An Interview with Translator Rohith

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Today, we're publishing an interview with Rohith, who has translated a story by Telugu author V. Chandrashekar Rao for the upcoming anthology.

Rohith

What sorts of genre fiction exist in Telugu? Is science fiction popular? What about horror? Are there many writers experimenting with weird or absurdist fiction?

Rohith: One can broadly trace out two streams in Telugu literature in the mid- to late-twentieth century. The first stream is ”serious” writing: writers working primarily in the social realist tradition, heavily influenced by worldwide leftist and anti-imperialist movements and the nationalist anti-colonial movement of the time. Many legendary writers in this tradition found their place in the literary canon.

In the other stream, there were writers who catered to a popular audience, producing books with yellow paper, cheap jackets, and low prices. These books were considered non-serious, non-literary, and mostly looked down upon. It was understood that the authors were writing for commercial success. It was an era without many televisions, and these books were the blockbusters of the time. This literature was seen as complicit in seducing people away from doing the real tasks of the world, like fighting colonialism, freeing the nation, or mobilising against capitalism. It was considered escapist to read this literature. Horror and detective fiction were predominant in this second stream.

Science fiction, largely influenced by Soviet futurism, was at the intersection of the first and second streams. 

Tell us a little about how you got into translation and why you think it’s important.

I think I started translating in order to read texts more closely. I think I was, initially, just a reader. Since I wanted to share what I read with my friends who didn’t know the same language, I ended up translating.

But it slowly metamorphosed into something bigger when I started translating Varavara Rao. This was in 2020, when Varavara Rao was viciously incarcerated by the state. At that time, my translations were circulated in social media, and they were further translated into many other languages. A solidarity in support of the poet was built across languages against the might of the state. That all became possible through translations. That’s when I got more serious about translating from Telugu.

How did you discover V. Chandrashekar Rao’s work?

I think it was in 2014, and I was looking for writers who were seriously engaging with politics and social change but also not confining themselves to social realism. A friend suggested that I read Chandrasekar Rao. The first story I ever read was "The Last Radio Play", and I remember reading the very first line of that story—it took me by gasping surprise. It was an expression that seemed so poignant and yet so awkward to me.

That’s how I discovered Chandrasekar Rao.

Front cover of the Telugu Edition of "The Last Radio Play"

V. Chandrashekar Rao

The story to be included in the anthology, “The Last Radio Show," is hard to classify in terms of genre. It isn’t science fiction and it isn’t fantasy. But there are things that happen that seem impossible, including a character that appears to be living several mutually exclusive lives simultaneously. How was the author’s work packaged for its original Telugu audience?

The eccentricity of Chandrashekar Rao’s writings rendered him a little unpopular. He was seen as a difficult writer, inaccessible to common readers. 

If we examine how Telugu literature evolved over decades, we can see at least one major social movement in Telugu society every decade after independence: The Telangana armed struggle, the Srikakulam armed struggle, the Naxalite movement, the anti-emergency protests, the Dalit movements that took shape after the upper caste attacks on Dalits in Karamchedu and Chunduru, up to the recent movement for a separate Telangana. These movements had a direct influence on Telugu literature. For a very long time, Telugu literature has been evolving alongside the social and political changes in Telugu society. Many writers were activists, and many activists turned into writers. In this ecosystem, literature had an agenda: social change. Speculative fiction was considered escapist; it was trivialised and marginalised. V Chandrashekar Rao somehow figured that a sharper critique could be delivered by writing in alternative genres. He focused on introspection, turning inward, and looking at the gaps within the social movements. His stories seem to be derived from the incidents in social movements. Many of his characters are social activists, deeply flawed and complex. And, in some sense, V Chandrasekar Rao speculates on how these characters affect the social movements of the neoliberal era through his stories. I believe this ‘speculation’ is the source of his magic-realism.

I think that’s why his stories were marked by a mournful atmosphere, reminiscent of the social movements after the fall of the Soviet Union. There is an eeriness akin to the end of history, where melancholic spectres from the past colour the present. His stories have that sense of international left-wing melancholia prevalent across the world in the 1990s.

Can you tell us about the politics of V Chandrashekar Rao?

Chandrashekar Rao’s politics were a bit complex. He was never open about his identity as a Dalit, even though many of his stories were derived from the anti-caste movement in Telugu society. He was a harsh critic of the communist movement, despite being largely left-leaning.

It’s fair to characterise him as a spectator of neoliberal society. He was never an activist, and the reasons for this remain unknown. However, he chronicled whatever he observed during this period. I think he was conscientiously filling gaps in the lives of the flawed activist leaders, and the fractured political movements, with magic-realist elements, like shape-shifting ghosts, or by creating an eerie atmosphere.

In the preface of his first short story collection, Jeevani, he wrote: “I chose story-writing as a medium to understand life. Story stood in between me and the world, and acted as an instructor - it made me wiser. It gave me the eye to look into myself.” (Translation mine.) His strong inclination towards communism led him to examine the failures of the left-wing movements in the country. He was also critical of the Dalit movement, writing about the flaws of Dalit leaders and how he felt the movement was going astray.