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Literary Review
Quiet epiphanies
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INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM responds to a translated collection of short stories and poems from Sri Lanka.
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THIS book, Lutesong and Lament, has fermented in the mind of this reader; become potent, made me drunk.
As I leaf through and through these pages, I search for a missing link, the answer to a riddle that is the Tamil diaspora. I think of that old phrase, the great chain of being. What binds the poets and writers of Jaffna, Oslo, Toronto, Chennai? Who are these Tamilians drafting deft, understated sketches in poetry and prose of a strife that has pulled the chain around and around the globe? I recall in an early poem describing the "boys" as creeping by night through the silent lanes of Jaffna to board the first craft of the young wood called Eelam. I note at least one writer in these pages, who conversed with that same sabre-toothed beast, broke bread on the young wood, and then moved from safe house to safe house with eyes in the back of his head trained to spot and avoid tigers.
I have observed the Sri Lankan scene from a middle distance, eventually giving up my passport and espousing fully my now American identity. Yet, this lutesong and lament transport me towards Elephant Pass and the mysteries beyond. I see them from the starting gun in Colombo where I was born and began to run. I gaze at them from the hybrid and thriving melting pots of London and New York where the attempts to lose oneself and forget island battles can succeed at least for a time.
Yet, I have now come back from these travels to take up residence in Chennai, an hour away from Colombo by plane. What, and for whom, are these laments? For killing the Buddha in "Murder" by M.A. Nuhman (trans. S. Pathmanathan):
Last night
I dreamt
Buddha was shot dead
by the police,
guardians of the law.
For Christ crucified among palmyrahs and sea crows in "Exile Days" by P. Akilan (trans. S. Canagarajah)
Good Friday
The day they crucified you.
A hot wind
blew between shore and sea
One or two sea crows
flew in the immaculate sky.
The wind grating the palmyrah trees
whipped up inexpressible horror
That was the last day in our village...
And what of the lute songs? There is lyricism in Serendip, "Faster, my dear carter, faster/, let's head for the new town/Before night falls./Faster, my dear, faster," writes Nilaavanan (trans. A J. Canagaratna).
There's a wonderful panoply of voices here; and although I turn naturally to poetry and unnaturally away from prose, I find a number of stories that deserve to be praised. Praise not for startling imagery or an arresting prose style, but rather for understatement and concurrent achievement of small and quiet epiphanies. I think especially of A. Muttulingam's "Butterflies" (trans. S. Rajasingam). And I wonder if the chaste reserve I have noticed in the stories comes from the same sober Tamil personality that must have been startled by the appearances of guerrillas in palmyrah groves not to mention soldiers in helicopter gunships and armoured convoys.
"Butterflies" relates the story of a lepidopterist who has sought a visa to enter the United States. The first time he applies saying that he wants to look at butterflies. Ten years later he tries again, saying he hopes to visit a nephew. Koneswaran had forgotten that there is a computer in the American Embassy.
The information he had given in his first application was safely stored in it. The computer, like an astrologer, compares the information given in the second
application with that of the first and finds they do not match.
Koneswaran is timid, a character familiar to sleepy Southern towns, perhaps a cousin of some resident of Malgudi. And he is patient. Finally, after 20 years, he visits a consul again and this time receives a visa and sets off to study the monarch butterfly during its annual migration through the U.S.
Koneswaran is drawn from life. He is a professor of mathematics. He has a job. Lepidoptery is his passion, the hobby that leads him out of class in the middle of the day in front of bemused students while chasing a rare butterfly that happened to fly in and out of the window. Koneswaran is also married but rather unaware of his wife's needs and wishes. The butterfly dominates. Yet she appears to understand — or rather, accept — her husband's whims. Eventually, Koneswaran goes to a sanctuary south of San Francisco where he sees the red and black-winged monarch butterflies hanging thickly on the branches. For the first time in his life, he will not take a specimen. He has reached a kind of nirvana and is walking, he believes, in holy land. He meditates on these butterflies who do not require visas for their migration. One butterfly even kisses his left eyebrow.
Koneswaran returns to the car and falls asleep and goes "to that land where no visa is required." Sentiment and sentimentalism. Beauty and mawkishness. Fine lines separate them. Muttulingam stays safely on the side of sentiment and beauty. The same can be said for most of this rich collection. In some cases, the sentiment is harsh and difficult the reading. I think of Sivaramani, who committed suicide in 1991, and wrote in "Humiliation" (trans. Chelva Kanaganayakam):
Behind the bars
of your laws
I cannot be held;
from your muddy
permanence
I am a stone
reclaimed...
That year, I met Cheran for the first time and recall going with him to a memorial service for Sivaramani. I had come back to Sri Lanka to find another talent cut down early, a common item in the island nation's letters. Two other major poets did not reach 40. One succumbed to the undertow near Mount Lavinia, the great Lakdasa Wikkramasinha. The other washed up on shore, Sri Lanka's legendary actor and one of its strongest poets, Richard de Zoysa. De Zoysa was murdered.
Wikkramasinha drowned in the 1960s. Death by water. Death by fire. Death by poison. Sri Lankan poetry and landscapes are filled with disappearances. Cheran has gone away to Canada. Some poets have insisted on braving the hardships of terrorism and war while staying at home. The lute is played and the lament sung even more fiercely by those who have gone away. Cheran writes in "Meeting and Parting":
These separate us:
Long mountain ranges,
a rainbow,
an invisible sun
endlessly falling
winter rain,
the proud light
of my dark face.
These unite us:
The heartbeat of waves,
an endless telephone wire
which falls across continents and oceans,
and,
too frightened to question the future,
a tender heart.
(trans. Lakshmi Holmström)
This collection, published in Canada, is the labour of Chelva Kanaganayakam who has written a perceptive introductory essay and contributed some of the translations. The translations have now travelled most of the way back and sit with me at my desk in Chennai, less than an hour by plane from Jaffna.
Lutesong and Lament: Tamil Writing from Sri Lanka, edited by Chelva Kanaganayakam, TSAR, p.171, $23.95.
The writer is Consul for Public Affairs at the American Consulate General, Chennai. He is a poet who writes in English and Spanish and his latest book Ceylon R.I.P has just been published in Sri Lanka.
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