When Rohith Vemula – a Dalit student and research scholar at the University of Hyderabad – ended his own life, one of the most agonising things about the suicide was the letter he left behind. Among a thousand other unfulfilled dreams, he writes heartbreakingly of wanting to be a writer.
“I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write. I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature.”
The full text of the letter can be read here.
When the Centre for Translations in St Stephen’s College got together to pay tribute to Vemula, they did it the best way they could – by offering him a patient hearing. Denied one during his lifetime, Rohith’s unpublished poems (beautiful epitomes of his unfulfilled writing career) were read out in 13 different languages by students.
The afternoon, which was presided over by three of St Stephen’s College’s professors, was later encapsulated into a thoughtful video and circulated. It is called “India Hears Rohith Vemula”.
You can watch it below:
How an Unfulfilled Writing Career Was Brought to Life
Professor NP Ashley of St Stephen’s College – who, not long ago, was in the news for being a Muslim man organising a pork lunch in the wake of the Dadri mob lynching incident – elaborated on the beautiful cultural afternoon that was conducted on February 8.
Rohith Vemula’s… writing demonstrates how we are already at the dead end of language, necessitated by the ethical vacancy of our actions. Translating the work of this exceptional writer… can make us realise the limitations of knowing and wake us to actions...This event proposes to sit around and translate Rohith’s poems into regional languages and then read it aloud to others for them to feel the vitality of it.Professor NP Ashley, St Stephen’s College
And that is exactly what the participants ended up doing. As they sat in the college’s sunny Allnutt lawns, the 29 participants – who, amongst themselves, spoke 13 different languages – were given a number of Rohith’s unpublished poems.
Hindi, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, Bengali, Telugu, Kashmiri, Urdu, Odia, Tamil, Nepali and French were the languages of the afternoon.
The poems were first read out in English – after which the participants set about translating them into various languages. These were then read out again.
What this effectively did was give the listeners present, a sense of pan-Indian reality.
Some Poignant Lines From Rohith Vemula’s Poetry
While Rohith’s poems do not overtly talk about caste or social inequality, they are at the heart of his writing. Sample this, for instance:
One day you will understand why I was aggressive.
On that day, you will understand
why I have not just served social interests.
One day you will get to know why I apologized.
On that day, you will understand
there are traps beyond the fences….
And so on and so forth.
One truly hopes this will provide Rohith with the audience he always craved, even as his writings transcend the barriers of language.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)