#Promo | Vikram Seth’s Hanuman Chalisa Translation: Exclusive Interview
Vikram Seth, who revels in the pleasures of both religious poetry and translation, called his translation of the ‘The Hanuman Chalisa’ a labour of love. He has dedicated it to Bhaskar, a character in his epic novel A Suitable Boy (1993). In the novel, Bhaskar learns the poem before he is five. When he is older, he resists the co-option of this poem and other religious texts by those with vested interests. “I learnt the ‘Chalisa’ because I had to know what my characters were seeped in,” Seth says. “How do you write about them from the inside without understanding the religious and linguistic texture of their world?”
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