Discussion Group: Lyrics Nestled in Narrative: Folksongs as Poems and Paratexts in a Bihari Colonial
Monday 16 November 2026
12:45 - 14:00
Online (Microsoft Teams)
Shuchi Agrawal (Cambridge)
Published in 2006, Jagdish Prasad Singh's Anusuya follows two star-crossed lovers--Anusuya, the daughter of a zamindar who lives on a sprawling estate in the Bihari countryside and Hardev, the son of an ordinary farmer who has managed to enrage the zamindar. In this love story, which unfolds against a colonial backdrop, time and place serve as a microcosm for power struggles and rebellions that defined the 1920s and 30s. This novel derives its universality precisely by immersing the reader in the specificities of pastoral life in Bihar. Aside from introducing scores of Bihari words specific to that period or to that agricultural period, it notably integrates centuries-old Maithili and Bhojpuri folksongs in the novel's narrative. These songs are a highly unusual inclusion in a Hindi novel, where many readers would not be able to understand them. And yet, they have been handled with immense care, bearing modifications and weaving in characters' names to embed them in key scenes.
Filled with reference and ethnographic detail, these harvest songs and wedding songs span genres like Samdaun, Vivah Geet, and Parichhan, which serve distinct social functions in Bihari life. Just as Bihari languages change drastically throughout the state, many versions of these songs abound. To many Hindi readers, who do not share these traditions, these songs might instead be reminiscent of musical interludes in the movies, especially classic romantic tragedies, like Bobby from the 1970s.
But besides the cultural context embedded in them, it is the emotional and narrative threads that they propagate that make the text come alive. This brings us to the crucial questions concerning this session of the discussion group: How might a translator realize their emotion, their lyricism, and their cultural import in English? In our hour together, we will start with unraveling how such songs and the scenes containing them might operate in a historical romance in English. We will explore how romance and yearning are embodied, and discuss how romance and courtship are socially constructed. Finally, we will dig into the practice of translating multilingual texts by listening to recordings of different versions of these songs, peering at annotated glosses, and examining the scenes they are embedded in.
Shuchi Agrawal is at the tail end of her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, and has previously studied Literary Arts at Brown University, where her work won two prizes. Her translations have been selected for a SALT bursary for BCLT's Advanced Workshop (2026), for the Wasafiri Prize longlist (2025), for a Vermont Studio Center residency (2024), and as a finalist for the Anne Frydman Prize (2024).
