When I read the story to my father, he got tears in his eyes and he said, “Jao maa ko sunao (read it to your mother)". My mother used to make rotis in the tandoor and she also had marks on her arm. I read it when I was a child and there was this imagery of Hamid’s dadi’s hands getting burnt as she made rotis. It’s like Munshi Premchand’s short story Idgah. Kuch kissi se seekhte hain aur kuch kissi aur se (you learn different things from different people). There are a hundred masters you learn from. But there has never been a guarantee that I’m always on the right path, sometimes if I go wrong then I go wrong. When you are choosing your own way, you end up leaving signposts and, in that process, others can learn too. Do you feel the power you wield over so many people? Literally an entire generation has grown up on your words… those who sang ‘Lakdi Ki Kathi’ now sing ‘Tujhse Naaraz Nahin Zindagi’. Lafz dhoondne ke liye kaam toh roz karna padta hai (one has to work hard in order to find the right words). I recently travelled to Bangladesh to collect material on both these personalities. Like, now I want to translate the works of the Bangladeshi poet Kazi Nazrul Islam and write a play on the Bangladeshi leader Mujibur Rahman. When you find something that makes you feel that only you can do it and nobody else, then you automatically want to do it. I rely on my conviction and devotion to pursue whatever I’m passionate about. Issi liye toh filmein banani chhod di (This is the reason I stopped making films). Even though I received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award from the President, it was only after we discussed Tagore that I felt I had had a conversation with Pranab Mukherjee.įor someone who has such an enviable body of work, how do you keep yourself motivated? How do you choose your projects? He did a double take and I felt very honoured when the President spoke about Tagore with me. I presented the first copy to President Pranab Mukherjee and he asked me, “You have done it from Bangla? How?" I replied in Bengali that I could read and speak in Bengali. To the best of my efforts, I have remained honest to Tagore. I have followed his original Bengali works and then translated them.
English mein zubaan ka culture hi nahi aata (English cannot capture the nuances of the language). Maybe he was, but I wasn’t, so I took it upon myself to do it. I wasn’t happy with Tagore’s own translations in English. Sabse pehle toh ghar pe maar padti (first I would be criticised at home)-(laughs, referring to his wife Raakhee, a Bengali). When I decided to translate his works, I knew it came with great responsibility. Mujhe yeh theek karna tha (I wanted to correct that), which became my motive. It was a book he wrote to present Indian spiritualism to the West. People think Tagore is only about Gitanjali. I searched for the original poems, uss mein waqt laga (that took time). Tell us a bit about the process of building these two collections? How long did it take?
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