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Taking translated literature to the people during COVID19 crisis

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When the COVID19 struck the whole world, especially India shut its people for a couple of months; a lot of people had a lot of time. Though it is definitely not a pleasant time, the lockdowns gave a lot of time to people to explore their habits like reading, writing, indoor sports, binge cinema watching and so on. However, there is one organization that has used the crisis for its benefits and then helped a lot of literature lovers. This is a story about the Indian Novels Collective which has expanded quite significantly in the lockdown period.

According to the people behind the organization, they took advantage of increased online reach during the lockdown. Being a literary translation group, there were hundreds of activities scheduled; however, lockdown affected the functioning of the Indian Novels Collective to great extent. Nonetheless, not just the story-telling and translation projects were disrupted but the literary and publishing ambitions were also held for few months as times were uncertain and nobody knew what was going to happen.

Crisis also generates opportunities

COVID19 crisis that has affected millions of people rendered them jobless and thousands others died; however, the human grit still prompts for surviving in difficult times. Despite the initial hurdles and issues, the Indian Novels Collective started focusing on the alternatives to explore. The people behind the organization looked for the opportunities in translated literature not just from the various languages in India but hundreds of languages spoken and written around the world.

After coming into existence a couple of years ago in 2018, the Indian Novels Collective has been focusing on generating interest among its members to read literature. It has not just provided resources but also built a community around significant works of Indian literature as it aims to create a change in how Indian literature is perceived altogether. As India is a land of nearly two dozen languages that have been recognized by the government, they are focusing on them as well.

There is huge opportunity for translated literature as well in India and the Indian Novels Collective is working towards ensuring the delivery of the same to the members. Talking about the ambitious project the organization says that just as European literature easily accommodates French, German Russian, Czech or British authors, among others, in its corpus, it would like readers of present and future generations to be able to appreciate and engage with, for instance, Tamil, Gujarati and Assamese authors with equal ease.

Taking literature from various Indian languages to everyone

In the COVID19 crisis the Indian Novels Collective has started to take translated literature from various languages to the households. To make things easier the organization not just curates lists of literary masterpieces from major Indian languages but makes sure that people know about them all. Using internet tools like Whatsapp, Facebook, YouTube, etc. the organization did several live shows for the benefit of the people and helped them start loving literature.

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