Sunday, December 04, 2005

Translating feelings?

Feelings expressed through one language can not be translated into the other. Sometime back I used give to such an example - a song from the movie Mughal-e-Azam. Starting lines of this beautiful song by Shakeel Badayuni are:

"khuda nigeh-baan ho tumhaara
dhadakte dil ka payaam le lo
tumhaari duniya se ja rahe hain
utho hamaara salaam le lo".

Well, what motivated this post is not this song but something else. Yesterday for the first time in my life I could understand the fine resolution between two Hindi words: kriya and karma - and I feel there is no translation available which "preserves" this fine resolution. In Geeta Pravachan, a commentary of Bhagavad Geeta, Acharya Vinobha Bhave explains this difference between kriya and karma with the "following" (kind of) example: In a class of students making noise, the class monitor shouts "do not make noise", and the class is silent. However for the class teacher, it is enough to put a finger on her lips and whisper "shhh....". If an inspector comes to the school, then the class is already silent. The presene of inspector is enough! In the three cases, the karma is same but kriyas are not, and can be categorised as teevra, saumya and sookshma.

The best "translation" of karma and kriya, I could find only in the language of Physics - kriya = (force) X (distance) and karma = displacement. Any better explaination or translation?

3 Comments:

At Tue Dec 06, 03:58:00 PM 2005, Blogger Amit said...

Could you please quote even a single line in this blog which mentions that I "discard the beauty and content of other cultures". I do not understand what made you think so.

I do not understand your explaination that kriya = To do, and karma = What has to be done. Please elaborate. And don't challenge Lord Krishna who said that there IS a fine resolutions between two notions. :)

 
At Tue Dec 06, 06:45:00 PM 2005, Blogger Amit said...

The lines you have quoted above do not reflect at ALL that I "discard the beauty and content of other cultures". If I say that I like something does not mean I hate everything else!... And even when I say in my blog that Indians having and edge over the rest of the world in personifying things, I prefix the sentence with I think. And this is my personal view (which probably can even be proved if you do a thourough research). I do not write this blog to prove or disprove anything. This contains my personal views (as is the definition of a blog). I do not claim that the stuff published in this blog is a "researched material". And of course, anyone can disagree with the views presented here.

I also disagree with YOUR deinition of kriya and karma.

 
At Thu Dec 15, 01:32:00 PM 2005, Blogger Amit said...

@ Aditya: When I say "there is no translation available which "preserves" this fine resolution", I start the sentence with I feel. And still, after reading your comment, I feel the same as I felt while composing it. One possible reason... you have not elaborated your perception of kriya and karma, and have merely tried to put it in some "light" English words.

 

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