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Acknowledgments
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
This translation has been long in the making. I have been talking about my reading of the play for more than a decade now, to anyone willing to listen, until they are tired. Pressed by friends that I should write my ideas down, I realized that before I presented my reading of the play, I had to translate it. Over the long period of time I have worked on the translation, I have incurred a number of debts, many that I cannot repay with words of thanks. Wissenchaftskolleg zu Berlin is the first on my list. A fellowship at the Kolleg during 2000–2001 gave me an opportunity to produce the first draft of the translation. It was fortuitous that David Shulman, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Muzaffar Alam, and Partha Chatterjee were at the Kolleg at the same time. Their company was energizing and also provided the necessary corrective to many errors I would have committed in my enthusiasm to quickly produce a complete translation. Muzaffar helped me with the Urdu words and songs in the text. Sanjay and Partha read the first draft and by their silence told me it needed a lot of work. I set to work on improvements and the more I reread the draft, the more changes I began to make. In June 2003, David read the complete draft with me and suggested improvements on practically every page. I knew the translation was not anywhere close to publication. Many words were unclear and contexts unknown. My work on improving it continued. Apparao’s language faithfully reflects the regional dialects of Vizianagaram. I come from the same area of northern Andhra that Apparao does and comfortably understand the language he uses in the play, but the distance of time has made some of his expressions opaque. Dictionaries did not help, and people I was able to contact long distance from Berlin were not particularly helpful either. These words and references do not interfere with the enjoyment of the play as such, so even admirers of Apparao read on without thinking about them, but for one who is translating the play, they pose serious hurdles. I continued to pester my friends for books and information. Attaluri Narasimharao and Chandu Subbrao of Visakhapatnam, Acknowledgments India; Paruchuri Sreenivas of Düsseldorf, Germany; and Paranandi Lakshmi Narasimham of Columbus, Ohio, responded to my requests patiently and sent me valuable material that helped in writing my notes and afterword (“The Play in Context”). A senior fellowship from the Institute for Research in Humanities, University of Wisconsin–Madison, gave me the time free from teaching to rework with undivided attention on my translation, afterword, and notes. I am deeply thankful to my colleagues at the Institute and director David Sorkin for their support. Sylvia Dakessian worked with me all along, fixing my wording to make it more colloquial and carefully editing my text draft after draft. Sanjay came to my aid again to read my afterword and suggested a number of improvements to make my argument work better. I used a version of my afterword in Oxford, England, when I gave Radhakrishnan Lectures at All Souls College, in Hyderabad when the Anveshi group invited me to talk about Kanyasulkam, and at the Institute for Research in Humanities. I am grateful to the audiences at each place for their feedback. Veluri Venkateswara Rao explained the card game in the fifth act and sent me a note about it, which I include here as an appendix. Just when I thought I had a text ready to be sent to publishers, my friend and colleague Charles Hallisey offered to read it on his plane journey to Boston. He brought the manuscript back with a number of suggested improvements written in longhand. His sensitivity to spoken English was very helpful, and no words of thanks are enough to express my debt for the time and attention he gave to the text. My only solace is that I was able to make his plane journey less boring with a text which he said he enjoyed reading. Gyan Pandey gave a very careful reading to my afterword and suggested a number of changes for which I am deeply thankful. I sent the manuscript to a former student, Rebecca Glowacki, who read it, “painting houses during the day and reading the play at night, finding myself laughing out loud.” After a few days she sent me a long e-mail with corrections only her careful eye could catch and suggestions...