'Muddled Muff's Musings': New English Translation Promises To Take D V Gundappa Classic ‘Mankutimmana Kagga’ To The World

Muddled Muff's Musings. Chandana Sri S. Sahitya Akademi. Pages 355. Rs 399.

Laughter is a tendency innate;

Making others laugh as well is great;

Laughing when you see another’s laugh -

Is an even more outstanding trait;

Seek to laugh, to spread laughs all the way -

For a life of laughter you must pray!

*

For some morsel not having to wait,

To some shoulder not being a weight,

Unencumbered by attachment’s net -

Such release is what one prays to get.

*

For poetry connoisseurs, the lines above resonate not only for their flawless meter, alliteration, and prosody but also for the profound philosophies of life they beautifully express. These are just two of the many such gems of poetic excellence and spiritual wisdom available to the readers of the new book in town, Muddled Muff’s Musings by Dr Chandana Sri S.

Muddled Muff’s Musings, published by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, is an English translation of the celebrated Kannada work “Mankutimmana Kagga.” The original, authored by Dr D V Gundappa (fondly referred to as DVG) and published for the first time in 1943, stands as one of the most admired works in modern Kannada literature. Widely hailed as a masterpiece, it is often referred to as the “Bhagavad Gita of Kannada.”

The title, translating to “Dull Timma's Rigmarole” as DVG himself put it, is a collection of 945 four-line verses crafted in the panchamātrā chaupati meter, which offers a remarkable blend of poetic beauty and philosophical depth. It delves into life's most profound questions, contemplates the nature of the ultimate truth, and guides us toward a balanced life in a complex world through the wisdom of a noble soul.

The popularity of this work is obvious through the hundreds of thousands of copies of this work sold in Kannada since its first publication, as well as multiple translations that have come out, across English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, Tulu and Malayalam.

Nadoja Dr S R Ramaswamy, a renowned journalist, writer, art critic, social activist as well as a long-associate of Dr DVG, calls Mankutimmana Kagga a phenomenon in Kannada literature, given the popularity that it continues to enjoy even after multiple decades of its publication.

He highlights that Kagga is made special and unique not merely through its literary quality, but through a honeyed block of years of prolonged contemplation of life and experience. DVG himself had remarked that his work in Kagga was not for the pundits, eminences and the well-fed and that he would be content if it became akin to a drop of oil to the light in the homes of the most ordinary people. Indeed, a typical day in the life of Kannadigas feels incomplete without encountering a reference to a Kagga verse woven into their daily routine.

Muddled Muff’s Musings by Chandana Sri S is an illustrious addition to the list of translations the Kagga has enjoyed over the years, and is special for being the first metrical translation in English, while the earlier ones have been prosaic.

The translator is a surgeon by profession. However, as Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji notes in the introductory sections of the book, she has demonstrated remarkable interest and sensitivity towards literature and the arts, as well as academics, from a very early age. As the author herself shares, what started as a hobby project — translating individual verses of the Kagga for fun and joy — became a mission to complete the profound work as months passed.

Returning to the example verses shared at the very beginning of this write-up, those who have read Kagga in the original can recognise that those were the translations of the famous verses numbered 917 and 930 respectively, and that the translator has been masterful in representing the connotation and depth of the original verses.

ನಗುವು ಸಹಜದ ಧರ್ಮ; ನಗಿಸುವುದು ಪರಧರ್ಮ |

ನಗುವ ಕೇಳುತ ನಗುವುದತಿಶಯದ ಧರ್ಮ ||

ನಗುವ ನಗಿಸುವ ನಗಿಸಿ ನಗುತ ಬಾಳುವ ವರವ |

ಮಿಗೆ ನೀನು ಬೇಡಿಕೊಳೊ - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ ||

naguvu sahajada dharma; nagisuvudu paradharma |

naguva kēḻuta naguvudatiśayada dharma ||

naguva nagisuva nagisi naguta bāḻuva varava |

mige nīnu bēḍikoḻo – maṅkutimma ||

 *

ಆರ ಕೈತುತ್ತಿಗಂ ನಿನ್ನ ಕಾಯಿಸದೆ ವಿಧಿ |

ಯಾರ ಭುಜಕಂ ನಿನ್ನ ಭಾರವಾಗಿಸದೆ ||

ಆರ ಸೆಲೆ ಸುಳಿವುಮಂಟದವೊಲಾಗಿಸಿ ನಿನ್ನ |

ಪಾರಗಾಣಿಸ ಬೇಡು - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ ||

āra kaituttigaṃ ninna kāyisade vidhi |

yāra bhujakaṃ ninna bhāravāgisade ||

āra sele suḻivumaṇṭadavolāgisi ninna |

pāragāṇisa bēḍu – maṅkutimma ||

 *

The Work and the Approach to Translation

Muddled Muff’s Musings features a glowing foreword by the esteemed polyglot of our times, Shatavadhani Dr R Ganesh. A practitioner of Avadhana and a writer and poet in multiple languages, he is also an authority on Indian aesthetics, including prosody and figures of speech.

