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Interview Review

Is Mitra Phukan a Modern-Day Jane Austen?

In Conversation with Mitra Phukan about her latest novel, What Will People Say? A Novel , published by Speaking Tiger Books, March 2023

Mitra Phukan. Courtesy: Speaking Tiger Books

What will people Say? A Novel by Mitra Phukan, a well-known writer from Assam, plays out like a sonata with fugues introducing complexities into the narrative. It concludes in a crescendo of hope with an acceptance of love. At the end, Phukan writes: “It was love. A love great enough to conquer all the ‘What Will People Says’.”

What is remarkable about the novel is the light touch with which it deals with major issues like communal tensions, acceptance of love across divisive human constructs and questioning of social norms. She elucidates: “I have written What Will People Say in a conversational, everyday style, sprinkled liberally with humour, even though the themes are very serious.”

Phukan’s novel moves towards a more accepting world where social norms adapt to changing needs — perhaps an attitude we would all do well to emulate, given the need for a change in mindsets to broach not only divisive societal practices but the advancing climate crises which calls for unconventional, untried steps to create cohesive bonds among humanity.

The story is set in a small town in Assam called Tinigaon. Where the protagonist, Mihika, a widow and a professor, upends accepted social norms with her budding romance to a Muslim expat, a friend of her deceased husband. She has strong supporters among her family and friends but faces devastating social criticism and even some ostracisation. This makes her think of giving up the relationship that drew her out of the darkness of widowhood.

Suffering during widowhood is a topic that has been broached by many Indian writers ranging from Tagore, Sunil Gangopadhyay to many more. Before the advent of these writers, in 1856, the Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act was brought into play by the efforts of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who had also written on the issue. But despite the law, has it as yet been accepted by conventional society? And how would such a society which bases its perceptions on rituals and traditions respond further to a relationship that discards marriage as a norm? These are questions that Phukan deals with not only in her novel but in the conversation that follows.

The plot showcases an interesting interplay of different perspectives. In certain senses, it has the delightful touch of a Jane Austen novel, except it is set in India in the twenty first century, where relationships are impacted by even social media. Phukan, herself, sees “ageism” and female bonding and friendship” as major issues addressed in the novel. She says that women’s bonding is a theme that “has not been focused on enough, at least in Assamese writing”, even though, it is a fact that this has been the focus in other literature like, Jane Austen’s novels written in the nineteenth century and in subsequent modern-day take-offs on her novels, like the The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, published in 2004. In the sub-continent, Begum Rokeya described a full woman’s utopia in Sultana’s Dream (1905), though Rokeya’s story is essentially a feminist sci-fi. Unlike Rokeya’s book, Phukan’s is not an intense feminist novel. The protagonist, Mihika, has men well-wishers and men friends-cum-colleagues too. The tone is lighter and makes for a fabulous read, like Austen’s novels.

As if rising in a fugue to Mihika’s romance are two more relationships of a similar nature. One is between her daughter and a young boy from a traditional, respected, conventional home. The other, which I found more interesting, and I wish Phukan had explored a bit more, is a relationship between Mihika’s Bihari beautician, Sita, and a tribal boy. While the girl is from a traditional vegetarian strictly Hindu family, the boy is an orphan, a tribal. It is a romance that is outside the conventional affluent, middle-class circle. And is used as a contrast to Mihika’s and her daughter’s experiences. Sita’s narrative highlights how the conventional finally accept the unconventionality of a romance that in the past might have been completely rejected.

The novel rises above victimhood by looking for resolutions outside the accepted norms subtly. The plot weaves the triangular interplay of relationships with notes of harmony. The story, devoid of gender biases and darker shades of drama, delves into serious themes with a feathery touch.

The structuring of the novel arrests the reader with its seeming simplicity but each is fitted into the composition to create a fiction that touches your heart and leaves you pining for a bit more… like the strains of a composition that has the deftness and neatness of a Jane Austen novel, written in the context of twenty first century Assam.

Phukan herself is a trained vocalist in Indian classical, a columnist, a translator and a writer. In this conversation, she reveals more about the making and intent of her novel and her journey as a writer.

You wear a number of hats — that of an Indian classical vocalist, a columnist, a children’s writer, a translator and so much more. How does this impact your work as a novelist?

I feel everything is related; everything flows seamlessly into the other aspects. Yes, I am a trained Shastriya Sangeet[1]vocalist, though I have retired from performances now. But at one time that was my life…even now, I write extensively about music through essays and reviews. And I’m always listening to music, of many genres.

I began writing, hesitantly comparatively late, though I always enjoyed it, getting prizes in school and college. Later, I began to write stories, etc, for magazines such as Femina, Eve’s Weekly. Mainly though it was the paper The Sentinel and its editor D N Bezboruah which gave me a platform through middles, short fiction, essays and other genres. My children were very young at the time, and somehow the children’s stories came to me at that point. Now that they are grown up, those stories don’t come any more…and I regret that.

Translation happened because two stalwarts of Assamese literature, Jnanpith awardee Dr Indira Goswami and Sahitya Akdami awardee poet Dr Nirmal Prova Bordoloi encouraged me to try my hand at it by translating their work. I found I enjoyed it …and the journey continues!

Writing fiction, especially novels, needs the writer to have a wide view of life, I feel.  I love storytelling. I write from observation, but also, I learn a lot about the literature of the place I come from, Assam, through the works of the greats in Assamese.

Do your other passions, especially music, impact your writing?                   

Music, definitely. In What Will People Say, for instance, there are so many references to songs and music, to concerts and musicians. There is an entire chapter devoted to songs in Hindi and Assamese where the theme is music. Besides, my novel A Monsoon of Music is about the lives of four practicing musicians. Many of my short stories from A Full Night’s Thievery have music as a theme …’The Tabla Player’, ‘The Choice’, ‘Spring Song’, and so on.

Also, musical metaphors seem to creep in, unbidden, to my writing…

Among the other passions that are reflected to a greater or lesser degree in my writing are gardening, and of course food!

What led you to write What Will People Say?

My stories, whether long or short, are always triggered by events, people, that I see around me. Sometimes it could even be a sentence I overhear while waiting at an airport, or maybe an expression on somebody’s face. They are based on reality, though they are fictionalised as they pass through the prism of my mind, my imagination.

What Will People Say was triggered by the fact that I see so many older women who have lost their spouses spend their lives in loneliness and sometimes despondency. Yes, their children may be caring, they may have women friends, a profession, but that is not enough. Love, finding a romantic partner, even companionship, is very unusual as a senior. There are so many unwritten codes, so many taboos and restrictions, especially in the small, peri-urban places.

And yet I find that change is coming. After all, people are exposed to other cultures, where going in for a second relationship is not seen as a betrayal of the dead husband, as it tends to be here.

The need for social change and a questioning of norms is part of the journey you take your readers through in your novel. Were these consciously woven into the story or did the story just happen? Please tell us about the journey of the novel.

This was the theme I have had in my mind for a while now. It was a conscious decision, and not always an easy one to implement, because of the binaries involved. 

The place where I live, the larger society, prides itself on being “liberal”. And it is, compared to some other places on the planet, or in the country. But in the twenty first century, we are aware that there is much more that needs to be done, a much longer path to be traversed. The theme came first. After which I began to think of the storyline, the characters, the incidents that would make the theme come alive, all in a fictional way, of course.

What Will People Say, the line, is a kind of whip used to keep “straying” members of society, usually young people, within the fold. But here I have inverted it …it is the older members, those who are supposed to uphold the status quo, who are doing what, for many, would be the unthinkable.

Do you still see widow remarriage as an issue? Is it still an issue in Northeast India as your book shows?

Assam is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious society.

The community I am describing is what is known as the “caste Hindu” society, in which, traditionally, widow remarriage is not “allowed”. Even now, even in urban Assamese society, it is uncommon. There are unspoken taboos, unwritten codes of conduct. The extreme strictness of the past has lessened no doubt, but also a lot depends on the economic and social status of the woman. I never, for instance, saw my grandmother, a staunch Brahmin, wear anything but stark white after she was widowed. Her vegetarian kitchen was separate from the main kitchen …leave aside meat or fish, even onions, garlic were not allowed there. My mother wanted to follow the same route after my father passed away, but her doctor forbade her from doing that, while her children insisted, she wear colour. Today, my generation of women wear colour and eat non-vegetarian after the demise of their husbands, so things are slowly changing. But a second marriage, or a romantic relationship, in middle age is still very rare indeed.

Your book describes middle class liberals, conservatives as well as immigrants and tribals. What kind of impact have tribals and immigrants had in Assam over time?

There have been many waves of migration into this fertile valley of the Brahmaputra. As a result, it is a rich cultural and linguistic mosaic. Different influences are at play all the time, communities that live in proximity to each other are definitely influenced. But it is a slow process, naturally. And usually takes place over generations.

You have hinted that tribals are more liberal and out of the framework of Hindu rituals. Is that a fact?

Many tribes are, in general, indeed more liberal when it comes to widow remarriage, as are the large Muslim and also the Christian communities. It is the “caste Hindus”, especially those from the “top” of the caste pyramid, who mostly have these taboos. The original inhabitants of these valleys were different ethnic groups, which, because of the riverine, heavily forested aspects of the region, tended to remain in isolation from each other. As a result, cultural practices were unique to each one. Different waves of immigrants from both the East of the region, from Southeast Asia and beyond, and from the rest of India in the west brought in different influences, which were absorbed slowly. We see this in the food practices, the music, the weaves and clothes that we traditionally wear, and religious and social practices, among other things.  

How do your characters evolve? Out of fact or are they just a figment of your imagination?

All are creations of my mind, my imagination. But I try to keep them as real as possible. It is all fiction. I love adding layers to them as I go along, till they have their own individuality, their own body language, their own ways of thinking, speaking, their food preferences, everything. By the end, they are “real” to me, though they actually exist only within the pages of a book.

What writers/ musicians/art impact you as a writer? Is there any writer who you feel impacts you more than others?

My music gurus have impacted me in many ways, beyond music. Guru Birendra Kumar Phukan, especially, taught me …through his music …what it means to be steeped in spirituality, and how to aspire higher through Shastriya music, which, to him, and sometimes to me, too, was and is prayer.

As for writers, there are so many I admire deeply. Among the Assamese writers are the scholar and creative writer of the 15th-16th Century, the Saint Srimanta Sankardev, Jnanpith awardees Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya and Indira Goswami. I am always deeply moved by their humanity. Their works, their characters, are drenched in it.

Among writers that I have read in English are the obvious ones, so many of them …but for style and humour, I think nobody can beat P G Wodehouse, and for irony, Jane Austen.  And my Go To book during the pandemic was Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, for an instant lifting of spirits.

