Excelsior Correspondent
New Delhi, Oct 19: Celebrated writer, Bollywood personality and twice Sahitya Akademi awardee Ved Rahi’s classic Lal Ded has achieved yet another first by becoming the first Dogri novel to be translated in nine languages; it has just reached the latest milestone in English.
Ever since Rahi wrote Lal Ded in 2007 his magnum opus has got several firsts to its credit for a narrative in the Dogri language — The first full-fledged Dogri novel on a fabled Kashmiri personality whose poetry and spirituality had a great impact on Kashmir’s patron saint Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Wali alias Nund Rishi whom she breastfed; Lal Ded actually influenced the Kashmiris’ way of life as no other saint did; the first Dogri novel to be published in ten languages with the Hindi version currently running in the fourth edition and the original in Rahi’s native language in the second and the first Dogri novel whose three translations so far have won the much-acclaimed Sahitya Akademi award for translations — Urdu by the author himself, Sindhi by Sarita Sharma and Kashmiri by Rattan Lal Shant.
Ten languages in which the novel is now making waves are Dogri, Kashmiri, Pahari, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Sindhi, Gujarati and English.
The English translation has been done by well-known writer and Daily Excelsior columnist Suman K. Sharma. It has been published by the highly prestigious Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan founded by freedom-fighter, writer and educationist K.M. Munshi eight decades ago with the avowed objective of promoting ethical and spiritual values.
Lal Ded has been prescribed in postgraduate classes in the University of Jammu and awarded Best Book of the Year by the Jammu & Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture & Languages in 2009.
Critics in almost every language have spoken in identical laudatory terms about the novel.
According to renowned Hindi critic Namwar, “Lal Ded is the best novel among all novels which have been written on the lives of saints. It is very relevant even today.”
“This novel is very interesting, it will become very popular” is how Shamur Rehman Siddiqui, one of the best-known critics of Urdu literature, has described it.
Renowned Dogri novelist Deshbandhu Nutan has observed: “Many books can be written on the philosophy of Lal Ded’s poetry, but in this novel Ved Rahi aptly condensed it in a very interesting and grasping style.”
Well-known Kashmiri writer Arjun Dev Majboor has said: “Ved Rahi has made Lal Ded alive again after seven hundred years. We can see the Kashmir of that time in this novel.”
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