Sabeer Haka, Iran’s worker-poet, constructs buildings by mixing brick, mortar and cement. He creates poems by mixing words, thoughts and images. We haven’t seen the buildings he helped construct, but we can feel the sweat of his body and the sound of his creaking bones in the poems he writes. I have translated countless poems in my life so far, and amongst them, the poems of Haka hold a special place.
I translate mostly for creative satisfaction. While reading world literature in English, if I spot a poem that I feel should be available to the Hindi reader, I try to get in touch with the poet or their representative for the permission. I then translate the poem into Hindi so that the vast reader-family of my language can read the poem. The poems of the Iranian poet Haka are among the translations that have given me two kinds of joy. One is the satisfaction that the beautiful poems of an Iranian poet donning a different attitude have come into my language and enriched it. And the other is the pleasure of watching the poems receive immense love from Hindi readers through social media.