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Hemang Desai 239upon evolving an idiom which would be a culmination of one whichRaja Rao advocated in the preface to his novel ‘Kanthapura’. Almostsix decades after independence a translator should daringlydecolonize her/his pen from the exotic and even indigenous frownsover the use of footnotes and glossary. Sundaram’s works weretranslated for both kinds of readers, nonindian and nongujaratiIndian, though primarily for non-Gujarati Indian readers who are in adire need to familiarize themselves with it. A penetratinglydiscerning and perceptive non-Indian reader will not have theslightest problem in coming to terms with the idiom. When calledupon to render the saucy impertinence, the salty tang of a highlylocalized language, manipulated especially in dialogues, thetranslator can take liberties with the syntax of the English language.The following example, from ‘Mājā Velā nun Mrutyun’ illustratesthe point.“Mājā Velo burst into laughter. ‘Sutarfeni! You bettergive up your desire to have it. Even its name you can’tpronounce properly.”It is heartening to note that now the interest of Indiantranslators is to explore the ways in which the English language canbe stretched to contain ‘authentic Indian expressions’ and thus toevolve an idiom which would be exclusively Indian, capable offulfilling the needs of the native languages and which at the sametime would assert the Indian lingual and cultural diversity on aninternational scale.Great authors use the imperfections and quirks of languageto produce certain startling effects - a macabre pun, a cleverwitticism, an indigenous half-truth. In the story, ‘Māne Khole’, theheroine has a sly dig at her cowardly husband by frequentlyaddressing him as bhiyā, a local variety of ‘bhaisaheb’ which bears aclose resemblance to the English ‘sir’. It is attached to a person inauthority exercising power over others. But in the story, Shabu’s