This page includes the translations of literary fiction I sometimes do out of my own interest. This is personal and does not involve any official work. Though, I sometimes talk to the authors whose work I am translating.

Keep Your Kingdom (original title सम्हारू अपन राज-पाट) is a short story by a well known Maithili author Ramdeo Singh. This story is sketches the character of a man who worked with a family and gave almost all of his life. The simple character of Gulba, the protagonist of this story, is striking in many ways. First of all, he is noted for his ‘love’ for a family which gave him nothing but just some sense of familiarity. It is beyond logic to approve of this character in the modern times. But, I wear witness to characters like this who abound even now the country side of different parts of the world. Characters like this make us think that it is just one value for which one can sacrifice the whole of his life. Even a one sided love for a group of people far remotely related to a man can be enough to strike a bondage that lasts for long and pays of nothing but misery in the end.

Prestige is a translation of a short story Maan (मान) by Jeevkant, a Hindi-Maithili poet, short-story writer and a novelist. The story unravels the complex relationship of a domestic help and her mistress. This shows where the human values lie and in this way it also unravels the pride of each of the two parties. This story is woven around the feminine relationship.

This story was published in Antika (Jan-March, 1999). This was Antika’s first issue. Jeevkant, born in 1936, has been writing in both Maithili and Hindi and has also received many awards for his literary works.