Greatness recalled

The Tamil story: Through the Times, Through the Tides
Translated by Subashree Krishnaswamy
Edited by Dilip Kumar
Tranquebar
2016, pp 572, Rs 799

The holdall of a title did flabbergast me, but soon the foreword and ‘a note’ made it clear that this is a space-specific, time-specific volume of fiction, not the story of Tamils from the Sangam Age onward, nor about the Tamils abroad.

The sumptuous volume is flagged off by Ammani Ammal. She had published Expectation and Event in Viveka Bodhini as early as March 1913. That gives a headstart to women writers, for sure. A striking fable, it gives us the information that generally, people don’t always ‘write good things’ on paper. A percipient statement when one takes in much of the junk that’s cast before us by books and journals in this century. The biographical note says that nothing else is available from her pen. So sad.

Such anthologies can never satisfy everyone, for each person has preferences, even among well-known writers. I sorely miss writers like K Saraswathi Ammal and Anuthama, whose writings remain quite relevant in these days of familial discord and the question of what constitutes marital compatibility. Having said that, this anthology tries to touch as many writers as possible.

Has it helped me arrive at any particular conclusion about the psyche of the Tamil writer as he/she sought to move through 100 years?

Somewhere, somehow, he/she has lost that imperative quality of radiant humour. Life is no bed of roses, and the dark forces always shadow you, but should they prevent us from smiling at the sun’s rays released by the clouds? The earlier writers seem to have felt that a pinch of wit could be a powerful antidote to depression.

Somehow, they brought in a bit of grey humour, if not dark fun. SVV, Kumudini and Devan (they are all here) were meaningful sparklers who illumined the everyday folly of the average Indian. Where have all those serious writers with the icing of hilarity gone? Read Kalki and Saarvagan here to know why we read them in the earlier decades.

For the rest, there is an editor’s plenty. As we turn the pages with the decades rolling by, there are waves of depression engulfing us because of the lives portrayed. There is entry of a harsher (down-to-earth?) diction which is rendered often in as is where is condition by the translator. She hopes that the English version would carry the flavour of the Tamil original. Here, the advantage is only with the reader who knows the source language and can afford a gratuitous smile. For others, too much of it can be bewildering. ‘Hei... go, da’; ‘ei, di’, ‘just go, di’, ‘why, di?’

C R Raveendran’s Thrills is relentless realism and does not need ‘da’ and ‘di’ to lift the language. One could multiply such instances, like, ‘She’s gone to the cinema va?’, ‘Mallikarjunan had to forever sit down’, and ‘Go, go and come back’. Translating linguistic ‘otherness’ is not easy, but it is enough if a translation gives us faithfulness and readability. Trying to wrap oneself around the nature (sound, rhythm, perception) of Tamil words and then putting them in bare English does affect fluency of the narrative. There should be a sense of the new, but not at the cost of comprehensibility.

However, the strength of the chosen stories carries the day. Like, nothing has changed since the 70s regarding the manner in which democracy functions in Tamil Nadu (Vote-grabbers), the reason why Congress lost its presence here (Flag Hoisting in Chinnoor), the tragedy of ‘touch-me-notism’ (The Judgement), the interweaving of fable and realism (The Story told by Crane), and the loneliness of a long-distance runner (Journey).

The power of the genre is also amply demonstrated when a whole culture is bottled in just 2,000 words by K Vittal Rao in Faraway Land. When Christina wraps up the story with, ‘I will give you the money, buy it. Twenty pounds have come’, you would have unerringly experienced the good even in crotchety hearts.

Meaningful wordplay of the Saiva Siddhanta concept of existence comes from the scholarly pen of Indira Parthasarathy to give us Husband, Hunger, Human Bonds. Ka Naa Subramanyam turns up with his remake of the Sakshi Gopal legend. And Ku Alagirisami proves that rich men are not necessarily heartless (Two Different Estimates).

The roll call of honour includes Rasikan, K Rajanarayanan, Rajam Krishnan and Imayam. It is as well that Dilip Kumar and Subashree Krishnaswamy have included S Ramakrishnan’s The Proofreader’s Wife. Else, how would we know the struggle that lies behind a work like The Tamil Story?