T’TA Professor (Winner of the Vodafone Crossword Book Award For Best Work in Indian Language Fiction Translation 2008)

Manohar Shyam Joshi (1933-2006), a prolific writer, tried his hand at virtually every form of writing: novels, advertising copy and television scripts, and had a long and distinguished career as a journalist. His interests ranged from sports to philosophy and he could handle satire as well as he handled romance and tragedy. He is the author of one of the finest Hindi love stories, Kasap, such cult classics as Kuru Kuru Swaahaa and the novel Hariya Hercules ki Hairaani, and is the creator of the Hindi soaps Hum Log, Buniyaad and Mungeri Lal Ke Haseen Sapne. He won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2005 for his novel Kyaap.

Ira Pande worked as a university teacher for fifteen years, and then as an editor at Seminar, Biblio, Dorling Kindersley and Roli Books. She is the author of Diddi: My Mother’s Voice (Penguin India, 2005), a biography interwoven with stories by her mother Shivani, the famous Hindi writer. Ira is deeply committed to translating Kumaoni writers, like her mother and Manohar Shyam Joshi, into English. She is currently Chief Editor, IIC Publications.

Back of the Book

‘Hilarious and disturbing…I have never read anything like it…Joshi is a genius’-Khushwant Singh.

A thin, short man with illusions of grandeur, Khashtivallabh Pant, Dubbul MA, is a school teacher in a remote Kumaoni village, where he is mockingly referred to as T’ta Professor. A great admirer of the Englishman’s attire, T’ta is also deeply in awe of the white man’s language. He always carries a notebook to jot down English words that he hears for the first time, acknowledging a word as acceptable only after he has consulted his Oxford Dictionary. His vanity makes writer who never manages to finish the stories he sets out to write, is determined to produce a ‘biting satire’, and wastes no time finding out more about T’ta’s life.

When T’ta starts to tell his tale, what begins as an innocent idyll turns quickly into an erotic and scatological romp, and T’ta turns from a ridiculous comic character into a pathetic pervert. As the story unravels, the multiple narratives reveal a complex figure, comic and tragic by turns, and the novel changes gear and darkens into a gothic bleakness of unimaginable dimensions.

‘Translated brilliantly by Ira Pande, this gem of a book will soon establish itself as a classic’-The Statesman.

‘[An] excellent translation’ - Urvashi Butalia, Outlook.

‘This translation will re-invent Manohar Shyam Joshi for a generation - Time Out.

‘Ira Pande has done a remarkable translation. She has retained the authenticity of the original voice, while retelling the story as a good English novel’-Deccan Herald.

‘A true classic to which Ira Pande’s translation does justice-Elle.