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No doubt the several translators have performed a heroic task, but the results are disappointing.
There are some 188 individual items for the reader to dip into, ranging from rhyming micro-verses, songs and nursery-ditties to a few longer pieces in prose. No doubt the several translators have performed a heroic task, but the results are disappointing: "When I drank rice gruel with great relish/ What landed in my stomach was a chicken dish..." (from Malayalam); "When I the Mu filled up my mother who had but dry, milkless breasts, in the semen bag of he called father..." (from Tamil) and so on. I can’t be a judge of accuracy but the extreme lack of euphony in English made me wince. Imagine translating "Eenie-meenie-minie-mo/Catch a nigger by his toe" into Marathi or Hindi, what would the results be? Horrid or inaccurate, very likely!
The few texts that are presented in transliteration alongside their translations spring to life. For example, Goat’s Tail, originally in Telugu, is rendered as: "Mekatokaku meka toka mekaku toka" I don’t understand a single syllable of that language and yet just the sound of the little verse is more attractive to my mind’s ear than "rice gruel", that dismal post-colonial dish.
I do not doubt that the editors would have loved to include the original sounds of their source-material, but doing that would have meant doubling the book’s content and price. It is to their credit, therefore, that even such a grave drawback doesn’t preclude appreciating the book for its conception and presentation. The editors’ project was to focus attention upon the element of whimsy that informs all our lives; in that they have succeeded. I particularly enjoyed the contributions of film director Satyajit Ray’s father, Sukumar Ray. He is not only credited with having suggested that nonsense be dignified as a Rasa ("emotional effect") but his drawings, doggerel and short prose are by far the most polished examples of indigenous wit in this collection. It’s possible that his work comes through well in translation because he was unconsciously reflecting the British literary traditions of his era. Then again, it’s equally possible that I, as a reader, am more attuned to word-play of the ‘Gorgondola’ and ‘Horrendipitous’ kind than to the quasi-mystical or mythological themes in some of the other pieces.
Humour is highly subjective after all: what’s funny for me might be blasphemous for you and vice versa. But in a country where politicians generate tidal waves of nonsense on a daily basis, the need for honest satirists and nonsensologists has never been more acute. A book like this should inspire more interest in the field and, we hope, more euphonious editions in the future.