Posts by Thila Varghese

Translation Tuesday: “23 Cents” by Appadurai Muttulingam

March 14, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Thila Varghese

May your day begin well! Let it turn out to be even better with the resolution of my 23 cents credit issue.

This Translation Tuesday, Sri Lankan author and Toronto resident Appadurai Muttulingam recounts one person’s mischief at the expense of the impassive Canadian bureaucracy. When the narrator, in search of a human connection and the money he is rightfully owed, is rebuffed by automated mails and call center robots, a solution presents itself in the form of voicemails: whimsical, garrulous ones sent directly into the heart of the system, intended to flush out human beings hidden behind the machinery. Will the issue be resolved? Read on to find out.

Canadian $0.23. Its currency value amounts to 15 Sri Lankan rupees, 8 Indian rupees, 333 Italian liras and 20 Japanese yen in their respective denominations. That is not what is important. The Canadian government owes me these 23 cents. For many years, the government has been confused about how to return this amount to me, and I also don’t know how to get it back. Canada, a member of the world’s important group of countries known as the G8, has been cheating me for 23 cents.

This is how the problem started. For cooking my food and running the furnace, the Canadian government’s natural gas company supplied the gas, which saved me from hunger and cold. I am grateful for that.

Every month, they would send me a statement of account. Along with it, other monthly bills would arrive as well. I would review the bills on a Saturday morning and write the cheques to settle the accounts. These cheques would then be placed in window envelopes and mailed with appropriate stamps pasted on them.

At one time, the natural gas company sent me a bill for the amount of $199.77. For the sake of convenience and also because the amount in my account was in zeros at the time, I sent them a cheque for $200.00, meaning that I had remitted 23 cents more.

That’s how the blunder I made started.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Painting of a Dream” by Sakthi Jothi

February 21, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Thila Varghese

I am drawing an image of me that remains embedded in an undissolved dream of mine.

This Translation Tuesday, we feature the poetic reflections of Sakthi Jothi, translated from the Tamil by Thila Varghese. With painterly verse, Sakthi Jothi extracts a perfect image from the intensities of an “undissolved dream.” Feelings are captured in the lines, and colour and tools are sought to map their depths—but success may come at a price.

The Painting of a Dream

I am drawing
an image of me
that remains embedded
in an undissolved dream of mine.
I tried to put together a figure
by extending the lines in the summer
and contracting them in the winter,
stretching the lines farther
and erasing some of them as unwanted.
I painted it with colours
specific to each season.

It was only
during the times
passed in searching
for brushes and colours
to paint with precision
all the details,
such as the loneliness
that is undissolved by anything at all, READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Fragrance” by S. Vijayalakshmi

February 9, 2021  |  in Translations  |  by Thila Varghese

the desire to share everything/stimulated the conversation/while the voice inside cautioned to wait

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, the promises of a domestic paradise belie a need for defendable boundaries in S. Vijayalakshmi’s poem “Fragrance.” We’re guided through a surreal mosaic of images that juxtapose lofty abstraction with quotidian concreteness: the soul leans against the door of a domestic threshold, time (itself concretized in clock hands) peeks and laughs, paradise beckons like a salesperson, and possible lives are stars that bloom corporeally with fragrance. The speaker’s interlocutor, described as having the disarming veneer of a wise man, evokes a sense of risk and relatability—his very speech is depicted as unusually cloying (honey drops with sweeteners) and performative (“courtesy words,” “mask having sloughed off”). Yet the speaker’s trepidation is expressed by dramatic, even violent metaphors: a circus ring of fire, a standoff requiring bullet-proof vests. Through its ironically “delicate” title, S. Vijayalakshmi’s poem confronts the ungentle truths of relationships, vulnerability, and possibility.

Fragrance

The conversation proceeded very smoothly.
In the voice that was preaching to me
like a profoundly wise man,
honey drops were mixed with sweeteners.
The figure hiding behind the rough voice
smiled, the mask having sloughed off.
The night breeze gathered up
the courtesy words and left.
As the desire to share everything
stimulated the conversation
while the voice inside cautioned to wait,
the clock hand peeked out
to check whether everything was going well
and laughed.
Within the boundaries of the conversation,
a thousand bouquets
extended their welcome.
A paradise opened and invited me,
like a sales agent, to come in.
Leaning against the door,
my soul struggled with the weight
of the boundary line’s bouquets,
unable to bear the load.
Even as I contemplated on
which foot to put forward first
to step into the door of the paradise,
an oracle declared,
“Enough with your cautionary instinct and analysis;
just discard them and come in.”
What to do with all the fragrances
from the countless stars
that bloomed within me?
Again, I draw a line.
The flames are burning
like those on the line of a circus ring of fire.
You seem to appear the same as I do,
and both of us are wearing bulletproof vests.
The bullets are waiting
in the tidal wave of conflicts. READ MORE…