You have written a lot of children’s stories and written columns. Have these impacted you as a novelist? How is writing a novel different from doing a fantasy-based children’s story or writing a column?

I have written biographies, short stories and essays too. Basically, I see myself as a storyteller, though I write non-fiction too.  The children’s stories came from my observations of the child’s world at one time, the way they thought and reacted. My columns are commentaries on society, couched in different “rasas”, including the humorous, but are sometimes a narration in the form of a story. The practice of writing, whatever the genre, and the habit of observation, have all helped me in the marathon task of writing novels!

What can we look forward to from you next? Are you working on a new novel?

Yes. I do have a novel in the pipeline, am giving it some final touches now. But what is due to be published next is a biography of Dr Bhupen Hazarika, a monograph really. He is a musical icon and so much else for us. It is being published by Sahitya Akademi. And then there is a translation of a novella by Sahitya Akademi Awardee Dr Dhrubjyoti Borah, to be published later this year by Om Books. And then of course there are the columns which I really enjoy doing, since the paper that I write for, The Assam Tribune, reaches the deepest areas of rural Assam. Many of the readers of this column, ‘All Things Considered’ are first generation literates, and that makes me really happy.

Thank you so much for these lovely questions.

Thanks for giving us your time.

.

[1] Classical Indian music

Click here to read the book excerpt of What Will People Say?

(The book review and the online interview conducted through emails are by Mitali Chakravarty)

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Excerpt

What Will People Say?

Title: What Will People Say?

Author: Mitra Phukan

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

PROLOGUE

Tinigaon

There were many Tinigaons within the city of this name. ‘Three Villages’ was the meaning in the local language. A small city in the folds of a valley in the middle of Assam. There was the Tinigaon that was still a small town, not in terms of size, but in the attitudes of the people. It was not just the middle-aged and older people who clung to tradition. Quite a few younger people did, too. And it was not always bad, this conservatism. Indeed, sometimes this unshakeable belief in the sanctity of the past was beautiful and illuminating. It was this conservatism that preserved the precious heritage of the past and kept it alive, preventing it from passing into oblivion.

But at other times, when conservatism became rigid, and sought to impose its beliefs on those who had a different mindset, dictating how they should behave, dress, what relationships they could or could not have, it could become a prison that prevented any kind of progress from taking place. As with much conservatism, the greatest restrictions were placed on women. There were strict codes of conduct for women and girls, codes that varied from age group to age group, but were authoritarian, nevertheless. Individual freedoms were always secondary to the ‘expected’ modes of conduct. ‘It’s always been like this,’ was a refrain often heard to justify the many rules which had lost all relevance in a swiftly changing world. If, indeed, they had ever been relevant at all.

The rules for girls and young women, though unyielding, at least took into account the rebelliousness of youth. ‘You are young, that’s why you think like this,’ was a sentence that was spoken grudgingly by parents or uncles and aunts, to people who were, in their eyes, guilty of ‘errant’ behaviour. But young people went outside the city, outside the state, to study, to work, and who knew what their lifestyles were there? Preferring to turn a blind eye to many rumoured ‘goings-on’ in the metro cities, goings-on in which their children were willing, even enthusiastic participants, they were for the most part relieved that at least when they came home, they behaved in ways ‘expected’ of them.

And so, even though they spoke viciously of that girl, WhatWasHerName, who was now living in with some boyfriend in Delhi, they preferred to keep silent about their own daughter who was doing the same. Grateful for small mercies, they pretended not to know anything when they visited her in the flat she rented in Gurgaon. They kept a deadpan face when they came across a shirt in size 42 hanging, forgotten in the cupboard in the second bedroom. They tried not to notice the other telltale signs that their daughter had been ‘cohabiting’ with a male, and refrained from asking where he had gone, now that they were here for three weeks. They did not ask about the long phone conversations that stretched to well past midnight and were only grateful that their daughter had been ‘considerate’ enough to spare them the trauma of meeting some unknown boy with whom she had been sleeping for the past so many months. They even pushed into a dark recess that worry of pregnancy, and the even greater worry of ‘WhatWillPeopleSay?’

Yes, in these changing times, people were learning, slowly, to ‘adjust’ to the fact that the younger people now were prone to living their lives in ways that were different from what was deemed to be ‘allowed’. But when it came to older people, things still remained as rigid as they had been for centuries. Especially for women. And especially, very especially, for widows.

True, Hindu widows were no longer expected to live a life that was, virtually, a death sentence. Younger widows, especially, ate non-vegetarian food, though their mothers, after the deaths of their husbands, still did not. They wore coloured clothes, though again, their mothers wore pale, traditional clothes, even though during the lifetimes of their husbands they had worn the most vibrant colours under the sun.

But there were, still, many restrictions on single women, widows, even divorcees or never-marrieds, in Tinigaon. They could go out in mixed groups, but never in a twosome with a man not closely related. They could not ‘date’ a man, and go out with him, even if it was as innocent as an outing to a theatre, or a music concert, or having a meal at a restaurant. There were always prying and peering eyes around who would ‘see’ what was happening, magnify it many times, load it with all kinds of intent, and then broadcast it with relish to salivating friends at the next kitty party that took place.

Mihika remembered the time a recently divorced forty-something mother of two had accepted a lift, two days running, from her superior, a married, fifty-plus man. Without a car at that time just after her divorce, she had been waiting on the pavement, in pouring rain, for a bus or auto or ricksha to take her home. As time passed and no vehicle stopped for her, she was growing increasingly desperate. The nanny who looked after the children would be leaving at six-thirty, and it was almost six already. She was greatly relieved, therefore, when her boss’s boss, whom she knew only slightly, stopped and asked her if he could drop her anywhere. It turned out her apartment was on the way to his house and she had gladly accepted the offer of the lift.

(Extracted from What Will People Say? A Novel by Mitra Phukan. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2023)

About the Book

When Mihika, 56 and a widow, gets drawn into a relationship with Zuhayr, a 60-year-old divorcee who was her late husband Aditya’s friend, it doesn’t seem to her like an event that should cause more than a raised eyebrow or two. Not in the twenty-first century, and not when their grown-up children are happy that their parents have found a second chance at happiness. But inTinigaon—a small town in Assam—it is just not done for a woman of Mihika’s age to have a romantic relationship—that, too, with a man from the Other Religion: a Muslim.Tinigaon’s Old Guard is scandalized as Mihika and Zuhayr are seen together in restaurants and cinema halls,‘flaunting’ their affair. And a nosy neighbour, Ranjana, keeps the moral brigade busy with juicy details of Zuhayr’s late-night comings and goings from Mihika’s house. Mihika decides to ignore the gossipmongering and slander and remain true to her relationship with Zuhayr, who has filled a void in her life after Aditya’s death five years ago.As long as her four closest friends,Tara,Triveni, Shagufta and Pallavi, stand by her, she doesn’t care if others turn away. But when the gossip turns into something more sinister that could threaten her daughterVeda’s happiness, Mihika is forced to take a call—should she give up the man she loves for her daughter’s sake, or is there an alternative that could give them both what they want? Writing with great sensitivity and gentle humour, Mitra Phukan proves once again that she is an extraordinary chronicler of the human heart. Rooted, like all her fiction, in the culture and sensibilities of Assam, What Will People Say? speaks to all of us, wherever we are, whoever we are.

About the Author

Mitra Phukan is an Assamese author, translator and columnist who writes in English. Her published works, fourteen so far, include children’s books, biographies, two novels, The Collector’s Wife and A Monsoon of Music, several volumes of translations from Assamese to English and a collection of her columns, Guwahati Gaze. Her most recent works are a volume of her own short stories, A Full Night’s Thievery, and a translation of a volume of short stories, by Sahitya Akademi Award-winning author, Harekrishna Deka, Guilt and Other Stories, both published by SpeakingTiger.

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Editorial

Imagine…

Art by Pragya Bajpai

Imagine a world without wars, without divisions, where art forms flow into each other and we live by the African concept of Ubuntu — I am because you are’ — sounds idyllic. But this is the month of March, of poetry, of getting in touch with the Dionysian elements in ourselves. And as we have said earlier in the introduction of Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World, what could be a better spot to let loose this insanity of utopian dreams than Borderless Journal!

Having completed three years of our Earthly existence on the 14th of March, we celebrate this month with poetry and writing that crosses boundaries — about films, literature and more. This month in the Festival of Letters or Sahityaotsav 2023, organised by the Sahitya Akademi, films were discussed in conjunction with literature. Ratnottama Sengupta, who attended and participated in a number of these sessions, has given us an essay to show how deep run the lyrics of Bollywood films, where her father, Nabendu Ghosh, scripted legends. It is Ghosh’s birth month too and we carry a translation from his Bengali autobiography which reflects how businessmen drew borders on what sells… After reading the excerpt from Nabendu’s narrative translated by Dipankar Ghosh and post-scripted by Sengupta, one wonders if such lines should ever have been drawn?

Questioning borders of a different kind, we have another piece of a real-life narrative on a Japanese Soldier, Uehara. Written by an Assamese writer called Kamaleswar Barua, it has been translated and introduced by Bikash K. Bhattacharya. The story focusses on a soldier’s narrative at his death bed in an alien land. We are left wondering how his need for love and a home is any different from that of any one of ours? Who are the enemies — the soldiers who die away from their homes? What are wars about? Can people live in peace? They seemed to do so in Kurigram, a land that has faded as suggests the poem by Masud Khan, brought to us in translation from Bangla by Professor Fakrul Alam, though in reality, the area exists. Perhaps, it has changed… as does wood exposed to a bonfire, which has been the subject of a self-translated Korean poem by Ihlwha Choi. Tagore’s poem, Borondala translated as ‘Basket of Offerings’, has the last say: “Just as the stars glimmer / With light in the dark night, / A spark awakens within/ My body. / This luminosity illuminates / All my work.” And perhaps, it is this luminosity that will also help us find our ideal world and move towards it, at least with words.

This is the poetry month, and we celebrate poetry in different ways. We have an interview with poet Heidi North by Keith Lyons.  She has shared a poem that as Bijan Najdi said makes one “feel a burning sensation in …[the]… fingertips without touching the fire”. It flows with some home truths put forward with poignancy. We have poetry by Michael R Burch, Kirpal Singh, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Amit Parmessur, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, George Freek, Sanket Mhatre, Asad Latif and Rhys Hughes. While Burch celebrates spring in his poetry, Parmessur explores history and Hughes evokes laughter as usual which spills into his column on Indian Pale Ale. Devraj Singh Kalsi has written of simian surprises he has had — and, sadly for him, our reaction is to laugh at his woes. Meredith Stephens takes us on a sailing adventure to Nouméa and Ravi Shankar explores Aruba with photographs and words. Suzanne Kamata shows how Japanese curry can actually be a multicultural binder. Prithvijeet Sinha links the legends of artist MF Hussain and Mother Teresa while Paul Mirabile explores the stylistic marvels of James Joyce in his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a very literary piece.

