In a nutshell, the Bhagavad
Gita has Krishna
(the avatar of Lord Vishnu) giving
his spiritual teachings directly to Arjuna, right before the great war between the
Pandavas and the Kauravas in Kurukshetra.
The Bhagavad Gita
has been translated into more than 75 languages worldwide. In English alone,
there are reportedly over 300 different versions.
Taking yet another road less traveled, what Uthaya Sankar SB
is working on a retelling — not a translation — of the Bhagavad Gita. The original epic is presented in the form of 700 slokas (Sanskrit poem) but Uthaya has
decided to retell in prose (story).
“I really want the multiracial Malaysian community to be
able to read, understand, and enjoy the Bhagavad
Gita. It is already widely available in English and Tamil, but I would love
to see Malaysians appreciating a Bahasa Malaysia version,” says Uthaya who spent
25 days to prepare the manuscript [read here].
Another week was used solely to edit the complete manuscript.
Uthaya literally single-handedly
typed the manuscript; something he has been doing since a freak accident in
1994 caused a wrist-drop to his left arm.
While the original Bhagavad
Gita is more of a monologue — with around 600 of the 700 slokas belonging to Krishna — this Bahasa Malaysia
retelling gives Arjuna more space to express himself.
“The Bhagavad Gita
is considered a religious text by many. While staying true to the original
content and teachings of Krishna, I took the liberty to slip in another
character and made a slight twist
in the retelling,” Uthaya cautions with a smile.
Uthaya was introduced to the Bhagavad-gita: As It Is — the official Hare Krishna version — when he was growing up in Taiping, Perak.
Since then, he has read and listened to, and pondered over, numerous versions
in English, Tamil, Malayalam, and Bahasa Indonesia.
“Malaysians are familiar with the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
Those epics have been adapted into the local milieu since Hinduism set foot on
our shores long ago. But the Bhagavad
Gita still holds a strong sacred status and is not usually discussed openly
among our multiracial society,” says Uthaya who has written and published Thirukkural dan Megha
Duta (2018), Ramayana dan Mahabharata
(2019), and Vetalam dan
Vikramaditya (2020) in his effort to introduce Indian
classics to the Malaysian readers.
“As a full-time (read: poor) writer, I have to depend on
social capital and pre-orders to cover my printing cost. The initial support itself
was so overwhelming that I was very motivated and therefore managed to complete
the Bhagavad Gita manuscript in less
than a month,” says Uthaya who has been self-publishing
his books since 2000.
His latest book is expected to be ready by June 2021 but because
of its rather religious nature, Uthaya’s retelling of the Bhagavad Gita in Bahasa Malaysia would only be sold online [details here].
