ABSTRACT
The events in Joginder Paul’s Urdu novel Paar Pare are centred around displacements from mainland India, imprisonment in the cellular jail, and the new settlements in Andamans. Kissonwali Gali, the street of stories, is where various languages, idioms, as well as socio-economic registers mingle to regenerate both absences and continuities. Languages are accompanied by personal histories and it is this wholistic existence that the English translation Beyond Black Waters attempts to capture through the main narrative voice of Baba Lalu. The non-sequential, multilayered narrative imbued with fantasy and orality remains a challenge for any attempt at translation. The tightrope walk between authenticity, embellishment, and readability is made even more difficult by the fact of language/s, themes, and characters tightly woven into each other. The complexity, however, brings along its own enrichment of multiple options and interpretations with images and play of words becoming extremely significant in imparting meaning to the story, the plot, and the rhythms of passing time in the novel. The fact is translators are travellers not just across time but that time imbues this translation with a quality that defies a final and finished form.
