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Literary Review
Reality to the fore
ASHOKAMITRAN'S three Tamil novellas have recently been brought out by Orient Longman as Sand and Other Stories. Kalyana Raman has translated Sand (1971) and Malati (1981), while Gomathy Narayan has translated Those Two (1993). Both the translators have made a double investment in terms of their linguistic proficiency in two languages and of their ability to get well under the creative spell of the writer. The result is a near approximation to the original, and the English version is a treat on its own merit.
Paul Zachariah's foreword contains a brilliant analysis of the creative streak of the author, who, he says, confronts the soul's terrifying loneliness. "Ashokamitran has known the dark Lord closely in His hideouts in the bathrooms, kitchens, yards and living rooms of the Brahmin family. He tells these stories without anger or recrimination, without asking you for a grand beheading, but investing suffering with the possibility of dignity".
The author's scoring point is his unique capacity to characterise. He unravels the inner recesses of a Sarojini (Sand) or a Malati (Malati) as women with distinct personalities; women who have faced the respective tragedies that overtook their lives in the form of societal pressures, poverty, or circumstances beyond their control. He is able to unearth the things that really matter from those that appear casual or even trivial. Of the men and women who people these stories, if the men are recognisable by their behaviour and traits, the women stride forcefully into the readers' psyche, clamouring for justice, redemption and a level playing field. Can the hindsight of today's so-called emancipated climate answer these women with a fair deal, one wonders uneasily. They establish their reality through sheer experiential presence, as the author tries to capture the oft-felt but unuttered spaces of womanhood.
Ask any reader how Sarojini or Malati looks like. They may go over the story mentally or thumb through the pages for those descriptive snatches usually writers resort to, to introduce a character. But the exercise may be a vain one. Nevertheless, the readers are sure to know these women only too well, in their experiential entities.
How does the writer achieve this? With his eye for detail, the stories are narrated as a series of incidents, interspersed with dialogues and interior monologues that capture the essence of these characters.
In Sand the banal family scenario reveals beneath its deceptive surface, extraordinary depths of pathos and unhappiness. It charts the increasingly desperate nature of Sarojini's dreams, initially to enter a medical college, and later the chances of her getting married. The desultory conversations, the death of the mother and the attitude of the family members bring reality to the fore. The narrative captures the atmosphere of the middleclass Tamil Brahmin household in the late 1960s, laden with rituals and hidebound tradition.
In Malati, the author's compassion for disadvantaged womanhood is manifest. Malati belongs to the lower middleclass and has to wage a heroic battle for day-to-day living. She thinks to herself, "Women are women's worst enemies".
Endi, that woman who was with your doctor, is she married? Asked amma.
Malati did not reply. She was both amused and sad. The question came from a person with a daughter of marriageable age. That she must arrange for her daughter's marriage doesn't occur to her. Nor is she distressed that her daughter remains unmarried. Instead, she eagerly gossips about someone who has nothing to do with her. (p.58.)
Those Two is heavy, with an eerie repetitive refrain that involves the supernatural; but it scores because of the subtle narrative stance. It is an uncomfortable narrative in which seemingly ordinary people live their lives in quiet desperation. Being related from the perspective of the young boy Visu, there's a part-knowing and a part-naïve veneer to the narration. The author is able to bring forth an implied criticism of the hopelessness of the situations, or of the dishonesties and the hypocritical subterfuges of the adult world.
Though the stories were written much earlier, their themes are still relevant. The translated versions have managed to bypass the inevitable, untranslatable sections that might grate in terms of idiom or connotative reach and have tried to catch the delicate Tamil prose rhythms into English.
Sand and Other Stories, Ashokamitran, Orient Longman
PADMINI DEVARAJAN
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