Shanta Gokhale, Sahitya Akademi award winner, author, theatre person and translator, has a confession to make. “I haven’t read all the books in my bookshelf,” adding that she requests people to not give her titles. “Unlike the Japanese term ‘tsundoku’, of stacking up books without reading them, we need to find a term for this because I want to read all of them,” she chuckles, offering us snatches into her literary conundrum. We’re at her sunlit Art Deco residence in Shivaji Park, to discuss The Woman Who Wore A Hat (Speaking Tiger), her recent translation of the landmark feminist Marathi novella by Kamal Desai, Hat Ghalnari Bai. But when one is in the company of the octogenarian wordsmith, the conversation takes a life of its own.

The Woman Who Wore a Hat