He highlights the lofty place DVG and Mankutimmana Kagga occupy in literature and points out the challenges in translating such a classic work. In addition, there is the challenge of translating an Indian language text rooted in the principles of Sanatana heritage to an alien language like English.

Dr Ganesh highlights through prolific examples that the translator “has succeeded in bringing out not just a line-to-line translation but has preserved the scansion of the original with admirable poetic skill.”

Chandana’s work has a detailed Translator’s Note before the reader gets into the actual poetry, where she introduces the reader to the original work of Kagga, to the life and times of Dr D V Gundappa and then to her own approach towards translation. This section itself is a gem of a contribution. For anyone wanting to know more about Kagga itself, the diverse topics it covers and the different ways it treats them, Chandana’s note is a godsend. She says: 

“The Kagga has something for everyone. Its tone is often playful, sometimes poignant and sometimes ironic. It is skeptical without being dense, reverent without being dogmatic, interrogative without being insolent, firm without being rigid, and honest without being harsh… It is completely cognizant of the limitations of human capabilities and comprehension. But its attitude is never defeatist.”

She combines this with quotes from Dr R Ganesh’s observations on Kagga in his Introduction to an earlier translation, Foggy Fool’s Farrago by Smt. Malathi Rangaswami and Sri Hari Ravikumar:

“The Kagga speaks of the balance between our hopes and the reality, between our dreams and capabilities, between human effort and providence, between our needs and universal welfare, between privileges and challenges. And this balance is never static. It is a dynamic equilibrium that needs constant vigilance.”

Most verses in the translation are quatrains set in a type of trochaic meter, with each line beginning as a trochee and containing five stressed syllables. Occasionally, the translator has also resorted to using more than four lines when it was difficult to fit the entire intent of the original in just four lines. Some verses have also been translated with more than five trochees in a line, again when the need for larger metrical real estate was felt.

Before the Kagga verses begin, DVG also tells the story of Kagga and Timma Guru through a heart-touching ballad, “Kaggada Kathe.” It is rendered in the original in a meter called Utsāha ragaḷe, and Chandana has also translated this to English by retaining the same meter. This work, like the Translator’s Note, is another highlight. The story comes out exceptionally well, captivating the reader through the tenderness of the topic and the pensive mood towards the end. Here are a few lines, for example:

Tattered shirt and unkempt beard - Uncle - quite the rural bum!

Savvy outfit, pompous look - Nephew - quite an English chum!

Minutes passed without a change, till the buddies left the place;

Then Uncle and Nephew could - chatter like the good old days!

 *

In my Maṇḍugere home, in a humble little nook,

I have left a written stash - Tell Somi to take a look.

Let him do what pleases him - with those pages in a sheaf.

Please don’t think of me a lot, please do not give in to grief!

 *

After the Translator’s Note and the Story of Kagga, the work delves into the individual verse translations.

Examples from the Work

As an example of how well this work succeeds in driving home the point of a Kagga verse as succinctly and strongly as the original, one can look at the translation of verse 315, among many. The original verse goes thus:

ಸಂಬಳದ ಹಂಬಲವೊ; ಡಾಂಬಿಕತೆಯಬ್ಬರವೊ  |

ಇಂಬು ಕೂರ್ಮೆಯ ಕರೆಯೊ; ಕರುಳ ಕರೆಕರೆಯೋ  ||

ತುಂಬಿಹುವು ಬಾಳಿನಲಿ ನೂರು ತಕರಾರುಗಳು  |

ಬೆಂಬಲವವೆಲೊ ಜಗಕೆ - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ ||

sambaḷada hambalavo ḍāmbikateyabbaravo |

imbu kūrmeya kareyo karuḷa karekareyō ||

tumbihuvu bāḷinali nūru takarārugaḷu |

bembalavavelo jagake – maṅkutimma ||

 *

The essence of the verse is about how various types of human materialistic bindings and squabbles have kept this mundane physical world going. DVG brings it to life in his typical matter-of-fact fashion filled with alliterations. In one of the earliest published English translations of Mankutimmana Kagga, Sri D Seshagiri Rao brings this verse to life in the following manner:

