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Focus on Books:
‘Where are we going daddy?’
Professor Sunanda Mahendra
Ou On Va, Papa?’ Api Koheda Yanne Tatte?
The title given to a creative work may take any form which suits the
central experience expressed by the creator concerned. Ou On Va Papa is
the French title given by the author Jean-Lois Fournier to his work,
which comes as a Sinhla translation as translated by the university don
Niroshini Gunasekara.
The translator, presently a lecturer in French, is well known for her
other translations directly from the French sources. The Sinhala
translator who had selected this work shows several reasons for the
selection. Firstly it is an award winning work which was acclaimed as
the 2008 French Femina award. Secondly the author is unknown to the
Sinhala reader who is familiar with such names as Sartre, Maupassant,
Voltaire, Camus and Duras.
The author is one Jean-Louis Fourrer who presents his work in a new
creative technique which could be regarded as episodic and self
referential rather than a well constructed and conventionally structured
narrative.
The protagonist in the work is a father of three children, out of
whom two are disabled or retarded in their physical and mental forms.
But should you term them in that way? The reader is once again allowed
to question the stance of such a situation.
The terms such as ‘handicapped’, ‘disabled’, ‘spastic’, ‘mongolic’,
‘autistic’ and ‘Down’s’ are quite familiar as medical terms, though that
perhaps evoke a sense of irritation and discrimination in the minds of
the general public.
Invariably in the sphere of ethics and censorship. As such though the
two sons of the narrator are not labelled in those terms, instead in
various other possible terms that evoke a degree of human understanding
in interaction process.
This entering into the domain of another and a father who spend their
time with such children become the central experience.
The narrator and protagonist is created as a comedian who makes
others in the society relax, while he is made to express his inner
feelings via a series of notes which eventually encompass the creative
structure.
The notes or episode contains the intimate feelings of a father who
possess a tinge of suffering piercing the soul while he gives expression
to the experience in order to alleviate it in the best possible manner.
In this manner the experience of a father who tries to love and watch
the two sons who never grow, become the page moving work of a different
type. The work is both materialistic, sensitively created and moving
enabling the reader to grip into terms with reality gradually
transcending the barriers of the very same reality.
Though the reader sees a glimpse of the various factors such as
boredom, suffering, stereotype, tiredness, they are never expressed in
terms of banality or sentimentality. Instead the writer merely accepts
them as human experiences that encountered day by day.
The spacing in the work as one sees in between the notes of the
narrator are functional and essential as a creative flux. The translator
makes the rendering of the original work as sensitively as possible
retaining the tonal expression as intimately as possible. This actually
is the skill of a translator that should be commended. The simple
passages the reader comes across look more like lyrics or poems written
to suit the temperament.
A reader in search of a rounded narrative line may come across a
father, who takes everything in a light heated manner. But he is torn
between two worlds. The world of his children two of them are sons
Matthew and Joma, about whom he is concerned as they are not normal
children. He too is the father of a daughter in the same family, who
grows up as a normal skilled girl.
Halfway through the reader finds that his wife quits the family
circle leaving everything in disarray for the husband. But as he is
assigned to a duty of evoking humour of others, he takes the situation
rather light-heartedly and mildly, through there is a strong
undercurrent of distress, when he is forced to leave the two sons out of
which one dies a natural death, the observation of which is dismal, but
recorded realistically.
Life goes on irrespective of all sad and stressful nuances. Which for
the reader is the most significant factor in the narrative structure.
The work does not have a clear cut beginning, middle and end. The reader
may start reading from any point they so desire.
I, as a reader, was encapsulated by the human experience and how it
is expressed. I feel that those who work with children of all types
ought to read this work in order to better their activities. I’m not too
sure whether this is true to life work (I wouldn’t call it fiction) is
available in English.
Niroshini believes time is ripe to have an English translation.
Perhaps the Sinhala translation which is readable as an original,
available with copyright clearance proves once again the continuous
necessity of the good translation from other literary sources.
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