We have a book review by Aruna Chakravarti of Bornali Datta’s In A Better Place: A Doctor’s Journey, a book that is set amidst immigrants and takes up certain social issues. Baba Padmanji’s Yamuna’s Journey, translated from Marathi by Deepra Dandekar, one of the oldest Indian novels has been discussed by Somdatta Mandal.  Bhaskar Parichha has told us about S.Irfan Habib’s Maulana Azad – A Life. Basudhara Roy has brought out the simplicity and elegance of Robin Ngangom’s My Invented Land: New and Selected Poems. He writes in the title poem that his home “has no boundaries. / At cockcrow one day it found itself/ inside a country to its west,/ (on rainy days it dreams looking east/ when its seditionists fight to liberate it from truth.)”. We also carry an excerpt from his book. Stories by Jessie Michael, Brindley Hallam Dennis, Sangeetha G and Shubhangi bring flavours of diversity in this issue.

Our journey has been a short one — three years is a short span. But, with goodwill from all our readers and contributors, we are starting to crawl towards adulthood. I thank you all as caregivers of Borderless Journal as I do my fabulous team and the artists who leave me astounded at their ability to paint and write — Sohana Manzoor, Gita Vishwanath and Pragya Bajpai.

Thank you all.

Looking forward to the next year, I invite you to savour Borderless Journal, March 2023, where more than the treasures mentioned here lie concealed.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Excerpt

Anthill by Vinoy Thomas 

Title: Anthill

Author: Vinoy Thomas

Translator: Nandakumar K

Publisher: Penguin India

Diverse Marriages

The sight of his brother-in-law and his own son toiling in the teashop warmed the cockles of Prasannan’s heart. Whenever Ranjit handed over a cup of tea to anyone, they would say, ‘Oh, Prasannan’s tea was far better.’

He was gladdened not because his son caused people to compare him favourably but because the level of tea and sugar in the containers remained undiminished and one bottle of milk delivered over forty to forty-five cups of tea. Since Perumpadi was devoid of other shops at that time, the public decided to accept— with the same stoicism they accepted fate—the son’s atrocities as he followed in his father’s footsteps.

Suni excelled in tossing parottas and thinning them like cloth; wet grinding the batter to such a fine froth that dosas became gossamers; slicing the bananas paper-thin to make fritters; pouring wheat flour, baking soda and sugar mixtures from such heights that undakkaya made out of it had more air bubbles than substance. His only fault was that he had to watch at least two movies a week. That was taken care of by the complimentary pass he received for pasting the movie poster on the shop wall.

The day after the vehicle of black magic was delivered, work was started on a kuzhikalari* in a plot that belonged to Chandrappura Mani to the west of Prasannan’s land. Whirlwind Manoharan was the kalari gurukkal. There were two versions on the provenance of this nickname—some said that it was because from the time he was a child, at the least provocation he would swirl like a typhoon and hit people; others said it was because he was epileptic. Epilepsy and whirlwind share the same homonym in the vernacular.

Whirlwind Manoharan had a trait of becoming an instant admirer of practitioners of traditional skills and arts—especially the ones he could not master—and then trailing those practitioners to learn from them. Although an ardent admirer, when he started to learn the skill or art, he would pick fights with his gurus. He, therefore, ended up not mastering any of the skills.

Although he tried to learn many such skills, he gave literacy a wide berth. In his view, this world needed nothing that required one to be literate. Before he started the kuzhikalari, he was attached as a helper to a stonemason.

At the house at Koothuparamba where he was working, a kalari asan had come to do therapeutic massage for the karanavar of the house. The way he carried himself and his physique turned Manoharan into a devotee. He started to believe that whatever the asan did was superhuman. One day, after the massage, when the asan was leaving, it started to rain heavily.

‘Asan, how can you leave without an umbrella?’

‘Why do I need an umbrella? I will twirl this stick and walk,’ asan bragged for a lark.

After he said that, when he stepped into the rain, asan did open the umbrella in his hand. However, Manoharan’s mind was not willing to process that sight. All he saw was asan walking under a stick spinning overhead, without a single droplet hitting his body. The apprenticeship with the stonemason ended on the same day.

Manoharan was unable to follow the vocal syllables used by the guru for guiding his disciples’ steps and movements. Though Manoharan had suggested that he slow down the recitation, asans have their own pace of doing such things. Even the small children were stepping up to that tempo. Eventually, asan separated Manoharan from other disciples and let him set his own pace. After about six months, Manoharan made an announcement that shocked asan—he was going to start his own kalari in Perumpadi. Asan asked him, ‘Eda, do you know all the movements?’

‘Oh yeah, I learnt before joining here.’

‘Let’s hear a couple of vocal syllables of the move sequences.’ ‘Eyy, gurukkal, what do you need all these vocal syllables for?

Feet forward, feet back, bend, twist, turn   isn’t it enough to say

these? I know enough.’

‘You little prick, upon all the gods of kalari, I shall not allow you to start the kalari.’ The gurukkal was adamant.

‘Gurukkal, for Perumpadi even I am too good. Shouldn’t they all learn kalari? Shouldn’t I earn my livelihood?’

Considering that any further conversation would be possible only if he lowered his own station as a gurukkal, he said nothing further.

Since Whirlwind was the owner, there was no cutting corners. The ground was excavated and sunk by four feet; the kalari training arena was laid out as per the traditional dimensions of forty-two feet by twenty-one feet; one-and-a-half-feet high mud walls bordering the kalari were built and on that, using bamboos and coconut thatches, the superstructure six-feet high; and in the south-west corner, a seven-level poothara, a platform for the kalari deities.

A few knives, swords, ottas,* and canes were procured and placed on the poothara. These arrangements left Whirlwind’s detractors in awe, and in spite of themselves they started to call him gurukkal. The kalari normally starts during the monsoon season. However, the location being Perumpadi and the gurukkal being Manoharan, it started in April. He managed to enrol about fifteen children as disciples.

With the opening of the kalari, Prasannan started to stock gingelly oil—until then it had no demand—in large quantities. He started to offer ready credit to Manoharan gurukkal. Receiving unwonted respect, gurukkal became a regular at Prasannan’s shop.

Two months after the inauguration of the kalari, a man came to Prasannan’s shop claiming he could stick together anything that was splintered. He was carrying a glue in a spiral, wound up like aluminium wire.

When Prasannan dismissed him with ‘Sticking, my ass, as if there is nothing else to do, scram,’ Manoharan, seated on the plank drinking tea, was immediately interested in the new gimmick and said, ‘Don’t go without showing how you stick things together,’ and made the glue-man sit beside him.

That made Prasannan recall the broken cooking pot lying behind the shop. Happy that at least one loss could be redeemed, he offered, ‘I’ll give a pot to be glued.’ He went to the rear of the shop and lifted the pot. The sight of something wrapped in the torn pall shocked him. Without showing any alarm, he took the bundle, shoved it between the banana plant stem and leaf stalk, and handed over the pot to the glue-man. By that time, using charcoal, the glue man had started an ersatz furnace in a small biscuit tin.

He ground the broken edges and made them smooth and even. Using the rod heated in the ersatz furnace, he applied the aluminium coloured glue on the broken edges and stuck them together. After that, he poured water into the pot; there were no leaks, not even seepage. The man instructed them that the pot should be used on the stove only after three hours. Prasannan paid Rs 25 for a sliver of the glue—the size of a matchstick—planning to use it in future.

After five hours, Radhamani boiled water in that pot to make fish curry. As she added Malabar tamarind and stirred the pot, it started to leak like an incontinent elder onto the stove.

When the fire in the stove was extinguished, Prasannan suddenly recalled the bundle he had found under the pot. He felt no animus towards the glue-man; nor did he believe he had been duped. All he could think was that the black magic was so malevolent that not even a breach in his pot could be repaired.

The next day, Radhamani got a low-grade fever. Before taking Radhamani to the doctor, Prasannan chose to go to a karmi* in Manathana. As he struggled to undo the knots, the karmi said, ‘This is no tyro, it’s done by an expert.’

When he opened and read the palmyra leaves, he understood it was a horoscope. However, the text added by Pittankanishan foxed him. Nevertheless, in order to vindicate his previous opinion, he said, ‘It’s a malefic thing done by including a rakshass’s† horoscope in it. Remedying it will not be easy. But we are lucky that it is not impossible.’

‘Are you able to divine who did it?’

‘They don’t belong to your place. Your enemies are from outside.’

‘Could be true. I don’t have many enemies in our place.

Whatever it maybe, please get rid of the jinx.’

On the prescribed date, for hours after midnight, all the rituals and poojas were conducted. Gritting his teeth, Prasannan had loosened his purse strings.

‘You have nothing to fear any more. Not only have I nullified it, I have built a fence of protection that none can breach,’ the karmi said with overweening self-confidence.

The next day, Prasannan observed all his customers closely; apparently, the tale of the midnight exorcism rituals had not reached them. If it had, there would have been searching questions. However, after he had swept the teashop, he was stunned by a question asked and statement made by Whirlwind, who had come in for a morning tea, ‘Prasanetta, has Radhamani chechi’s fever subsided? Be careful, she could have AIDS. We don’t know what diseases people bring into the shop. She interacts with them closely, doesn’t she?’

Whirlwind had no idea what AIDS was. He thought that it spread like common cold. However, since everyone else present there knew what it was and how it was transmitted, they laughed.

‘Your mother has AIDS.’

Prasannan had regained his confidence from the knowledge that the jinx had been neutralized. That courage made him unleash a roundhouse slap on Manoharan’s face, forgetting for the nonce that he was a kalari gurukkal. Mortified, Manoharan turned and ran into the kalari.

Getting into the lotus position with much difficulty, he sat in front of the poothura for a while, pondering which weapon to use on Prasannan. Finally, he decided that it had to be the otta—not because he was an expert user, but because none of the Perumpadi residents had seen it used before. In order to give them a taste of this weapon shaped like an elephant tusk, he took it up in his hand.

As Prasannan watched Whirlwind run towards him twirling the otta overhead furiously, he felt scared. To temper his fear, he stepped out of the shop and took up a large stone. That sight scared Manoharan too.

Manoharan thought it prudent to remind him the rules of engagement, ‘Prasannetta, you should not fling stones at someone wielding the otta. You may take up an otta yourself.’ However, since Prasannan had not been trained in kalari, he was not bound by such rules.

