Life’s many phases
The marriage idea has been in doldrums in bhasha fiction during the twentieth century.
Mithunam and other stories
Sriramana, translated by K Chandrahas and K K Mohapatra
C P Brown Academy
2011, pp 169
Rs.190
Broken marriages, emotional incompatibilities, domestic violence, adultery and feminist overkill have been dominating the scene. Fortunately, things are not so bad in everyday life. Among the few who have been celebrating this positive side to married life in India is Sriramana, who writes in Telugu. His story, Mithunam, commemorated married life with such wiry strength that the force spilled over into an English translation, captivating the celebrated M T Vasudevan Nair, leading to his realistic and award-winning Malayalam film, Oru Cheru Punchiri (A Slender Smile).
This one instance is enough to show the high power that Sriramana packs in his stories coated by an easy-flowing Telugu, the Italian of the East.
Sriramana, columnist and maker of feature films, is the author of the novel, Prema Pallaki, that sees, as through a microscope, accurately at the human bondage that we must cherish. There are no cooing lovers in Mithunam and Other Stories. Most of his protagonists are married. The exterior of the marriage may look rough, but within they are bonded by hoops of steel. Watch the manner in which the child bride, Dhanalakshmi, blossoms into an entrepreneur par excellence with sheer native ingenuity, her management skills very effective in getting her husband move on and move up. She knows well that the elastic fabric of marriage must be stretched only this much and not more. A truism practiced by Appadasu and Butchilakshmi (Mithunam). No time here for self-pity.
In Ulakihtsaa, irony and wit manage to convey the hunger that is transforming our green swards, making way for iron to enter the soul. A village springs to life at the touch of Sriramana in The Quagmire. The heartless ways of the rich and their vanitas vanitatum. The victim is Seenayya and Sriramana’s style is such that we do not know whether to laugh or cry, for tragedy and comedy are like warp and woof in this story.
How can we stop the lump forming in our throat when Seenayya goes in search of the place in the crematorium where his mother was burnt months ago? Latchi shows him the place: “He poured the milk on the ash slowly, like a mother feeding milk to the infant. He emptied the pot, threw it down, breaking it into pieces, and walked off.”
Who is Latchi? She is the same Machavaram Mahalakshmi (Madlatchi) elected unanimously as panchayat board member by Ramakrishnayya to cut down to size his own brother-in-law in the local body elections. Such is the subtle stroke of the satirist in Sriramana, who has a fantastic ability to portray characters so near to us.
The not-so-subtle ways of corruption indulged in by politicians and bureaucrats trying to checkmate each other explodes in The Wedding. Another classic in this collection is The Gold Bracelet. The jewel grows into a mystic metaphor as the grandmother reveals her administrative acumen in puncturing the unreluctant egoism of tradition-spouting religious men. When the Swamiji suggests she give her golden bracelet for making a chain to the goddess, she rejects the suggestion in an adroit manner, but later tells his disciple: “Orey! Don’t I know these antics? If I had wanted, I would have given it to Gandhiji when he came knocking at the door for donations. I didn’t give it to such a great person. Would I now give it to the circus company?”
So, her heart is in the right place. Subtle fall her strokes as she manages the farmers of her natal village to pay her dues. The bonding between herself and her grandson (the omniscient author) is realistic to the core, yet poetic in its movement as the little boy grows up to become a bridegroom. Nor would one like to miss the wisdom of the ages in the grandmother’s proverbs. “Family life and kitchen knife get better and better with time.”
The Last Stanza is a well-crafted experience of motherhood battling with a
husband’s avarice for money. A successful playback singer is not a machine!
“Lalitha extended her hand imperiously. Her five fingers, like five tongues,
commanded him to give the phone to her. Chandrasekhar, on his knees in front of her, involuntarily placed the phone in her hand. The hands which had controlled her, the hands which had enjoyed every part of hers, had lost all control now. It was a cell phone all right, but it was actually her husband’s tongue which had issued
thousands of commands to her. Now, it was in her possession. And it’ll remain there forever.”
Along with Soda Naidu and Simhachalam Champak Flowers, the nine explorations in Mithunam and Other Stories form a delightful spread of excellent social literature.
