Donald Trump is all hunkered down in his mosquito net
Written by Shubham Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
Recently I attempted to translate this new poem by Shubham Shree about Donald Trump, but ran up against some intractable problems in translating the final line, which in Hindi is a humorous punchline. After much thought and discussion with the poet and other readers, I resolved to create a menu of three options for readers to choose from.
Option I: For readers who are familiar with the filmi dialogues of Nana Pateker
All loops stretched taut
All edges stuffed beneath the mattress
No holes, no rips, no tears
How pleased is he, the psycho
all hunkered down
surrounded by mosquitoes
yet totally protected from them
thinking he’ll never be thirsty, never have to pee
If he wasn’t such a fool, he’d realise
that the end result
of every perfectly set mosquito net
is next morning’s fat pink mosquitoNana Patekar totally agrees with me on this
Option II: For readers who are not familiar with the filmi dialogues of Nana Patekar, don’t like excessive annotations in their translations, are familiar with the transgendered hijra community in South Asia, and are relatively unconcerned about the casual transphobia expressed toward said community in contemporary India.
All loops stretched taut
All edges stuffed beneath the mattress
No holes, no rips, no tears
How pleased is he, the psycho
all hunkered down
surrounded by mosquitoes
yet totally protected from them
thinking he’ll never be thirsty, never have to pee
If he wasn’t such a fool, he’d realise
that the end result
of every perfectly set mosquito net
is next morning’s fat pink mosquitoNana Patekar once remarked
“A fucking mosquito can make a hijra of a man”
and he totally agrees with me on this
Version III: For readers who are not familiar with the filmi dialogues of Nana Patekar, do not mind lengthy annotations in translations, would like to understand the cultural context of the punchline, but are concerned about the dangers of transphobia in contemporary global society
All loops stretched taut
All edges stuffed beneath the mattress
No holes, no rips, no tears
How pleased is he, the psycho
all hunkered down
surrounded by mosquitoes
yet totally protected from them
thinking he’ll never be thirsty, never have to pee
If he wasn’t such a fool, he’d realise
that the end result
of every perfectly set mosquito net
is next morning’s fat pink mosquitoNana Patekar totally agrees with me on this*
* Nana Patekar is a famous Bollywood film actor, known for his sardonic delivery of lines of dialogue. Shree playfully implies in the poem that his famous pronouncement on mosquitoes in the film Yeshwant (1996), “A fucking mosquito can make a hijra of a man,” makes him a clear expert on human-mosquito interactions. This particular line refers both to actual mosquitoes in the specific scene as well as using them as a metaphor for corrupt, blood-sucking politicians. A hijra is a member of a traditional transgendered community in South Asia whose members are born male, or sometimes intersex, and dress as women, at times undergoing surgical procedures to further their transitions. Shubham makes reference to this widely-known and quoted line in a humorous fashion, but feels that actually quoting the line or inserting it into the translation invokes the transphobia of the original utterance. This line is a widely known cultural artifact, similar to “leave the gun and take the cannoli,” and should not be overly analysed for its content in this context. Shubham is not expressing a desire that Donald Trump somehow be emasculated, but, rather, humorously suggesting that if Nana Patekar, a known expert on mosquitoes, agrees with her about the preceding lines, then what she has said must be true. Imagine an American poem in praise of the cannoli that briefly invoked the Godfather; would such an invocation make the poem a paean to mobster violence?
Translator’s note: My thanks to Shubham Shree, Aftab Ahmad, and Camille Guthrie for their readings.