We don’t have people like Nisar Ahmed anymore: Roopa Pai
It began with a series of Facebook posts exactly a decade ago. Between November 1st and 7th, 2016, to celebrate Karnataka Rajyotsava, Roopa Pai translated
It began with a series of Facebook posts exactly a decade ago. Between November 1st and 7th, 2016, to celebrate Karnataka Rajyotsava, Roopa Pai translated and posted poems of various Kannada poets on the social networking platform. “Apart from the translation, I wrote a note about the poet, introducing them to whoever was reading my Facebook page. This became quite popular; people felt touched and happy that Kannada poets were being celebrated like that,” says the Bengaluru-based writer and the co-founder of Bangalore Walks, a history and heritage walks and tours company. One of the poems she translated was by KS Nisar Ahmed, best known for ‘Nityotsava’, a paean to Karnataka, which was later set to music and became a cultural icon of sorts within the state, deeply resonating with its people. “I didn’t know very much about Nisar apart from ‘Nityotsava’. But when I saw this poem called ‘Hakku’, I thought it was cute,” says Roopa, recalling how “satirical, sardonic and tongue-in-cheek” it was. “He was such a well-known poet, but I found it was interesting that he could write like this too. So, I picked it up and translated that poem ” Then, in January the following year, she bumped into Nisar at an event at Bengaluru’s Sapna Book House. “They were celebrating their 50th anniversary and had invited a few authors to give a few soundbites about Sapna,” she says. A number of heavyweights from Kannada literature were present at the event, including Nisar, whom she immediately recognised from a photograph. “Everyone knew how he looked, because he always wore a suit and a tie, the only thing that would give him some volume since he was quite slim.” Roopa, who was excited to see him, says that she went up to him and told him that she had translated one of his poems.
She showed it to him and, on impulse, told him she wanted to translate more, she recounts. “He told me to go ahead.” That was the genesis of Every Day a Celebration, a collection of Nisar’s poems translated by Roopa, which recently came out. Published by Seagull Books, the anthology contains 102 poems, including cult classics such as ‘Sheep, Sir, We are Sheep’, ‘Krishna, the Butter Thief’ and ‘Amma, Tradition and I’, handpicked by the poet himself from his vast, si decade-long body of work comprising hundreds of poems. “When he sent me the list of poems, and I began to read them, I was struck by the range of his work. He was responding to whatever was happening in his environment,” says Roopa, listing some of the themes explored in these poems: politics, communal conflict, identity, Bengaluru, America, philosophy. Also read: How to make friends with the trees around you ”He was difficult to slot, but his concerns were many, and his spirit was always humane and compassionate, without taking strong sides. But he also was a critical insider, calling out injustice and fakery in many poems,” says Roopa, who also loves how much of a Bengalurean Nisar was. “He was able to create new words and use different languages in his poetry, very much like how an urban person would speak in Bengaluru.” She began the project by visiting the poet at his home, where he gave her his entire collection of poetry, along with a list specifying which poems to include and where they could be found in the collection, says Roopa, who would work in spurts on these poems “whenever I could find the time, since I was also working on other books then.” By April 2020, she had finished all the poems and sent them to Nisar, who, she says, appeared happy about it.
The BriefWire