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Stories from melting pots
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"One can convey the nuances of complex concepts through what comes to him or her naturally. In my case, English is the immediate vehicle, though thoughts come from my Kerala roots.''
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Shreekumar Varma is a peripatetic writer, and his wanderings bring him close to people and their milieu. Like many uprooted Malayalees, he lives away from his cultural base, in the melting pot that is Chennai, but his affinity to his chosen city is strong enough for him to call it `home town'. This may sound cliched in a city with strong contingents of residents from all over the country. But not for Mr. Varma, who is inspired by suchdiversity. His latest novel is on the `nightmarish experiences' of a Chennai-settled Malayalee on a visit to Goa. T. Ramakrishnan listens to the litterateur who straddles the Madras of old, a Travancore royal connection and the social milieu of Kerala juxtaposed with `hip hop' Tamil cinema today.
SHREEKUMAR VARMA was four when his family moved to Chennai in the late 1950s. At that time, Nungambakkam High Road looked like a `village'. His home stood approximately where Hotel Ganpat lies now. ``Then, even a dog bark could be heard at Gemini Studios, which was on the other end of the road,'' he recalls.
But, by the time Mr. Varma's family decided to end its `ties' with Nungambakkam in 1981, the road had become one of the congested corridors of the city with two-way traffic. His next stop was St. Mary's Road, which resembled, in many respects, Nungambakkam High Road of the 1950s. But in just 15 years, this road in south Chennai also turned into a choked corridor of urban confusion. Now, Mr. Varma lives in a southern suburb, Neelankarai.
Despite having to become a roving resident periodically, his love for the city remains undiminished. ``Chennai is one of the vibrant urban centres, culturally and in other respects,'' he says. Existential worries about crime are, however, inescapable. Of late, crime has increased here, he says, expressing hope that the city police will do something about it.
Cities evolve over the years, and in the case of Mumbai, it is not a happy change. Recollecting the three years that he spent in that city about two decades ago, the writer points out that once upon a time, the general atmosphere of that city was great. ``Now, I find it stifling.'' There is a skein of humour in Mr. Varma's works but it rests on the foundation of serious issues in life. Author of several poems, short stories and plays, he wrote two award-winning plays, `The Dark Lord' and `Bow of Rama', the last one dealing with the power struggle in a Kerala village. What is more, most of his works are in English.
He acknowledges that there are difficulties in conveying complexities of Indian society in English, an `alien' language.
While writing in English, one has to provide explanations about various aspects in a Malayalee's life or a Tamilian's culture to make them comprehensible to readers from different backgrounds. ``Some concepts are so unique to Kerala or Tamil Nadu that a Punjabi is as similarly placed as an American or a Briton to appreciate them. Take the matriarchal system, which even a Tamilian finds it not so easy to comprehend. But, one can convey the nuances of complex concepts through what comes to him or her naturally. In my case, English is the immediate vehicle, though thoughts come from my Kerala roots,'' he explains. Grandson of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, who was the Regent Maharani of Travancore during 1924-31, Mr. Varma says he knew her only as `my grandmother'. He heard that she had, in her official capacity, interacted with stalwarts such as Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. Many years later, when she settled down in Bangalore, her world was practically confined to one room. ``The person, who once enjoyed power and dealt with great personalities, had no problem in adapting herself to completely a different environment later.''
There were severe restrictions on members of the royal family in those days. ``They had no freedom and were in a golden cage. They could not talk to their relations on an equal footing,'' Mr. Varma muses, pointing out that his mother, Indira Bai, was the first woman in the royal family to take an under-graduate degree in a college. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was the granddaughter of the eminent artist Raja Ravi Varma. ``For some of his paintings, she and her mother were models,'' the younger Varma says.
In another dimension to his involvement with language, Mr. Varma teaches Creative English at the Chennai Mathematical Institute. ``My function is to remove hesitation from the minds of the students to engage themselves in creative writing. I believe that whatever be one's current passion, everyone has the sense of creativity. One must recognise it and act on it.''
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
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