House of Dolls, Short Story, Translation, The Bombay Literary Magazine, April 2024
As most things in my life, my translation of E. Santosh Kumar’s short story, Paavakalude Veedu, came about purely by chance.
Rahul Radhakrishnan, a prominent Malayalam literary critic and friend, to whom I was introduced by a common friend shared an English translation of this story by E. Santosh Kumar, one of his favourite authors, seeking an opinion of the same. I read the translation and found it lacking the right idiom and polish. He sent me a second translation, this time by another person, and this one I found stuffed with ponderous words that completely weighed down the lightness of the narrator’s manner of speaking.
I decided to take up the task myself just for fun and throughly enjoyed the process, which resulted in some happy outcomes: The Bombay Literary Magazine accepted it for publication; I became good friends with the author and I am in the process of translating his latest novel Tapomoyude Achan, which was a huge success in Malayalam.
Tony Xavier 