P. Lal
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Purushottama Lal (28 August 1929 – 3 November 2010), commonly known as P. Lal, was an Indian poet, author, translator, professor and publisher. He was the founder of publishing firm Writers Workshop in
Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...
, established in 1958.


Life and education

Born in
Kapurthala Kapurthala () is a city in Punjab state of India. It is the administrative headquarters of Kapurthala District. It was the capital of the Kapurthala State, a princely state in British India. The aesthetic mix of the city with its prominent b ...
in the state of
Punjab Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...
, Lal studied English at St Xavier's College, Calcutta, and later at the
University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta, informally known as Calcutta University (), is a Public university, public State university (India), state university located in Kolkata, Calcutta (Kolkata), West Bengal, India. It has 151 affiliated undergraduate c ...
. He would later teach at St. Xavier's College for over forty years. A friend of Fr Robert Antoine, he aspired to be a
Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
when young, and that haunted his entire oeuvre and life. P. Lal was Special Professor of Indian Studies at
Hofstra University Hofstra University is a Private university, private research university in Hempstead, New York, United States. It originated in 1935 as an extension of New York University and became an independent college in 1939. Comprising ten schools, includ ...
from 1962 to 1963, and held Visiting Professorships at many colleges and universities throughout America. These included
University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...
,
Albion College Albion College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Albion, Michigan. The college was founded in 1835 and its undergraduate population was approximately 1,500 students as of Fall 2021 ...
,
Ohio University Ohio University (Ohio or OU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. The university was first conceived in the 1787 contract between the United States Department of the Treasury#Re ...
, Hartwick College,
Berea College Berea College is a private liberal arts work college in Berea, Kentucky. Founded in 1855, Berea College was the first college in the Southern United States to be coeducational and racially integrated. It was integrated from as early as 1866 ...
, and Western Maryland College. He married Shyamasree Devi in 1955, and had a son, Ananda Lal, and a daughter, Srimati Lal.


Career

He wrote eight books of poetry, over a dozen volumes of literary criticism, a memoir, several books of stories for children, as well as dozens of
translations Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...
from other languages, chiefly
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, into English. He also edited a number of literary anthologies. He was awarded the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1969. He is perhaps best known as the translator and "transcreator" of the
epic poem In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to ...
Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
in English. His translation, which was published in an edition of over 300 fascicules since the early 1970s, was republished in a collated edition of 18 large volumes. His ''Mahabharata'' is the most complete in any language, comprising all the slokas. His translation is characteristically both poetic and swift to read, and oriented to the oral/musical tradition in which the work was originally created. To emphasise this tradition, he began reading the entire 100,000-sloka work aloud in 1999, for one hour each Sunday at a Calcutta library hall. In addition to the Mahabharata, his translations from Sanskrit included a number of other religious and literary works, including 21 of the Upanisads, as well as plays and lyric poetry. He also translated modern writers such as
Premchand Dhanpat Rai Srivastava (31 July 1880 – 8 October 1936), better known as Munshi Premchand based on his pen name Premchand (), was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindustani language, Hindustani literature. Premchand was a pioneer ...
(from the
Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
) and
Tagore Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...
(from the Bengali). Since his founding of Writers Workshop, he published over 3000 volumes by Indian literary authors, mostly in English, including poetry, fiction, educational texts, screenplays, drama, "serious comics," and children's books, as well as audiobooks. Writers Workshop has published first books by many authors including
Vikram Seth Vikram Seth (born 20 June 1952) is an Indian people, Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Akademi Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Awar ...
, Pritish Nandy and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.Writer's Workshop @ fifty
/ref> His publishing enterprise was unusual in that he personally served as publisher,
editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...
, reader, secretary, and editorial assistant. The books were also unique in appearance, hand-typeset on local Indian presses and bound in hand-loomed sari cloth. Writers Workshop continues to publish, under the direction of Lal's family members. Some of the last works he was engaged in publishing were ''Holmes of the Raj'' by Vithal Rajan
''Seahorse in the Sky''
by G Kameshwar an
''Labyrinth''
by Arunabha Sengupta.


The

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
Non-Rhyming English Verse
Transcreation Transcreation is a term coined from the words "translation" and "creation", and a concept used in the field of translation studies to describe the process of adapting a message from one language to another, while maintaining its intent, style, ton ...

This is the most complete translation to date. The Harivamsa Parva is still left to be "transcreated" and translated but it is not considered a part of the Mahabharata although it is considered an appendix to the Mahabharata. There are no plans for the Harivamsa Parva at present. The Mairavanacaritam (The Life of Mai-
Ravana According to the Mahakavya, Hindu epic, ''Ramayana'', Ravana was a kingJustin W. Henry, ''Ravana's Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below'', Oxford University Press, p.3 of the island of Lanka, in which he is the chief antag ...
) (100 pages) is a part of
Ramayana The ''Ramayana'' (; ), also known as ''Valmiki Ramayana'', as traditionally attributed to Valmiki, is a smriti text (also described as a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic) from ancient India, one of the two important epics ...
rather than the
Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
.


See also

* Indian English Poetry *
Indian English Literature Indian English literature (IEL), also referred to as Indian Writing in English (IWE), is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language but whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India ...
* Writers Workshop


References


External links

* http://www.confluence.org.uk/a-daughter-remembers-plal-and-writers-workshop/ * https://web.archive.org/web/20160304025136/http://fullcirclebooks.in/node/59492 / FLOWERS FOR MY FATHER, by Srimati Lal, pub. 2011 * https://web.archive.org/web/20130115160322/http://harmonyindia.org/hportal/VirtualPageView.jsp?page_id=19310 * Kanchangupta.blogspot.com/2010/11/pro-p-lal-in-memoriam.html Prof P Lal, in memoriam by Kanchan Gupta
Writer's Workshop

Writer's Workshop New ReleasesHarmony Magazine on P. Lal



A True Pioneer
in
The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It was founded as a weekly publication in 1878 by the Triplicane Six, becoming a daily in 1889. It is one of the India ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lal, P. Writers from Kolkata English-language poets from India Writers from Punjab, India Bengali writers Indian male essayists Indian literary critics Academic staff of St. Xavier's College, Kolkata Indian magazine editors University of Calcutta alumni Academic staff of the University of Calcutta Ohio University faculty Albion College faculty Berea College faculty 1929 births 2010 deaths St. Xavier's College, Kolkata alumni Indian publishers (people) 20th-century Indian translators Sanskrit–English translators 20th-century Indian poets Indian male poets 20th-century Indian essayists Jawaharlal Nehru Fellows Hartwick College faculty