Indirabai -- multilingual novel, bilingual pages ...

In the previous post I had written about the innovative use of language in Indirabai.  What Gulvadi Venkatarao had done in this novel was unusual or maybe even unprecedented.  Indirabai is a Kannada novel, but the plot is set in Dakshina Kannada district.  For those who are familiar with the district would know that it is a naturally trilingual place.  Tulu, Konkani, and Kannada being the three main languages and their various dialects based on communities or castes are spoken here.  Gulvadi Venkatarao belonged to the Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin community (for easy reference – the Karnads, Benegals, Padukones, Gulvadis, Talageris, etc.), who spoke Konkani.  Now there are various dialects of Konkani spoken in the district.  Roman Catholics (the D’ Souzas, Fernandeses, Pintos, etc., of Mangalore) also speak Konkani and so do the Gowda Saraswat Brahmins (the Kamaths, Shenoys, Pais, etc.).  Then there are different Tulus – the rural Tulu, the urban Tulu, the Bunt Tulu, the Brahmin Tulu, among others). 

And then we have the recent entrant, English.  Freshly minted English-speaking graduates carrying the message of social change from Bombay and Madras form the English-spouting characters in the novel.  They are idealistic and excitable, and influenced a little bit by English (maybe also read as Western) ways.     

Gulvadi brings all their languages and dialects together in Indirabai and how!   As I mentioned in the earlier post, people speak in their own languages in the novel.  And Gulvadi translates Konkani and Tulu and English into Kannada for those Kannada readers who may not understand these languages.  So, there are pages in the novel where you have ‘side-by-side’ translation of Tulu and Konkani.  It also helps that Konkani and Tulu are actually written in the Kannada script in Dakshina Kannada.  Instead of just saying, I thought why not show them to you … here they are …

  

Here is a conversation in Konkani between two policemen – the Jamedar, Niklav Fernandes and Constable, Anthony Souza … the Kannada translation appears alongside …

This is a conversation in Tulu between Thimma, a servant in Vithalrao’s house and Triambakarao …

 And this is the English-suffused conversation among the graduates … note the Kannada translations in parentheses immediately after English words/phrases …

 

(All these pages are taken from the 2013 edition of Indirabai, published by Vasantha Prakashana, Bengaluru)