Laffaz

Description

“Yogendra Ahuja is a masterful chronicler of the dreary, stifling, and muted landscapes of small towns and bustling metropolises. His settings are often gray, his characters tinged with absurdity. Yet, in crafting the narrative of Laffaz, Ahuja shifts his focus away from conventional “characters” or settings, choosing instead to spotlight a particular tendency. The Laffaz we encounter in this story—a figure endlessly practising the art of fluent deception, assuming new forms, committing fraud in varying styles, telling obscene tales, and waxing eloquent on patriotism and public welfare—is not a singular character. Instead, it embodies a “trend without character.” Portraying such a shapeshifting, elusive “Laffaz” and anchoring it within the framework of a cohesive narrative is a daunting challenge. Yet, Ahuja achieves this with remarkable persistence. No matter how intricate or rugged the path, he does not falter or succumb to frustration. Instead, he steadfastly pursues his quarry to the very end, capturing its essence with a storyteller’s tenacity and insight. Read a review of this book by The Wire Here TRANSLATOR’S NOTE The Urdu word laffaz has no English equivalent. A person garrulous, eloquent, and capable of holding an audience in thrall, is the one called a laffaz, but the word also has a whiff of the negative. A laffaz also implies someone who strips out meaning from words held in reverence by others with his shallow charm. For him, words are frivolous fluff, mere means to impress and hypnotise his audience. Mere tools to deceive, manipulate and exploit others. His apparently weighty but devoid of substance words estrange the act of communication from decency, sincerity and trust that form the bedrock of all human interaction. All these subtexts are laid bare in Yogendra Ahuja’s novella, Laffaz, a character study of a smooth-talking charlatan who weaves a silken web of words to gain—and then abuse— people’s trust, in the process destroying their lives, careers, and reputations forever. In a world where human beings hunger for deeper meaning, the charlatan makes use of this very yearning to gain a hold over his victims’ imagination, rendering them incapable of sensing oncoming disaster. That a word spinner can destroy not just individual lives but entire civilizations is delicately hinted at. Glib narratives leached of substance, can misdirect impressionable citizens hungry for betterment and engage them in false quests of ‘taking revenge against history’ from ‘outsiders,’ thereby deflecting day to day issues impinging on present day peace, personal liberty and even future prosperity . Laffaz forces us to ponder over the rampant crisis of meaninglessness in our times. Along with the hypnotic power of lies, the story explores the fate of the duped and the moral repercussions of an existence in which meaning is hollowed out from words. As such, it is metaphorical of our times. While translating Laffaz, I realized that a translator is the opposite of a laffaz. She must mine every bit of meaning from the writer’s words to recreate their force and resonance in another language and to keep expanding the boundaries of understanding between two different tongues. In that quest, I decided with my editor that the title Laffaz should stay untranslated because what follows reveals every shade of meaning the word embodies. Varsha Tiwary New Delhi