TRANSLATION
Critical insider
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`Perumal Murugan's book may be seen as a response to the genre of Dalit literature, a literature of protest, resistance and subversion.'
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A TELLING and powerful novel, Seasons of the Palm tells the story of Shorty, a young dalit farm hand and his painful growth into self-knowledge. It is not merely about breaking the spirit of a good young boy by sheer brutality. You cannot help notice the remarkable literary, almost lyrical, quality about the work.
Perumal Murugan's book may be seen as a response to the genre of Dalit literature, a literature of protest, resistance and subversion. He recounts the everyday brutality of caste society in relentless detail. Murugan writes as a critical insider, being from a dominant caste. His art both records as well as indicts the inhumanity he grew up with. It is a reality whose cruelty insists on being written about, as it were. Shorty's life is hard — he is in bondage to his landlord, herding his goats, working in his field and home. The lovingly drawn young-teen protagonist finds himself sandwiched between an oppressive working life and a happy dream world.
A regional novel
V. Geetha's English translation of the book is among the top five short-listed for the Kiriama Prize. The $30,000 Prize is awarded annually in recognition of outstanding books that promote greater understanding of and among the nations of the Pacific Rim and of the South Asian sub-continent. Instituted in 1996, the past finalists and winners of the award include V.S. Naipaul, Rohinton Mistry, Anita Desai, Monica Ali, Carlos Fuentes, Simon Winchester, Michael Ondaatje and Ha Jin.
The 38-year-old Murugan, who is a lecturer in Tamil literature in Namakkal, grew up in a harsh landscape amid hardworking peasants. Koola Madari has been 10 years in the making and was published five years ago. "I could never finish it, but neither could I stay away from it. And then one summer, it got written." When asked of his usage of Kongu Nadu dialect, during a telephonic interview with the author, the latter's defence was that it is a regional novel. He said he had set himself limits in this novel, he confined himself to the relationship between Goundar landlords and dalits and has not touched on their kudi-iruppu, family life or other facets of life. "My main concern is the futility, the sadness that follows the inability to escape from soolal (circumstances, environment), notwithstanding the many efforts to break free." He says that he cannot think of an existence without the dalits for, they help out with manual labour and other everyday chores in diverse ways. When asked if his secondary concern in the book was adolescence with all its attendant pangs since all the major characters like Belly and friends are teenagers, the answer was a negative. Murugan's current body of work is made up of three volumes of verse and short fiction, a dialect dictionary and a collection of scholarly essays on contemporary Tamil literature. The experience of untouchability is a strong thematic concern with him. His earlier novel, Current Show, also translated by V. Geetha and brought out by Tara Publishers, skims the murky world of the dispossessed youth while sporting a spare, swift style that imitates the rapid images and cuts of cinema. Murugan, who has bagged the Katha award for short story and the Tamil Nadu Government award, says his forthcoming novel, which will be out later this year, is on the institution of marriage.
Self-Imposed limits: Perumal Murugan.
Efficient translation
The English translation of Koola Madari has helped render a not so widely known work of fiction accessible and universal while remaining loyal to the literary idioms and expressions of the original. A sample: "No one's going to lop your head off if you walk slowly". Geetha says what motivated her to take up this particular work for translation was that since the book is not written by a dalit, it was saying something important about the responsibility of the dominant castes in fighting their own proclivity and interest in sustaining untouchability. She has rendered the novel in the simple present to get over the problem of switching tenses which sounds alright in Tamil but clumsy in English.
To underscore the point how dalit children are not even allowed the dignity of their own names but are called by other cruel names, she translated the names into English. Hence Shorty, Stumpleg and Tallfellow.
As for plant, bird, animal and food names, Tamil has been retained wherever commonly known English equivalents are not to be found. So cholam became corn, but aavaaram stayed; so with castor and bean, but not with vaagai and erukkan.
The Tamil original is sprinkled with evocative and lovely terms like poongkuttigal for goat kids. The palm pre-dominates the landscape of the novel and the writer has lovingly detailed its numerous offerings, like its nut, fruit, root, juice and toddy and hence the English translation is aptly titled Seasons of the Palm.
Seasons of the Palm, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by V. Geetha, Tara Publishing, p.320, Rs. 295.
SELINE AUGUSTINE
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