Dear Nandakumar, I thank you for posting again Ravindra Kelekar's ruminations about death which I had translated with the help of Padma Shri Suresh Amonkar.
A few days ago I was about to translate Ravindra Kelekar's tribute to the great Konkani short story writer Chandrakant Keni In the Diwali - Christmas mega-issue of Jaag 2009 which is the journal from where Ravindra commented upon Konkani movement and of course encouraged and promoted many many writers. I wanted to do this more because it revealed not only much about Keni, and also about those times, but also about Kelekar and his friends, such as Vaman Sardessai's lives. In his tribute to Chandrakant Keni, Kelekar writes like an old man. I say this because he does not have the energy to source the information that he has, he does not have the time to figure out the years and dates of the incidents he speaks about. And yet even before he speaks about Chandrakant Keni, he alludes to the environment in which he was part of - and that swirls from a censorious Portuguese regime, of the 40's to living with Mahatma Gandhi, to ... Here are the sections which I have already translated. Chandrakant By Ravindra Kelekar. Once upon a time a troika haunted Panjim: Dattaram Sukhtankar, Vaman Sardessai and Ravindra Kelekar. They were gluttons for good literature - in Marathi and in Portuguese (the languages through which most world literature came to us.) We used to read all this great stuff and discuss it till the cocks came home to roost, and then say, "Damn it - all this should have been in Konkani!" Really it was our desire to have all that writing in our own language, and we used to go around propagating this idea. Among us Vaman was the dreamer, the idealist, while Dattaram was the hard headed realist with feet always on the ground. And among them I think I was the golden mean, neither leaning to this extreme nor the other. Although we all had strikingly different personalities, we somehow got along extremely well. One day Vaman started to say,"We keep babbling 'Konkani' 'Konkani' ... but we never really do anything about it... We never write a word in Konkani. Until and unless we begin to publish in Konkani, we will have to put up with the slurs of those who describe our language as a 'boli' - a dialect. Why don't we start a periodical in Konkani? I expected Dattaram to object,"To start a periodical is not child's play!" But to my astonishment he said,"Let's do it!" Frankly in those days, thinking of running a periodical was no child's play. To start with, we had to get the Portuguese government's permission to begin publication. Anyway, we wrote to the government saying we wished to start a literary journal named 'Mirg'. After a few days, the government wrote back saying that we could start our journal, after depositing a sum of ten thousand rupees. Ten thousand rupees!!? Our faces turned small. No doubt we were frustrated. Then it so happened that we bumped into Amadeus Prazeres Da Costa. Looking at our disgruntled selves he remarked,"How is it that you chaps are looking so sour?" Amadeus was also the editor/publisher of 'O Heraldo' - the Portuguese daily and he happened to be a good friend of Dattaram. When he learnt about our problem, he said, " Why do you want to publish a new journal with a new name? Why don't you publish it under the banner of 'O Heraldo'? We already have sanction to publish in Konkani. You could make it a Sunday special supplement. Excited we straight away decided to start the Konkani supplement of O Heraldo. The entire responsibility of producing this supplement Vaman, Dattaram and I decided we should take on ourselves. And it started. After about 7 or 8 issues Vaman remarked," :Look here - this publication helps to satisfy our lust to be seen in print. Should we not be inviting aspiring Konkani writers to display their talents in this journal?" I said,"Let's have a short story competition. Then we can publish the best stories we receive. That should unearth new writers. We announced a competition. We expected a huge number of entries. Listen to this joke: we got just one, yes, just one entry. Sad. Just one person, a youngster from Cansaulim named Chandrakant Keni had very sweetly had sent in an entry even as our periodical faced closure... -- Augusto Pinto 40, Novo Portugal, Moira, Bardez, Goa, India E pinto...@gmail.com or ypinto...@yahoo.co.in P 0832-2470336 M 9881126350 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Goa-launch of the well-received *Into The Diaspora Wilderness* by Selma Carvalho on Aug 29, 2010 (Sunday) at 11 am at Ravindra Bhavan, Margao. Meet the author, buy a signed copy (only Rs 295 in Goa till stock lasts). http://selmacarvalho.squarespace.com/
