Ingenuity and Translation:Meanings of Ghalib in Tabish Khair’s Man of Glass

Tabish Khair’s volume of poems, Man of Glass, has one section “Stone:Ghalib Speaks in Tongues” which has 8 ghazals of Asadullah Khan Ghalib of which Khair has done both transliteration and, as he himself mentions, “transcreation”. Fidelity to the original is not something which Tabish Khair much cares about and therefore the translations carry much of Khair’s own interpretations in an attempt to carry the spirit of Ghalib. This can be seen by comparing his translations with a reputed translation of Ghalib done by Dr Sarfaraz K. Niazi. Khair goes on to link Ghalib’s divinity and humanity with his rendering of Shakuntala in an earlier section of the volume and with poems in the final section of the volume too. About the liberties taken with the original, Tabish Khair’s views and clarifications to the author shed further light on his efforts. The present paper explores and analyzes the dynamics of this translation/transcreation and of the issue of matter/content and spirit of the content in a translation.