KALYANI JHA | NT BUZZ
An assistant professor at Discipline of Konkani, at the Shenoi Goembab School of Languages and Literature, Goa University, Prakash Parienkar has published collections of poetry, literary essays, research work, children dramas, and screenplays. In 2022, he also came out with the novel ‘Puran’.
His writings, which explore the local culture, local life, class conflict, environmental issues etc, have been translated into different languages like, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, and Portuguese also.
Vidya Pai has been associated with Parienkar’s work for almost three decades. Her translations of his stories have appeared in Goa Today, Indian Literature and Katha Prize Stories 12.
This time around, she has concentrated her attention on 13 Konkani short stories written by him over a period of three decades. Twelve of these were published in his short story collection ‘Varsal’ (2021) that earned him the Sahitya Akademi award for Konkani in 2023. The title story ‘The Bitter Fruit Tree’ meanwhile was first published in the monthly periodical Jaag. The story was also made into the National award-winning film, ‘Kajro’.
These stories have been compiled into the recently released book ‘The Bitter Fruit Tree and other stories’ and published by Niyogi Books
“These stories deal with the social, cultural, and agricultural traditions in villages in Sattari region, along on the banks of the Mhadei River. They portray a range of folk customs and religious traditions and the tough life faced by the villagers even as they face nature’s fury or revel in her bounty,” says Pai.
However, the task of translation was not an easy task. “The region is isolated and not as developed as the rest of Goa, and has been unrepresented in Goan writing. Understanding the folk traditions and religious and cultural practices that abound in these stories was a challenge,” says Pai.
Also, the stories depict agricultural experiences that are not as known today. “The references to kumer farming, a slash- and- burn form of agriculture, now banned by the government, as well as the depiction of puran farming, an almost extinct method of tilling the land unique to this region, were quite distinct from the agrarian practices depicted by other Konkani writers I had translated like Pundalik Naik and Mahabaleshwar Sail,” she says. Further, Parienkar also brought to the fore unfamiliar words in the Konkani dialect in use in Sattari.
What helped Pai in understanding this region was Parienkar’s ‘Mhadei-Kallzantlyan Kagdar’ (An Eco-anthropological Study of the Mhadei River Valley), a voluminous study of the Mhadei river basin, published by the Directorate of Art and Culture, Government of Goa in 2011, which throws light on these aspects.
And Pai states that these stories truly deserved translation. “I believe that this little known writer and the little known region that he depicts deserves to be taken to a wider readership so that Konkani writing can be evaluated on the same platform as work from other Indian languages,” says Pai. Her next translation of his work is a children’s play ‘Igdi Bigdi Tigdi Tha’ which will be out soon.
