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Literary Review
Chronicler of Dalit life
ILAVENIL, SPARROW COLLECTIONS
IT is rarely that writers take up themes of inter-communal rivalries and their consequences on the lives of people. Bama, the well-known writer has dared to do it. Bama is not just a writer but also a chronicler and recorder of Dalit life and struggle in Tamil Nadu. She has often faced opposition from her own community for exposing the innards of the community, in the process of recording its life. But in her third novel Vanmam (Malice) Bama writes about the continuing rivalry that exists between Pallars and Paraiyars of a village to the delight of the upper caste landowners who foment it regularly. She writes with precision about how violence is bred in the area and how even young boys casually talk about killing someone. This novel is not some saga of Dalit life but it is about living and growing with violence, death and hatred. About uncomfortable truces and undying feelings of revenge. It is not the kind of novel one should pick up before going to sleep, for the novel is about sleepless nights that people spend worrying about their kith and kin in jails, working in lands and being educated far away. It is a novel that would shake anybody out of a sense of complacence that things are going the right way. It is also a novel that would make one question the very basis of one's understanding and dealing with the issue of caste.
In the first few pages she gives the geography of the village Kandampatti and the markings in the village based on caste and gender get clearly drawn up:
Kandampatti village is a big place. People of different castes live here. Mountains surround the village. They look beautiful. When there is no agricultural work people go into these mountain forests, collect firewood, sell them and manage. Those who go to collect firewood are basically, Pallars and Paraiyars. They would pick up firewood and sell it to Thevars, Nayakkars and Nadars. The Paraiyars live at the bottom edge of the village. Swaminathan's house is the first one. After that in the eastern side there are four or five streets where the Paraiyars live. Close to them are four or five streets where Pallars live... . In some four or five streets are the Saliyars or weavers, Moopanars and the Pannadimars. In the west beyond the marketplace, are the Thevars, Chettiyars, Acharis, Pillais, Nadars and the Nayakkars. The Pallars and Paraiyars have to go past them to go to work. As you go from the east to the west the caste status will keep going up. It is in the west that all the agricultural lands exist. All of them belong to the upper caste. The Paraiyars are Christians. But the church is not in their street. It is in the west... .
All the young boys normally got together at the village chavadi building built some forty years ago. It is in front of the chavadi that the village meetings take place. Even kabaddi game is played here. Adjacent to the chavadi are some neem trees. When the sun is up the shade under these trees offer a refuge. Not just the old people, but also the young people, goats and cows and the men gather there. Women don't go there. Women don't go for the village meetings also. Women are not allowed in that area. At times one or two women come there looking for their men. But they will stand far away and call out loudly. Or they will send some small boys to fetch their men. This chavadi is the public place for the Paraiyar streets. This is in the beginning of the street. From here some streets branch out to the east. Normally people from all the streets gather here for any public function. The Pallars also have a village chavadi. That is in the middle of their streets. The Pallars gather there for any public function... .
In just two paragraphs Bama is able to draw the caste structure of the entire village and its geographical distribution. Then she goes on to detail lingering memories of violence, which are passed on to younger people who are not able to reconcile to it except by retaliating. Innocent people standing in the fields working get murdered. People are attacked in public places like the bus stand and run into the village panting and bleeding only to be dragged out and killed. Bodies are quietly buried by the riverside to be dragged out by dogs. Women go looking for their drunken husbands worrying if they are just drunk are dead. Even a statue of Ambedkar can't be put up without it leading to violence and killing. After every murder, the men either surrender to the police or go away and the women are left managing the household in an empty village. The enmity between the Pallars and Paraiyars extend to other areas of life like politics, love and relationships. And the upper caste people have an advantage in letting the enmity continue. After much violence and killings finally both the communities arrive at a truce that violence must stop at whatever cost. The novel ends there with that note of hope.
Within this structure of violence, Bama writes little stories of mothers waiting for a letter from a son studying in a college away from the village, of young boys who let education go to their heads and ask for direction to their own streets, of young girls studying in schools waiting for an older brother to bring them gifts, of women being dragged into quarrels of their men, of the joy of young boys going and bathing in a well they are not supposed to use and of cultural festivals organised by young people. Many complicated patterns of relationships, village life, youth and the women and men are woven in this seemingly simple narrative. When one completes the novel the dominating feeling is not one of despair and hopelessness but of utter clarity about the uselessness of violence. Maybe someday the Kandampatti chavadi will make place for young girls and women to gather and Kuttiamma who eagerly reads out her brother's letter to her parents and asks for a reward of a rupee to buy raw mangoes — not the squirrel-bitten ones but the flat sweet ones — can look forward to much more.
C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder-trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women).
C.S. LAKSHMI
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