‘Run, …, I will break your single tusk with this stone,’ said Prasannan, and aimed the stone at Manoharan’s knees. Although Manoharan tried to stop it with the otta, it did hit his leg. Manoharan did not pause for further reflection; he flung the otta towards Prasannan’s head. It hit his right leg, instead.

With the words ‘Prasannetta, didn’t I warn you not to fling stones at an otta-expert?’ Manoharan walked back to the kalari.

Prasannan, whose femur had a complete, transverse fracture, was taken to the hospital by the people who had gathered there by then. After putting the leg in the cast, the doctor informed him that he would not be able to walk for three months.

‘President, he slapped me and also flung a stone at me. Yet I did nothing. However, as a weapon with integrity, the otta did find its target. Hadn’t I warned him enough not to tangle with the otta?’ At Reformation House, standing in front of Jeremias, Manoharan mounted a spirited defence.

Nevertheless, Jeremias decreed that since Manoharan had ignited the fight by slandering Prasannan’s wife and Prasannan’s hospital expenses had stacked up to a princely sum, he should pay Prasannan some compensation. Prasannan not only rejected Manoharan’s appeal for a remission in the compensation—in consideration of his readiness to massage Prasannan’s leg, after the cast was removed, with the kalari’s traditional liniment for such injuries—but also demanded that the outstanding dues, towards teas consumed by him, be settled forthwith.

Normally, when he saw that both parties were digging in their heels or that circumstances could not be ameliorated through dialogues, Jeremias quickly wound up the mediation talks.

The Manoharan-Prasannan dispute was one such. When he was trying to think of a way to end it, Puliyelil Clara reached Reformation House. Jeremias named a figure as compensation that was mutually acceptable to the parties, asked Prasannan to give Manoharan sufficient time to pay him, and brought down the curtain on the issue.

After drinking the tea and eating the jackfruit fries that Kathrina had served, Clara presented her problem.

‘You are aware, President, that my son Robin was working in a gold jewellery shop in Kannur.’

‘Oh yeah, you said that he was paid well and all that.’

‘True, he was paid well. They cared for him too; he was well regarded. He was managing everything in the shop. They are some kind of brahmins, yet, he was invited to every function at their home. I too have been to their house a couple of times. His boss has two daughters. He has fallen in love with the older one, a college student. I swear upon the Holy Mother, I had no inkling of this. I wouldn’t allow him to marry from another religion. What to say, president, last Saturday night he turned up with that girl in tow. I asked him what kind of idiotic act he had done and scolded him harshly.

‘The girl then started to cry saying she can’t live without him. To be honest, when I saw her cry like that, I too felt bad. So, I decided to let them stay with me that night. Robin said they would sleep together. I put my foot down. After she had been baptised and they were married they could sleep together or wake up together or whatever. President, shouldn’t we abide by the Church’s dictates? The same night, I went up the valley and made the girl stay in my sister’s home there.

‘The next morning, I found her father and relatives standing in my front yard. I started to tremble with fear. My son was also nervous. However, her father only asked him where his daughter was, and nothing else. I went and fetched the girl. The moment she saw her father, she started to weep. After asking her not to cry, her father spoke to us. Everyone already knew she had eloped. She was not going to find another alliance. They were agreeable to them getting married. I said, it’s true that we are surviving because of his salary. However, that doesn’t mean I am going to let him marry out of religion. She has to accept all our sacraments and get married in the church. He said all conditions were acceptable. It’s the first wedding in the family, he said, and that they wanted it conducted with pomp in a wedding hall. And the mangalasutra ceremony could be in some nearby church. I agreed to all that.

‘Then they said, there should be some assurance from our side. At least rings should be exchanged, then and there. We had no stock of rings at home, I said. They said that was of no matter, they’d brought the rings, and that could be deducted from the dowry. A solid ring, at least one-and-a-half sovereigns, she slipped onto Robin’s finger. He slipped another one on to her finger too. After fixing a tentative date for the wedding, they went away, taking her with them. Yesterday, Monday, when Robin went for work, the manager said he should meet the owner first. He says when he met the owner, he was not the same person he was on Sunday. The man abused him roundly and threatened that if showed up again, he would file a complaint that he had stolen the ring. He’s back home and in tears. What should I do, president?’

Jeremias kept looking at Clara as he turned things over in his mind. He then spoke, while pondering over the loss Robin had suffered.

‘Clara, every man is fated to get a particular woman. That’s whom he’ll get. Now you think about it. If this marriage had happened, what would have been your state? Would she have been a help to you? Do you think she would have stayed in this place, especially in your home? Whatever you might say, whether you consider our faith, economic status, domestic circumstances, place, or culture, only alliances that are suitable for us will sustain. If you can get Robin to meet me, I shall try to talk to him. Money, prestige, nothing matters; compatibility is the foundation of family life. We shall find such a girl for him.’

As he was ending his words, Jeremias’s mind was filled with another thought. Robin and his son Arun were of the same age. Now he too was of marriageable age; Jeremias had not been thinking of it only because Arun was away. Kathrina was concerned; she used to voice it occasionally.

‘Son, you should take care. You care for the people here; but no one will be there for you. Ours is a truncated family. A cursed family, as your father used to say. It’s been said that it will affect seven generations. We can only pray that nothing of that sort happens. However, you need to take care of Arun. He is living alone, far away from all of us, in an alien land. He has not seen a settled, happy family life. All my prayers to God are for him to have a happy family life.’

Only when his mother used to say such things would Jeremias think of his son. Was there really the curse that his father used to talk about? If indeed it were there, would prayers alone nullify it? Living as a family unit has to be learnt from doing so. Arun never had the opportunity. He should not have been sent away for his studies. Nevertheless, Jeremias could not have insisted that Arun should spend his life in this accursed Perumpadi like his previous generations. Jeremias was aware that he himself did not have an ideal family life to exemplify for Arun’s benefit. There was no point in agonizing over it. If it was in his fate to be married, he would find a bride too, as any other young man.

While returning after discussing the case of Charapadam Monichan’s daughter, Jeremias told Velu what had occurred to him, ‘Velu, kalyanam, that is wedding, means good or happy times. But, is it really that way? What have we seen in the majority of the houses in Perumpadi—complaints, disunity, tears, laments and suffering, right? If we search for the root cause, in most cases, we end up at incompatible marriages. Did Monichanchettan really have to get his mentally disturbed daughter married?’

Mental illness ran in the Charapadam family. It made finding her a suitable alliance difficult. Monichan tried his best to get her into a convent. However, the nuns in charge rejected her candidacy when they came to know of her mental illness. At that time, a proposal came from a family in Edathotty who had recently migrated to Malabar. No one knew of their provenance. Not that the Charapadam family were keen to find out about their roots.

The wedding did go through. On the first night, the girl bit off the groom’s ear. The issue eventually reached Jeremias. During the compromise talks, Jeremias said, ‘Return the gold and the almirah that you had received as dowry and drop her back home. And file a divorce petition.’

This statement put the boy’s parish priest’s back up. ‘How can that be? Whom God has joined, let no man put asunder. You should let the girl live with you. We can send her for some divine retreat. We have now retreat centres that cure things worse than this.’

After she returned from the retreat, the next organ that she chose to chew up was dearer and more useful to the husband than his ear. When the boy’s party reached Monichan’s house, Monichan told Jeremias, ‘I shall handle this now, president. You had given him a way out, hadn’t you?’

Jeremias remained silent. Taking his silence for acquiescence, Monichan filed a case against the boy, his sister and his father, alleging sexual assault. The complaint stated that the boy had affairs with other women and had attempted to murder Monichan’s daughter so that he could marry another woman. The police arrested the whole family and bundled them into the lock-up.

On that occasion, the vicar said, ‘That is not God’s law; it’s the land’s law. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

As soon as the boy’s family was released from the jail, at the first opportunity, they sold their property in Edathotty and left for some unknown destination.

‘We call that most disastrous event of that boy’s life also kalyanam. God’s laws and man’s laws are together screwing our lives.’ Jeremias concluded the topic he had opened with Velu.

Months later, an example substantiating Jeremias’s view that marriages happen unplanned did show up in Perumpadi. Following Prasannan’s leg fracture, Suni had assumed part control of the teashop. That pleased Ranjit too. Prasannan had said he would maintain the cashbox. However, insisting that his brother-in-law should take complete rest, Suni arranged all amenities for him in the bedroom behind the teashop. Every evening he showed him the account books too.

‘He’s smart. He’ll manage everything well.’ Radhamani gave her testimonial on behalf of her brother. Suni started the practice of closing the shop on Sunday afternoons. Every Sunday, as soon as they closed the shop, Ranjit and Suni headed for the movie theatre. They would return late in the night. One Sunday, they left for the movies and were not back even the next morning. Radhamani had to open the shop and serve tea. Prasannan let out a string of invectives and, aided by a stick, limped his way to the table that served as the cash counter. In the afternoon, Suni and Ranjit arrived in a taxi. A girl was with them.

‘Aiyyo, isn’t this Appam Mary’s daughter?’ The words of a customer seated inside the shop could be heard outside.

‘Yes, it is, sonny, do you have any doubts?’ the girl turned on him.

‘A slight one. That’s now removed.’ He retreated.

‘What’s all this shouting in front of the shop?’ Leaning on the stick, as soon as Prasannan stood up with these words, the girl bowed down towards his broken leg saying, ‘Acha, bless me.’

‘You misbegotten…, what is all this?’ Prasannan directed his query at his son.

‘Father, I was suckered.’

Those few words from an overwrought Ranjit were the précis of the story that spread through Perumpadi thereafter. After the advent of Suni at the shop, uncle and son used to sleep on the same mat, and uncle used to narrate titillating stories to his nephew to put him to sleep.

Stories such as squeezing lemon juice over a woman’s private parts to check if she had sexually transmitted disease when she was his and his friends’ co-passenger on a truck on their hitchhiking trip to Bangalore; gifting a piece of jaggery to suck on and a children’s magazine to read to seduce young girls in the slums; during visits to a relative’s house in the Wayanad hills, since the neighbourhood’s only wet-grinding stone was in that home, how he took the friendly neighbourhood women who were using the grinding stone from behind, and with his rhythmic thrusts helped them grind everything to a fine paste. Inspired by those stories, Ranjit requested for an opportunity to be the character in such a story so that he could gloat among his friends. Suni said that if there was money such stories wrote themselves.

All Ranjit had to do was dip his sticky fingers in the shop’s cash-box. The rest—finding the girl, vehicle, place, everything— fell on Suni. Every Sunday their purported visits to the cinema were to create stories for Ranjit to narrate in his old age.

