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MUSINGS
Another interior landscape
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Memories of A.K. Ramanujan and his interactions in the Tamil literary scene. Ashokamitran
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Literary interactions: A.K. Ramanujan.
A young researcher recently came from Australia to gather information and record interviews about A.K. Ramanujan from his friends in India.
I first met Ramanujan in 1967 when he had come on a short visit to India from Chicago where he had taken up an assignment with the University. A Tamil literary magazine had arranged for a talk by him at its premises which accommodated just about 10 people. I didn’t find his talking to Tamil writers in English as unusual but, in retrospect, I realise it was a significant detail of his interaction with the Tamil milieu.
Observations
Everyone knew he had just published a collection of ancient Tamil poems in English translation and that it was generating more interest from students of Indian literature than a collection of his own poems in English. His principal observation during the talk was that he found the then contemporary Tamil writing not adequately ‘engaged with reality.’ After the meeting, he was given a copy of Kurukshetram, an anthology of recent Tamil writing.
The very next day he called on me to say he was wrong about the engagement-with-reality thing. He had read the story “Vimochanam”. That was the beginning of a long but not-so-beautiful relationship between us. For I was the one who kept him informed of any published criticism of his work. He wrote letters once a fortnight and it was then I had come to know of a thing called aerogramme which cost just about twice the cost of a inland letter card, gave you enough space to write a number of things and most importantly, didn’t need you write more than a page and a half. The American aerogramme was more elegant than the Indian one. We were both enthusiastic letter-writers and we wrote at least one letter a month, filling the whole of the aerogramme.
Annual meetings
Whenever he came to India — he came almost every year — he would show me his manuscripts and I all my published short stories. He was a little aghast at my English and said I was a courageous person. He had just begun to translate U.R. Anantha Murthy’s novel Samskara. I was a little aghast and told him he needed to revise the opening paragraphs. He took a long time to complete the translation and when at last it was serialised in The Illustrated Weekly of India, I wasn’t sure what I thought needed revision. Once he wanted an out-of-print Tamil book and I took the risk of borrowing it from the local library and sending it to him by registered air mail. Again, that was the first time I was sending something out of the country and the form I signed to send the book was quite intimidating. For a fortnight, I thought the whole Indian police force would come any moment to drag me to my execution for sending a book out of the country. Ramanujan sent back the book by airmail in an envelope, which I didn’t have the heart to tear open.
At Chicago
It happened almost as a dream and I was in Chicago at his home in the cold February of 1974! After the obligatory pompous talk to his department, I fell ill. I was in bed for two days and Ramanujan would make me a mug of coffee every two hours. His colleague took me to the Chicago museum where I saw a mummy for the first time. As a matter of fact a whole corridor was strewn with mummies. Sceptres and crowns had tumbled down to be equal made in that foreign land.
I met a whole lot of Kannada avant-garde writers and artists with him. He was never hesitant to put me on to them and I found he had already talked to them about me. Once he took me to the just-then growing artists’ village, Cholamandal, where he gave a reading of his own poems in English and Kannada. S.G. Vasudev had done the cover for his collection of poems in Kannada.
Coming to think of those days, I now realise he was more comfortable with his Kannada friends.
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