point for the protagonist to go through an elaborate existential journey in the mind and memory. Trivedi responds to the novella both as a reader and as a translator who needs to process the creative layers in the work while being ultra-sensitive to the layered linguistic use of words and the shifts of memory that keep the protagonist ‘sane’ in an otherwise impossible situation. He brings up an analogy to Mir Taqi Mir and also shows how Paul carried the essence of the novella within himself throughout his life and how, in reality, his own memories constituted his life as well. Paul thus became a participant-commentator who created an iconic work full of ideas, cultural engagements, sociopolitical, and existential tensions. The essay speaks of how the translator negotiated the challenges of translation and how he worked with the specifics of creative expression, the sophistication and restraint of expression, and the ideation and architecture of the story from the original to English, and how the novella continues to be created, trans-created, read, and re-read even today.