Suni was late in realizing that Appam Mary’s daughter, Preetha, had started earning independently. In Suni’s opinion, it was all for the good, for in the initial days her rates would be sky-high. That Sunday with her in the car, they had used the Periya Pass to enter Wayanad. At the twenty-eighth milestone, they were stopped for a police check.

‘They’re my nephew and niece. We are going to Thirunelli temple to worship.’

Preetha, seated in the rear of the car with Ranjit, did some quick thinking. She had started to hate her present life. She thought of her mother, who with no one to help her, was forced to push her too into the profession. Why should she not have a family life? To have that one needs to marry a loaded guy. In her present circumstances, that was a distant dream. This was a do-or- die situation, where the right decision could make her life.

‘Sir, that’s not true. Ranjitettan took me from my home promising to marry me. I came because he assured me this uncle seated in front too was aware of it. We are Christians, sir. I won’t be allowed into my home now.’

‘Aiyyo, I never promised to marry her, sir,’ Ranjit blurted out. ‘Then what did you promise to do, man?’ the policeman pulled open the door and demanded.

The police accompanied them to Thirunelli. The brilliant idea that there was no need to inform his folks and that later they could get rid of her by offering her some money was that of Suni. With his uncle as witness, Ranjit signed an undertaking in the police station that he would marry Preetha and take care of her. The police, on their part, gave their word to Preetha that if it did not happen, they would file charges against Ranjit for sexual harassment.

After mouthing a volley of the choicest abuses at his daughter- in-law prostrated now at his feet, Prasannan hobbled into his house. When he pondered over it at leisure, he realized no one among them was to be blamed for all that had happened. It was the black magic at its malevolent best. Who is a more powerful shaman than the one in Manathana? Or perhaps, what was happening in his family was beyond the powers of any shaman.

The next morning, Prasannan woke up at 3 a.m., as was his wont. Everyone else was asleep. Leaning on the stick, he walked around the shop that his father had started and he himself had nurtured without rest for four decades.

From an open sack, rice grains were on the verge of falling down. He rolled up the hem of the sack and turned it into a ridge to hedge in the grains. He picked up a potato that had rolled off another sack and put it back. He selected chillies that had started to rot and threw them into the bin meant for cattle feed. He closed firmly the sliding door of the almirah in which savouries were kept. He looked towards the room in which his son and his bride were sleeping. He then went out and started to walk as fast as his broken leg could carry him to a destination he himself did not know.

About the Book

Anthill centres around the people of Perumpadi, a remote village that has hidden itself from the world. Bounded by dense Kodagu forests on the south and west, and rivers on the north and east, and situated at the border between Kerala and Karnataka, Perumpadi’s very isolation attracted varied settlers from south Kerala over the years. The first settler on this land, Kunjuvarkey, was fleeing the opprobrium of getting his own daughter pregnant. Those who followed had similar shameful secrets. In a land of sinners, where no one pried into the other’s past, they were able to live and build a community without being tied down by society’s interdictions. Anthill, the exquisite translation of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi-winning novel Puttu, tells the story of a people who have tried to shed the shackles of family, religion and other restraining institutions, but eventually also struggle to conform to the needs of a cultured society. .

About the Author and Translator

Vinoy Thomas hails from Nellikkampoyil, Iritty, in north Kerala. A school teacher by profession, he is one of the most promising young writers in Malayalam. His short story collections include Ramachi, Mullaranjanam and Adiyormisiha Enna Novel. His maiden novel, Karikkottakkary (English translation soon to be published by Penguin Random House), was selected as one of the best five novels in the DC Books competition. His second novel, Puttu (Anthill), won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award for the Best Malayalam Novel of 2021. In 2019, Ramachi had won the same award for short stories. Vinoy has also authored a children’s book, Anatham Piriyatham. His short stories have been made into movies. He is also a gifted scriptwriter and has to his credit a few acclaimed movies.

Nandakumar K is a Dubai based translator.His co-translation of M. Mukundan’s  Delhi Ghadaka(Delhi: A Soliloquy) won the 2021 JCB Prize for literature. His other translations include A Thousand Cuts, the autobiography of T.J. Joseph, which won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award; The Lesbian Cow and other Stories by Indu Menon; and In the Name of the Lord, the autobiography of  Sr Lucy Kalapura. Nandakumar is the grandson of Mahakavi Vallathol Narayana Menon.

* Where kalaripayattu, Kerala’s martial arts, is taught in the traditional manner.

* A thick, curved truncheon made of wood used in kalaripayattu.

* Shaman.

† A rakshass (short for Brahmarakshass) is an evil spirit that is born when a brahmin is murdered.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Conversation

Spanning Continental Narratives

He has translated Kalidasa’s Meghaduta and Ritusamhara from Sanskrit to English and then imbibed them to create Monsoon: A Poem of Love & Longing in a similar vein. Meet the poet, Abhay K, who also juggles multiple hats of diplomat, editor and translator. He tells us how he tries to raise awareness and create bonds through poetry. He is the author of a dozen poetry books and the editor of The Book of Bihari Literature (Harper Collins India). He has received the SAARC Literature Award for 2013. His ‘Earth Anthem’ has been translated into more than 150 languages and performed by Kavita Krishnamurthy, a well-known Indian voice.

Monsoon: A Poem of Love & Longing has 150 quartrains and is split into chapters. A passionate poem that yearns and sends love through the salubrious journey of the monsoon from its point of origin, Madagascar, to Kashmir, the verses caress various fauna, among them some endangered like indri indri, sifaka and more. Spanning the oceans, lands, nature and a large part of India, it reaches his beloved with his message from Madagascar.

Is it eco-poetry? Academia might be moving towards that decision. Monsoon: A Poem of Love & Longing has been chosen by a Harvard University’s assistant professor, Sarah Dimick, for a book project on Climate and Literature. In this exclusive, Abhay K describes not only how his passion for beauty, turned him, a diplomat, into an award-winning poet and translator but his subsequent journey.

Abhay K

What made you opt to translate Kalidasa’s poetry?

It was during the Covid-19 pandemic that I read a poem by the British poet laureate, Simon Armitage, titled ‘Lockdown’ which made a reference to Meghaduta. At that time, I was posted as India’s 21st Ambassador to Madagascar and Comoros and I thought of writing a poem on the lines of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta. This is when I decided to closely read Meghaduta and in the process I got inspired to translate it. However, later, I did write a book length poem titled Monsoon which was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2021. 

Did you translate both, Meghaduta and Ritusamhara, one after another? These are both books that have been translated before. Did you draw from those? Or is it your own original transcreation of the texts?

Yes, first I translated Meghaduta and after its publication, I decided to translate Ritusamhara. There are over 100 translations of Meghaduta available, I have read some of them, but none had been translated by a poet. Therefore, I decided to translate Meghaduta myself to give it a poetic rendition in contemporary English. I had studied Sanskrit in my high school, and it came handy while translating both Meghaduta and Ritusamhara. 

Your book, Monsoon, is based on Meghduta. Can you tell us a bit about it? Is it part autobiographical?

Monsoon is inspired from both Meghaduta and Ritusamhara. It begins near Madagascar where monsoon originates and travels along its path to Reunion, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Andaman, and the Indian subcontinent. It carries a message of love and longing from Madagascar to Kashmir valley. It is purely work of imagination. 

Tell us a bit about Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara, which is supposed to be especially relevant in the current context of climate change.

I have not come across any other poet who describes the lives of diverse plants and animals in such detail and with such empathy. In Ritusamhara, Kalidasa delights us with these vivid descriptions of plants, insects and flowers in the rainy season. 

Like jade fragments, the green grass rises
spreading its blades to catch raindrops,
red Indragopaka insects perch on fresh
leaf-buds bursting forth from the Kandali plants
the earth smiles like an elegant lady
draped in nature’s colourful jewels. 2-5

Aroused by the sunrays at sunrise,
Pankaja opens up like glowing face
of a young woman, while the moon
turns pale, smile vanishes from Kumuda
like that of the young women,
after their lovers are gone far away.  3-23

The fields covered with ripened paddy
as far as eyes can see, their boundaries
full of herd of does, midlands filled with
sweet cries of graceful demoiselle cranes.
Ah! What passion they arouse in the heart!   4-8

Kalidasa’s genius lies in bringing together ecological and sensual to create sensual eco-poetry of everlasting relevance. Ritusamhara highlights this fundamental connection between seasons and sensuality. As we face the triple threat of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution owing to our ever-growing greed and culture of consumerism, we face the challenge of losing what makes us human. It is in these unprecedented times, reading and re-reading Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara becomes essential.

True. Closer to our times Tagore also has written of the trends of which you speak. But there is a controversy about the authorship of Ritusamhara— it is supposed to have been written earlier. What is your opinion?

It is an early work of Kalidasa. There are many words from Ritusamhara that are used in Meghaduta. 

What were the challenges you faced translating Kalidasa’s poetry, especially in mapping the gaps created by the time span that has passed and their culture and ethos to modern times.

I think Kalidasa’s works bear strong relevance to the modern times. He can easily be our contemporary eco-poet. In fact, Ritusamhara is a fine work of eco-poetry because of the sensitivity shown by Kalidasa in handling the plight of animals in scorching summer, treating rivers, mountains and clouds as personas among other things. 

You have also translated Brazilian poets? Are these contemporary voices? Did these come before Kalidasa’s translation?

I translated poems of 60 contemporary Brazilian poets and compiled them in a poetry collection named New Brazilian Poems which was published in 2018 by Ibis Libris, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. My translation of Meghaduta and Ritusamhara was published in 2022. 

Your range of translations is wide. How many languages have you translated from? What has been the impact of translating both Kalidasa and other poets from various languages on your poetry?

I have mainly translated from Magahi, Hindi, Sanskrit, Russian, Portuguese, and Nepali. Translating the work of Kalidasa and other poets has enriched my own poetry writing. Translating poets whose works I love and admire, offers me the opportunity to read their work very closely and provided rich insights which in turn inspires my own poetic works. 

How as a diplomat did you get into poetry? Or has this been a passion?

I started writing poetry in Moscow where I started my career as a diplomat. It was the beauty and grandeur of Moscow that turned me into a poet. 

You are a polyglot. What made you pick up this many languages? Do you read poetry in all of them? You have already translated from Portuguese and Sanskrit. Do you want to translate from all these languages? What makes you pick a book for translation?

As a diplomat, I get posted to a new continent every three years and I have to pick up the local language to communicate more effectively. I try to translate from as many languages as possible as it helps in building literary bridges across continents. I translate books I truly love and admire. 

Do you have any more translations or your own work in the offing? What are your future plans as a poet?

