Suryabala’s first satirical essay was published in Dharamyug in 1973 when she was still in her 20s, but she had already been a familiar name among Hindi readers for more than a decade as a writer of short stories and poetry for the weekly supplements of major Hindi newspapers. Dhritrashtra Times, a collection of satirical nonfiction that veers dangerously toward spoof, first appeared in 2001. Dhritrashtra is the blind—literally and metaphorically—king from the Mahabharata epic, who can’t actually go to the battlefield. He gets a blow-by-blow account of the fighting from his charioteer, Sanjaya. But should Dhritrashtra trust this ancient freelance reporter? Suryabala’s turns her critical and satirical eye to politics, media, society, and herself to report a more complex reality. It treats, with crafty irreverence, venerable figures from mythology, literature, and popular culture.
In the years since Indian independence in 1947, continuing to this day, there has been a bungled effort on the part of the central and several state governments to impose Hindi in the place of English. It is not uncommon for government offices to have a small wall dedicated to a chalkboard with “Hindi word of the day” written—in Hindi—at the top. Suryabala says of this piece, “As a writer in Hindi I’m constantly aware of the treatment meted out to Hindi. If those who are responsible for nurturing it had a real passion for the Hindi language, it wouldn’t be in such a pitiable state. I’ve always found that these government officials and leaders give lip service, shout into the microphone and use Hindi as a stepping stone to more power. This essay is my reaction against such people.”
The thorniest issue for me while translating this piece was confronting my complicit role in the system that the author is satirizing. I am one of those people who in some way have given up Hindi for English, and yet I continue to benefit from knowing the language I claim as my mother tongue. As I totter toward a literary and academic career in North America, will I be, like the unnamed government official of this piece, the person who wants to use English to explain Hindi, for whom her mother tongue is a precious cultural heirloom, to be taken out of its plastic wrapping and paraded for an exotica-hungry audience?