‘Women need their own rooms in their own worlds’: Deepa Bhasthi on translating the female language

An editor, a bookseller and a writer walked into a Mediterranean restaurant – one that also served biriyani, most curiously – the other day. Over plates of lamb-something, semi-delicious hummus, some pita and fried halloumi, the serving washed down with olive lemonade, they talked about books, writing, female experiences plus gaze and such other essentials.

By the end of the long evening in sultry, humid Bangalore, I wondered what an eavesdropper – not that there were any, I must add – might have made of a table of women dipping in and out of this and that topic. Us women fascinate me in a way that a roomful of men, even if, or perhaps especially if they are discussing the state of affairs of home, country or world could never. It isn’t that women don’t care for or talk about grander affairs around us. (Although, really, what could be more historically fraught, regularly violent, unhinged, even, and deeply political than one’s family?) But the idea that we do it in a language that is gendered is one of my great current interests.

It is also what fuels a deepening interest in translating the feminine, whether it shows up as stories foregrounding the female experience...

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