I have translated the first Magahi novel Foolbahadur and Magahi short stories, which is likely to come out in the near future.

My new love poem of 100 rhyming couplets titled Celestial, which takes one on a roller coaster ride to all the 88 constellations visible from the Earth, will be published by Mapin India in 2023. My new poetry collection, In Light of Africa, a book of light and learning and unlearning the myths and stereotypes about Africa. The narrative spans the continent of humanity’s birth through time and space—from the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to modern bustling cities…introducing you to Africa’s rich history, culture, cuisine, philosophy, monuments, personalities—and its remarkable contribution in shaping our modern world. This collection is likely to be published this year or in 2024. 

Thank you for giving us your time.

(The interview has been conducted online by emails by Mitali Chakravarty)

Click here to read an excerpt from Monsoon

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Excerpt

Poetry of Love & Longing by Abhay K

Title: Monsoon: A Poem of Love and Longing

Author: Abhay K

Publisher: Sahitya Akademi

1

I wake up with your thoughts

your fragrance reaching me                           1

all the way from the Himalayas

to the island of Madagascar

.

brought by monsoon

from the blessed Himalayan valley                 2

to the hills of Antananarivo[1]

on its return journey

.

I dream of you every night, the shimmering dawn

snatches my dreams but the morning breeze comes  3

whispering your name, permeating my being

with your thoughts, only your thoughts, my love

.

I’m far away in this Indian Ocean island

yearning for your touch, gazing at the Moon,         4

Venus and myriad star constellations,

hoping you’re gazing at them too

.

I wait for the monsoon to be born[2]

to send you sights, sounds and aroma                   5

of this island, redolent of vanilla, cloves,     

Ylang-ylang[3] and herbs of various kinds

.

O’ Monsoon, wave-like mass of air,

the primeval traveller from the sea                    6

to the land in summer, go to my love

in the paradisiacal Himalayan valley

.

for eons you’ve ferried traders across the Indian Ocean,

guided the legendary Sinbad and Vasco da Gama    7

and brought wealth and joy to millions,

your absence, alas, brings famine and death

.

the bounty of Indra[4] offered through rains

at times just a spell of scattered showers,       8

at times unceasing torrents for days at a stretch

whetting passion of lovers with your thunder-drums

.

lovesick and far away from my beloved,

I beseech you to take my message to her                9

along with amorous squeals of Vasa parrots[5],

reverberating songs of Indri Indri[6]

.

the sound of sea waves crashing on coral beaches

mating calls of the Golden Mantellas[7]              10

mellifluous chirps of the Red fody

sonorous songs of the Malagasy Coucal

.

the sight of ayes-ayes[8] conjoined blissfully

at midnight in Masoala rainforests             11

fierce fossas[9] mating boisterously at Kirindy

colourful turtles frolicking in the Emerald Sea

.

yellow comet moths swarming Ranomafana[10]

Radiated tortoises carrying galactic maps        12

Soumanga sunbirds sipping nectar

white Sifakas[11] dancing in herd

.

ring-tailed lemurs feasting on Baobab[12] flowers

Vasa parrots courting their mates                  13

painted butterflies fluttering over fresh blossoms

blooming jacarandas painting the sky purple

.

Traveller’s palms[13] stretching their arms in prayer

Baobabs meditating like ascetics turned upside down  14

Giraffe-necked red weevils[14]  necking their mates

fragrant Champa flowers—galaxies on the earth

.

colourful Mahafaly tombs[15] dotting the countryside

erotic Sakalava sculptures[16] arousing longings in mind,   15

innumerable sculpted rock-temples at Isalo[17] —

each one a homage to Lord Pashupatinath[18]

.

the rich dialect of the old Gujarati

still spoken here with great zeal,             16

O’ Monsoon, I urge you to carry these

to my love in the pristine Himalayan valley

.

as you glide over the Indian Ocean gently

caressing her curvaceous body,              17

the humpback whales will amuse you

with their mating songs

About the Book

Monsoon is a poem of love and longing that follows the path of monsoon which originates near Madagascar and traverses the Indian Ocean to reach the Himalavas and back to Madagascar. As monsoon travels, the rich sights and sounds, languages and traditions, costumes and cuisine, flora and fauna, festivals and monuments, and the beauty and splendour of the Indian Ocean islands and the Western Ghats, East and North India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet are invoked. The poem weaves the Indian Ocean Islands and the Indian Subcontinent into one poetic thread connected by monsoon, offering an umparalleled sensuous experience through strikingly fresh verses which have the immense power to transport the readers to a magical world.

About the Author

Abhay K is the author of nine postry colfections including The Magic of Madagascar (1’Harmattan Paris, 202 I), The Alphabets of Latin America (Bloomsbury India, 2020), and the editor of The Book of Bihari Literature (Harper Collins, 2022), The Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems, CAPITALS, New Brazilian Rems and The Bloomsbury Book of Great Indian Love Poems. His poems have appeared in over 100 literary journals. His “Earth Anthem” has been translated into over 150 languages. He received SAARC Literary Award 2013 and was invited to record his poems at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. in 2018. His translations of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta (Bloomsbury India, 2021) and Ritusamhara (Bloomsbury India, 2021) from Sanskrit have won KLF Poetry Book of the Year Award 2020-21.

[1] Antananarivo is the capital of Madagascar

[2] Monsoon is born in the Mascarene High near Madagascar.

[3] Ylang-ylang is a tropical tree valued for perfume extracted from its

flowers

[4] Indra is the rain god in Hindu mythology.

[5] Vasa parrots are grey-black parrots endemic to Madagascar notable for

their peculiar appearance and highly evolved mating life.

[6] Indri Indri is the largest species of surviving lemur. It is critically

endangered.

[7] Mantellas are Madagascar’s golden or multi-coloured poison frogs.

[8] Aye-aye is a long-fingered species of lemur active at night.

[9] Fossas are the largest predators endemic to Madagascar.

[10] Ranomafana is a rainforest located to the southeast of Antananarivo in

Madagascar.

[11] Sifaka is a critically endangered species of lemurs also known as the

dancing lemurs.

[12] Baobab is a deciduous tree that grows in the arid regions of Madagascar.

Out of eight species of Baobab, six are endemic to Madagascar. They live

for thousands of years and are also known as the tree of life.

[13] Native to Madagascar, the Traveller’s Palm has enormous leaves which are

fan shaped.

[14] Giraffe-necked red weevil is a bright-red-winged, long-necked rainforest

beetle that uses its extended neck to battle for a mate.

[15] The Mahafaly people of Madagascar honour their dead by creating

imposing tombs.

[16] Sakalava sculptures, usually wooden nude female and male figures, adorn

the tombs of Sakalava Chiefs.

[17] Isalo is a national park in south Madagascar known for its natural rock

massif.

[18] Pashupatinath is another name of Lord Shiva.

Click here to read Abhay K’s interview

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Review

Is Time Future Contained in Time Past?

A Book Review by Rakhi Dalal

Title: A Handful of Sesame

Author: Shrinivas Vaidya

Translator: Maithreyi Karnoor

Publisher: Gibbon Moon Books

Originally written and published in Kannada as Halla Bantu Halla by Shrinivas Vaidya, this book won the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award in 2004 and Central Sahitya Akademi Award in 2008. The author of many critically acclaimed literary collections, Vaidya is also the recipient of Karnataka Rajyotsava Award.

The English translation A Handful of Sesame by Maithreyi Karnoor was shortlisted for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Karnoor is the recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship for creative writing and translation. She has also won the Kuvempu Bhasha Bharati prize for translation.

Written with the backdrop of India’s struggle for independence, spanning a time period of almost a hundred years from the mutiny of 1857 to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, this book chronicles the life of a Hindu Brahmin family over a century in a town called Navalgund in Karnataka. It is the narrative of a family, whose seed originated in Kanpur in Northern India but which took roots in the small Southern Indian town of Navalgund during a period of political upheaval and then made it a home for generations to come. This story, as Tabish Khair notes in the foreword, thus also becomes a story of internal migration, recording the adoption and assimilation of cultural and religious practices in everyday living. More than that, it offers us a window into the socio-cultural mores of a family affected and shaped by changing times. 

Vasudevaachar is the son of Kamalanabh-panth of Kanpur who marries the daughter of a Brahmin from Navalgund and stays back during the chaotic times brought about after the suppression of 1857 mutiny. Like his father, he practiced medicine and takes on the responsibility of the entire household after Kamalanabh’s demise. The narrative deals with a detailed account of the struggles of running of the household with regular events like birth, death, marriages and so on in the big joint family with Vasudevaachar at the centre even as various occurrences like natural calamities, fight for freedom, world war and political turmoil keep altering the contours of their daily life.

Vaidya essentially creates a Brahmin household, suffusing the narrative with a rich language, idioms and slangs and vivid description of rituals, food and daily practices which are rendered in a delightful manner to the non-native reader through a fine translation by Maithreyi Karnoor. It palpitates with both rhyme and rhythm, of language and everydayness, concocting a gripping tale that captivates imagination.

The major characters that inhabit the world of A Handful of Sesame are diverse and non uni-dimensional. They evolve with the progressing narrative, forging the complex web of relationships within a large family that change as the time moves. Vaidya’s skilful portrayal brings forth the nuances in their interactions and connections which tie them as a family.  

Vasanna or Vasudevaachar, the head of the family, a religious and orthodox Brahmin is shown to be burdened by perpetual looming financial burdens of the family. Tulsakka, his wife, is a quiet yet determined woman. Ambakka, sister of Vasanna, is a shaven widow who lives with them. Impatient and irritable, she however assumes bigger role in caring for the newborns of the family. Venkanna, younger brother of Vasanna and a widower too, instead of marrying again keeps a relationship with a Muslim woman. A firm and resolute man, he shares the financial burden of his brother. Rukkuma, an orphan adopted by Panth family and belonging to a lower caste, lives as a house-help while Narayana, another orphan adopted by the family and son of a distant relative lives with them too.

As the world around them keeps changing, family dynamics change too. When English schools open up in Dharwad, the young sons of the family are sent for an education there. With opening of newer avenues for livelihood, the next generation keeps moving onto newer and bigger places, adopting new ways of life but remaining connected with their roots.  

Struggle for freedom, which remains a constant in the background, is employed to portray the rising collective consciousness across the nation which influenced the lives of ordinary people. We are offered glimpses into how the events like Salt Satyagraha or Congress meetings had an effect on the routine life of people of a small town like Navalgund.  The author also offers a peek into the larger social construct surrounding the Panth family, which though fragmented by caste and religion, lived in harmony with each other. An orthodox Brahmin like Vasanna goes to a dargah to offer sugar to ward off evil eye. In the present context, this might appear contradictory to the very definition of an orthodox, but it simply means that a rigidness in following one’s own rituals did not translate to a dislike of others’ and the minds were more open to accepting the customs believed to bring a greater good. 

