Issues in Translating the Short Stories of R.K. Narayan

The poem "Obituary" by A.K. Ramanujan is a literary work that has the author, in the poem, waxing nostalgic about a father's life and death. It is a vivid, emotional, and intense poem that looks back on the life and times of a dear loved family member. The author relates that the father left behind a legacy that will live on for him:

left debts and daughters, a bedwetting grandson named by the toss of a coin after him,

The author reflects that this man was cremated and disappeared all too easily from this physical existence. He alludes to the transience of life and the pain those left behind experience in a patriarch's absence. The author muses about the physical remnants left behind from the father's cremation: eye coins in the ashes and several spinal discs. This is the only tangible evidence of the man left behind and this is painful to the...

*********************************************************** Sri Aurobindo

The Pilgrim of the Night

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I made an assignation with the Night; In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous: In my breast carrying God's deathless light I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo. I left the glory of the illumined Mind And the calm rapture of the divinised soul And travelled through a vastness dim and blind To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll. And still that weary journeying knows no end; Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time, There comes no voice of the celestial Friend, And yet I know my footprints' track shall be A pathway towards Immortality.
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Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher
Nissim Ezekiel.

To force the pace and never to be still
Is not the way of those who study birds
Or women. The best poets wait for words.
The hunt is not an exercise of will
But patient love relaxing on a hill
To note the movement of a timid wing;