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Society This is a case in which love's labour was not lost but rather encased in 39 volumes of the Gurmukhi script. Surjit Hans, a well-known historian and litterateur, has completed the formidable task of translating all the 37 plays of Shakespeare and one volume each of his poems and sonnets into Punjabi. This has been a cause for celebration. In England, copies of the London daily broadsheet The Telegraph were proudly distributed to devotees at the gurdwara in Walsall, in celebration of the literary feat accomplished by the former professor of history, whom the paper also described as a former Heathrow postman. Well Hans was that too for a year in London in the mid-1960s, but the love for the Bard of Avon had started much earlier when he was studying in the Panjab University College in the mid-1950s. Sitting in the living room of his Mohali home, having taken off time from on the unfinished volume of some selective work lying on the dining table, he said looking back at the long journey of 82 years: "Macbeth was being staged on the improvised stage of the college which had stairs, a tree and a water feature (I feel now that an improvised stage is indeed the best) and I had two roles in it; that of the wounded soldier and Macbeth's faithful lieutenant Seyton. It was then that I began the translation of Macbeth into Punjabi because I wanted to share my fascination for the Bard with readers of Punjabi." It was that year that young Hans also translated Ben Jonson's dark comedy of greed and lust, Volpone. However, the gigantic Shakespeare project was taken up by him after his retirement as professor of history from Guru Nanak Dev University at Amritsar with the translation of Othello on a fellowship of the Punjabi University at Patiala. He then re-translated Macbeth as he was not satisfied with the pentameter of his youthful attempt. The next two decades it was Shakespeare all the way and the work is there for all to see translated verse by verse. Hans says: "It was important for me to translate Shakespeare into poetry for therein lies his essence. There is not much to the stories of his plays. It is the poetry that makes them". When in London, Hans became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company Club and it was here that the romance of the youth blossomed into an enduring relationship. When asked how he was able to find appropriate words in Punjabi to meet this daunting task, his reply is: "I think I could do it because I always remained a rustic lad at heart. I did my schooling in my Surjapur village and such words as I learned there came to my aid. Folk beliefs, customs and ancient languages survive only in the rural society and thus the rustic linguistic background was my greatest strength." Now that he has put the Bard's words into his mother tongue, what next? "I will now translate The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin." This amazing scholar has the capacity and determination to carry through his resolve so one just drinks in this untiring spirit of the octogenarian calmly and returns with two neatly printed volumes of King Henry IV. Incidentally, all the volumes of Shakespeare have been published by the Punjabi University Patiala Publication Bureau. Scribes have started a controversy of sorts by calculating the emoluments he got from the university to Rs 40 a day at home and 83 cents a day abroad. But it is aimless to translate the value of this work into daily wages for it is priceless and what drove Hans to this and more in the years to come is passion, call it frenzy if you may, albeit of the literary variety.
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