Such times did exist. How wonderful it would be able to have access to more such works written in regional languages — works which open up bridges to the past of distant lands, connecting to our present, making the present improbable possible and bridging the divide; works which bring to us the account of lived lives of a people separated only by language. Perhaps this is why it becomes important that these works be made available to varied readers through translation.   

For an English reader, Maithreyi Karnoor’s perceptive translation presents a view of the ‘most underrepresented region in Kannada literature’, thereby offering us not only the linguistic nuances neglected by mainstream Kannada but also a compassionate insight into the regional life which is critical for a better understanding of the period.

Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .

.

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Interview Review

In Search of a Pitcher of Nectar by Samaresh Bose

A conversation with Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharya, the translator of Samaresh Bose’s In Search of the Pitcher of Nectar, brought out by Niyogi Books.

In 2017, the Kumbh Mela (the festival of the sacred pitcher) was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage. A Times of India report read: “The committee noted that as the largest harmonious conclave in the world, Kumbha Mela stands for values like magnanimity and patience that are very beneficial for the modern humanity. Moreover, the concept of Kumbha Mela goes well with the current international human rights tools because the festival welcomes people from all corners of the world without any differentiation.”

Five years down the line, Niyogi Books brought out a translation of Samaresh Bose’s[1] In Search of a Pitcher of Nectar, an epic travelogue translated from Bengali by Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee on the festival at the confluence of the three rivers, Ganga, Saraswati and Jamuna — in Allahabad. An eminent acknowledged writer, whose stories won not just literary acclaim like the Sahitya Akademi award but were translated to prize winning films, Bose’s solo voice stands alone in the translated version — as that of Kalkut, one of the pseudonyms he assumed.

In the early part of the book, Bose gives the reason for his journey into this crowded event which even in the middle of the pandemic (2021) had 3.5 million visitors: “Observing this great variety of humankind on the move is a thirst that is not easily quenched.” Bose’s exploration came long before the pandemic as his book was published in 1954. Then a Bengali film was made on it in 1982.

The writer claimed to have set out to look into the heart of the nation: “I would dive deep into that heart of India. I would identify my own face in this strange mirror of India. That face is my mind. My religion.” And he discovers, “the poor India was there like a faded cloth by the side of a muslin chunni.” While peeling layers of poverty and ‘respectability’, he introduces us to a bevy of characters which include not just Godmen, but also women, who evolved from wifehood to prostitution to godwomen, to young girls forced to marry polygamous octogenarians, to people in quest of lost family members, to men in search of the intangible — and all united together for a dip in the holy ‘sangam[2]’ of three rivers, the ultimate panacea for all ailments and ills for believers. That the author is not part of the believing crowds, but a sympathetic, humane commentator is obvious from his conversations with various people and his actions, which defy boundaries drawn by the respectable god minding devotees thronging the festival. He uses the event to pinpoint the flaws of socially accepted norms and to find compassion for the less fortunate. He laces his narrative with love and compassion for humanity.

The title itself both in Bengali and English conveys the quest for nectar or the divine amrita of immortality which led to a festival that washes away sins with a dip at the confluence. Legend has it that the gods and the rakshasas worked together to draw out the ambrosial drink at this sangam and then, the gods cheated and consumed all of it, judging the other party as too evil to be handed eternal life in a cup. The unbreachable walls had started and perhaps continue even to this date.

The real origin of the festival as Bose contended remains disputed like that of many other cultural lores, though people do continue to quest for miracles in the waters that were supposed to have thrown up the ambrosia. The narrative implies the educated and schooled rarely participated in this event. There is a mention of the prime minister at the festival, but that would be as a dignitary, and not as part of the crowd.

The crowd in its urgency to take a dip at the holy hour, results in a stampede and many deaths. It is a sad and philosophical ending which clearly takes us back to the questions raised at the start of the narrative. “If lakhs of people are blinded by faith, then why not search for the reason? What is that celestial blinker which can blind lakhs of eyes?”

While questioning faith, the narrative exposes the gaps in society with compassion — even between the educated and uneducated that has become a severe point of contention as more fissures into society and creating more boundaries. At the end of the book, one wonders have things really changed from the 1950s when Bose wrote the book to the current experience where the UNESCO, a modern-day construct and belief, has dubbed this festival as a juncture where all humanity congregates? Do they?  To enlighten us on this issue, we conversed with the eminent translator of this powerful book, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee.

Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee

What led you to translate Samaresh Bose’s In Search of a Pitcher of Nectar?

Samaresh Bose was a celebrated novelist. Social content of his novels can never be over-emphasized. But when he started writing travelogues under the pseudo -name Kalkut, he invented a new creative trajectory. Amrita Kumbher Sandhaney, Kothay Pabo Tarey [4]are all classics in Bengali literature. I have been reading and rereading Amrita Kumbher Sandhaney for decades and always felt it should be presented on a national and international platform. Hence, when time and opportunity arose, I took up the translation work and the result in In Search of the Pitcher of Nectar.

There was a Bengali film (Amrita Kumbher Sandhaney, 1982) made with the story of this book. Did you use this as a resource too for your translation? What do you think of the film? Did it capture the book well?

Yes, I have watched the film when it was released. I don’t remember the details now, but the impression remains that it was a reasonably well-made film. But I don’t think it has acted as a resource for my translation work. On the contrary whenever I tried to think of Shyama, the sophisticated face of Aparna Sen[5] would appear in my vision.

In 2017, UN declared the Kumbh-mela as an intangible cultural heritage. And yet, here Samaresh Bose mentioned a stampede within the Mela that killed many people. Do you think things have changed since he wrote this travelogue?

Definitely. Now, the Kumbh-mela is an extremely well-organised event. The way in which the administration handles the flow of lakhs of people is something to be seen to be believed. Even Harvard University researchers had undertaken a study to analyse how an ephemeral city comes up with all the civic, municipal and medical facilities for a temporary period of time. The stampede that Bose mentions are things of the past.

Have you ever been to a Kumbh-mela? Is it as he describes?

Yes, once; obviously inspired by the reading of the book. It was in early 70’s. I found it tallying with Bose’s description to a large extent. It was a lifetime experience for me, because I also went with an open mind, an agnostic as I am.

What in this book strikes you the most?

Two things struck me most in the book. One, unlike all other visitors, Bose’s was not a pilgrimage. He did not even take a dip at any of the auspicious dates and moments. He was in quest of understanding man’s urge for piety. It was as if an atheist’s search for the godhead. Secondly, the technique of writing was a unique blend of travelogue and fiction. His character sketches are something unparalleled in the history of travel writing anywhere in the world. I hope I am entitled to give this opinion, having a modest exposure to the world literature.

You are a felicitated translator. When you translate from Bengali to English, what strikes you as the biggest hurdle? And how do you get over it?

The biggest hurdle in translating from Bengali into English is the problem of culture specific transfer. Here one is not translating from an Indian language into another. Here translation is not just linguistic transfer, but culture transfer also. One has to be very careful where to valorise the source language and where to make some sacrifice for attaining compatibility to the idiom of the target language. I guess I have learnt to strike a balance between the two.

You have translated the Bengali portions fully in this book but not always the Sanskrit or Hindi? Why not?

The Sanskrit and Hindi portions in the text are very well-known quotes from Tulsidas and other celebrated poets. I thought they would communicate even without translation. More importantly, they are all in rhymed couplet or quartet. If the end rhyming is done away with, their linguistic impact will drastically reduce. And maintaining a semblance of rhyming in English was beyond me. So, I left them as they were. The case of the Bengali quotes is totally different. There I could confidently take some liberty and attain the desired impact.

Do you think a translation is better if it is closer to the text or if it captures the spirit of the piece and conveys it to the readers, though it departs from the text as in Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat?

It depends on the motive of the translator. Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak in her celebrated essay ‘Politics of Translation’ suggested that we should approach the text with love and empathy. If that is achieved, the translator remains as close to the text as possible; and yet he/she can take occasional liberty to capture the spirit of the original. But if the motive is to sanitise the text to cater to a particular reading community, as Tagore wrongly did or civilise the text from the point of view of master-slave attitude, as Fitzgerald did, then it is wrong. We now know how much of Tagore or Khayyam is lost in these English versions.

You have translated major writers from Bengal like Mahasweta Devi, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay and Samaresh Bose. Which has been your favourite author to translate and why?

Well, all the authors I translated so far are my favourite authors. I can not translate unless it is so. I greatly enjoy Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s young adult stories, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s romantic novels, Samaresh Bose’s dexterity in narration and characterisation, Mahasweta Devi’s socially conscious works. I have translated two novels of Tagore also for their universal appeal and extremely thought-provoking themes.

After translating this many novels, are you planning one of your own?

Oh no, I am not a creative person. I hopelessly lack imagination.

Do you have any advice for upcoming translators?

Well, I don’t feel entitled to give advice to anyone, I can only say that a wannabe translator should live with a book for some time before venturing into translation. You should not take up any translation work unless the book resonates with you or speaks to you, so to say.

Thank you for bringing the book to non-Bengali readers and also your time.

[1] Also known as Samaresh Basu (1924 to 1988)

[2] Confluence

[3] Translates to ‘ On the Golden Peak’, part of Kalkut Rachna Samagra (Kalkut’s collected writings), published in 1957 and made into a Bengali film in 1970

[4] Translates to ‘Where will I find Him?’, published as a part of his collected writings in 1957

[5] Aparna Sen, the legendary actress from Bengal, acted as a character in this film

(The book has been reviewed and the interview conducted online by emails by Mitali Chakravarty)

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Categories
Stories

Mercy

P.F.Mathews

Story by P. F. Mathews, translated from Malayalam by Ram Anantharaman

An appooppan thaadi[1] slowly swaying and dancing along in the wind, drifting gently up and down, entered the bedroom through the window and landed on the waterbed, and is lying flat and squeezed over there, as if it were trying to tell ‘I’m overfatigued’. Actually, it should not be called appooppan thaadi, it should be ammoomma thaadi[2] instead. The white chatta and mundu[3] worn in the ancient Syrian Christian style with fanfold pleats at the back and madisheela[4] at the front remained as is, without even getting wrinkled a bit. As the mekka mothiram[5] had been removed, the large holes in the ears have begun to close. Esther combed and tied the silver hair that lay spread over the pure white pillow. Now she has to bathe by softly wiping the entire body with scented cloth. When the younger son from Canada comes on video call at half past eleven, the ninety-two-year-old grandma has to appear as pretty as Our Lady of Lourdes. Neighbours and the parish people used to call her ‘pretty grandma’ always. Everything around grandma was beautiful and fragrant. Those days, at the end of qurbana, as she rose up from her seat wearing chatta and mundu and a scarf pinned with a butterfly-like brooch and walked towards altar to receive the sacramental bread, the entire church used to swoon over the fragrance of Eau de Cologne. Grandma retained that sense of beauty in every aspect even after getting bed ridden, until her speech was lost.