Whether solicitous thought for salary, shouting from empty pride,

Love of home beckoning or plaintive call of the belly,

Life is filled with a hundred plaints and objections

They provide the needed support to the world - Mankuthimma

* 

The same verse gets translated in the work “Foggy Fool’s Farrago” by Smt. Malathi Rangaswami and Sri Hari Ravikumar as below:

The yearning for salary, the swelling of pomp,

The call of shelter and love, concern for relatives

Life is made of a hundred conflicts

Indeed they support the world.

 *

And here’s how Chandana Sri captures the essence of verse 315 in her translation:

Need for wages, or the lure of the show;

Call of care and duty, or guts woe

Life has hundreds of such tiffs, not one!

They support this world and make it run.

 *

While this is not an attempt at comparing the various translations and each have their own clear merits, it is not difficult to see how effective Chandana’s translation is in representing the implied purpose of the original verse in this case. It achieves what it has set out to, even in the face of the limited metric real estate available to it.

Chandana's work masterfully distils the verse's specifics into a succinct, powerful expression of the author's deeper intent — delivering the message with the same precision and impact as the original.

The “make it run” (i.e., make the world run) part towards the end of her translation of this verse is not just there to fill up the metric void or to ensure rhyming, but that part was exactly what DVG intended to convey and left unexpressed. In translations, sometimes, expressing the unexpressed intents of the original or leaving aside the explicitly expressed intent of the original depending on the language to which it is being translated helps bring more clarity and packs a better punch, and this particular verse stands as a glowing example of that. 

There are examples in this work where the translator has resorted to retaining the original expressions and concepts close to Sanatana heritage as-is, and there are other example verses where she has chosen to derive the intent through masterful simplifications that fit the language of English, making it more natural to the readers of this language. Striking a balance in doing both is tough.

While purists might complain that some aspects have been watered down too much in certain cases, others might complain about using non-indigenous English words to retain the intents of the original. Despite having to endure this tightrope walk while facing the double-edged sword, Chandana must be commended for coming out of this stringent test with flying colours.

Dr R Ganesh also alludes to a cricketing analogy in his foreword when highlighting the quality of her output, saying that good examples of translations are spread throughout her work and hence her strike rate is admirably high! To extend this analogy further, we could add that Chandana has impressed enormously in her very first published work, equivalent to scoring a century on debut. Or in this case, scoring a 945 on debut!

Here are a few more exemplary verses:

For the famished, stale food does suffice;

Once the belly’s filled, the cravings rise-

Pomp, a mate, then gold, then station’s highs…

Bosom’s fount of craving never dries. (210)

 *

What's the dawn of existence? When did this world come to be?

Which one is the very first of the blue waves in the sea?

Do the ceaseless breezes know any frontier when they blow?

Just so is the timeless tale- of this world's colossal scale. (90)

 *

In Delhi, the Greek epics they read;

Kāśī's texts - in Oxford - are studied;

Mind’s kingdom has no borders to heed

It’s suffused by Brahman’s breath indeed! (60)

 *

Charming Śyāma is Nṛsimha too!

Śankara is fearsome Rudra! True!

Gauri takes up Kālī’s form and name!

Gore and charm are one! The very same! (95)

 *

Standing on the seashore, watch both sides-

One is still; the other rolls with tides;

When what can and can’t be quantified -

Seem to blend - the world is beautified! (99)

 *

The fact that Chandana has taken up the weight of translating such a profound work in itself must highlight the translator’s confidence in accomplishing this, and the results are there to be seen. While this work is a way to capture the attention of the non-Kannadiga Indians towards the beauty of DVG’s Kagga, by being the first attempt at metrical translation, the output also becomes attractive for a global audience through its sheer poetic appeal.

Thus, Muddled Muff’s Musings has become a vehicle for conveying the ideas and concepts of Sanatana heritage to a broader audience. For those interested, the work also provides the original Kannada verses on the side and is complete with a glossary of terms that are unique to Indian culture and thoughts. Here’s wishing the author Chandana Sri continues to bring many other works from Indian languages to English in the years to come.