Grandma used to always celebrate her birthdays by preparing and serving payasam[6]. However, her ninety second birthday passed by without having even a speck of sugar. It was an order from Canada. That innocent son from Canada was afraid that the thought of how old she has become might blow away the ammoomma thaadi to death. Martha Mariam, the grandma, has been bedridden for six years; her tongue stopped functioning six months ago. Even her memory might have failed. The rest of her children and grandchildren who visited once in a while to please her younger son, after entering her room and closing the door, would recollect her lapses and flaws of olden times and deride her. During such occasions, Esther who had been employed to take care of grandma, would not have eyes, ears and tongue. Nevertheless, while listening to the cruel words those wicked gang spoke, she would tell herself: My dear Holy Mother, please open grandma’s ears just for a while so that she could hear all the filth these people are saying.

“What for, my dear?” Mother would ask.

“So that when ammoomma returns to life, she could take revenge on each and every one of them…”

“Oh… why my dear… my son wouldn’t like that…”

“Oh… so all these are games you mother and your son Jesus purposely play, is it? From now on I will never go to the novena church, nor would I light candles…” When Esther expresses her displeasure, Holy mother would smile mischievously. Esther would be reading it from grandma’s face.

When no relatives are there, there was no problem. It will be only grandma and Esther in the room. Even though it is a little village, expensive imported flowers which are meant to adorn huge apartments and offices in the nearby town would arrive every day. As soon as they reach, the old flowers with wilted petals would be removed from the vase and fresh new flowers as soft as babies’ cheeks would be placed there. When the son comes on video call at half past eleven, he has to see them first. Once, when he saw wilted petals around the vase on the table and the floor, he simply disconnected the call! That’s how he showed his anger. One day when Esther woke up in the morning and came in, she saw a withered petal on the white sheet covering grandma’s waterbed, lying near her feet. As she took it wondering how the petal from the flower vase kept on the table near grandma’s head came over here, a numbness spread through her fingers. It was not a petal from the flowers. It was a finger that had dropped off from grandma’s foot! It was her first experience in all these years of care giving. First, she thought of burying it somewhere in the thicket before any relatives or neighbours come. But when she remembered the video call at half past eleven, she realised it would be a big mistake. Then she decided to inform the old doctor from the church hospital who visits and does special check-ups.

“No need to ask or tell anyone… just bury it somewhere in the compound.” Doctor’s reply reminded her of some mischievous children talking. The remaining fingers also would wither away like this. Do the same every time. When she said that Doctor himself should take up the responsibility to explain it to the Canada son, he agreed with a gentle snicker. But Esther felt sad when she thought that she would have to watch the remaining fingers falling off one after the other. Poor grandma… she can’t imagine even one moment that is not beautiful… how will she ever bear this?

She remembered the grandma of eight or nine months ago.

“Esther… even if you don’t care for me, you should look after the man on the other room… OK?”

“Appaappan is fine ammachi… why are you getting worried?”

“Who said he is fine…? He has a lot of problems… as soon as Jerrymon’s attention shifts a little he goes out of the house itself… isn’t that a bigger problem? Jerrymon has no free time at all after his kitchen work…”

Grandma would get very excited while talking about appaappan.

Seven or eight years ago, one of grandma’s front row teeth fell. She was very sad. The tooth had no damage at all. Afterwards she always kept her lips tightly sealed because she was hesitant to show her smile with a hole. She felt that her smile-less face is as good as being dead.

“Nowadays it is possible to fix a good tooth easily, that is why I told him that I want a new tooth… do you know what appaappan said then…?”

After remaining silent for a while, looking at Esther and changing her voice to that of the Fathers in the church, grandma said: “it’s already four o’clock Maria… it will become dark very soon…”

Esther was surprised to hear that: “Appaappan should have been a poet, isn’t it ammaamma?”

“Oh… nowadays if someone is not watching, the poet is busy climbing on top of the building and trees like mischievous kids…”

As she was certain that Esther would not say anything, a sentence descended from grandma’s tongue as if she had thought about it a lot and byhearted: “Once memories are lost, it is better to die… isn’t it dear?”

Don’t say such things… that was how she should have responded… but it was not possible to lie to grandma. Grandma wouldn’t like it at all. That day grandma was silent for a long time. Then she said: “In other countries, there are laws to kill someone who is suffering… isn’t it so?”

Esther didn’t say anything, and she cleverly walked out of the room. Grandma also did not talk for the next four or five days. She wondered what grandma would be thinking and felt sad for the next six days. Would grandma also have started to forget things? But Esther was wrong. On the seventh day, after her eldest daughter’s mischievous daughter who was studying in the twelfth grade came and went. Grandma gave a paper to Esther with a smile and asked her to read it. Grandma watched Esther reading through it silently. It was an agreement which said that when she, named Martha Mariam, got to a stage of extreme pain and suffering but not dying, someone could end her life on her behalf. Her thumb impression along with her signature verified the document.

“What have you done ammoomma… wouldn’t that girl go around singing this to everyone?”

“Not at all. I have promised to give her my gold ring with emerald embedded in it… Even though she is impish, she is greedy for gold, isn’t it so?”

“Whatever it is, this is not right.” Esther was actually a bit sad and she didn’t try to hide her tears.

“Edi penne[7]… even if I die your income would not be stopped… I would make all arrangements for that… and you will get additional remuneration for finishing me off…”

Esther was terribly angry, and all the bad words she had learnt from childhood days came rushing to her tongue. Moving aside all those bad words, Esther said: “Look old lady, I don’t want any damn thing from you. Esther knows how to work hard and earn well. I cannot be your executioner. You can tell your eldest daughter and granddaughter… I am leaving now.”

She uttered those words in a single breath. Having said, she wanted to adhere to her threat. Esther sent a four-line message to the children, packed her belongings and went home. On the fourth day, three of the children came in a car to her home. The Canadian kept on calling. After Esther’s leaving, grandma hadn’t have had anything to eat or drink, she had even stopped talking. Her eldest granddaughter who had been the cause of everything voluntarily confessed her mistake. Thus, after a brief interval, Esther once again came back to grandma. On seeing her, even though the pretty grandma who was lying without much fragrance smiled once, Esther felt that the smile didn’t have soul in it. It was from that day grandma’s tongue slowly started to stop functioning. She would always be lying in a half-asleep state without responding to whatever Esther would say. She wasn’t certain whether grandma was pretending. As days passed, it became a habit for grandma. Her days and nights became devoid of sounds. Earlier, she used to listen to old songs with a smile, but now, even when playing one of her favourite songs she would start frowning. Gradually, her hands also stopped moving, like her tongue. It became impossible to even know whether she had any pain. It was then one day appaappan slipped down from the steps on the veranda and passed away. The fall wasn’t that serious. It was as if for everything else, there had to be a reason for saying goodbye also, that’s all.

“Amma should never ever know about appan passing away…” voice message from Canada arrived to the siblings and Esther.

How can that be possible… they lived together for almost seventy years… how can we not let her even take one last look… before such thoughts could even reach their tongues, all of them wiped it away from the mind itself. Esther didn’t step out of grandma’s room until the funeral was over in the evening. They carefully kept all the wailings of the dead house outside the shut door. However, the scent of frankincense kept spreading across all rooms. In the evening, before the prayers and songs of the priests from the church who came for the funeral function went well out of their control, the elder daughter had sealed her mother’s ears with cotton rolls so that she wouldn’t be able to hear anything. After seeing appaappan off, when the children gathered in the family room and sat around sipping black coffee and chatting, there was a power outage. Apart from that, everything went well.

When Esther came into grandma’s room with a lighted candle to keep the darkness away, she saw something strange that surprised her. Tears had been flowing like streams from both the eyes of grandma who was until then lying like a dead piece of wood. Seeing that Esther became sad beyond words, and she felt a hot burning sensation in-between her neck and chest.

Realising that there was no other way to escape that feeling, she also sat near grandma and cried for some time. Esther considered it as her major lapse that she was unable to recognise grandma being aware of everything even though she was lying like dead body with all her organs shut. They didn’t sleep that night. For the next two weeks too, Esther wouldn’t sleep. As she closed her eyes, pretty grandma would appear in front of her and accusingly point finger at her. She would wake up from the half-sleep with a shudder and gently massage grandma’s twig-like legs with wilting fingers. Then she would sit like that until dawn breaks. She felt as though she did not show mercy to grandma, and moreover what she did was a severe injustice towards her.  

Two months after grandpa’s passing away, Esther video-called Canada and showed grandma’s wilting fingers, wax filled ears, abnormally open nose and throbbing veins on the forehead and said: “Looks like there is not much time left now… it would be better if you start today itself.”

The Canadian doesn’t question Esther who knows everything about grandma. He started the next day itself. The other children and grandchildren had already reached by the time he arrived. Without any dramatic incidents necessitating special descriptions, just like a ripened leaf slowly detaches itself in a gentle breeze, grandma passed away. Within hours, she was laid to rest in the same grave where grandpa was buried. There was no need to keep her body in an ice box. Soon after returning from the cemetery, when Esther collected her belongings and started to leave, though the residents magnanimously tried to stop her, she didn’t yield to their requests. The mischievous doctor from the church hospital also took her side. The doctor told them that he would drop her at the railway station in his car.

Even though the doctor was aged above sixty years, he was funny. On the way he stopped the car by the river side and told that he wanted to have a smoke.

Seeing him lighting a cigarette and exhaling the smoke Esther told: “Doctor, you are smoking like kids who have just been initiated into smoking.”

“Then show me how adults smoke…” said Doctor and offered her a cigarette. Looking at her lighting it and exhaling the smoke in a beautiful manner, Doctor laughed. After finishing the cigarette, Doctor asked her where she had kept grandma’s letter. She took it out from her bag and handed it over to him. Doctor read it one more time and lit it with a match. From that paper containing grandma’s signature and fingerprint, smoke as delicate as her soul emerged and drifted in the wind, and began to float up like an appooppan thaadi.

“Why did you burn it? I had kept it for my remembrance.”

“No need… it is better to abandon some remembrances at the same place where they originate…” Doctor threw the burnt sheet of paper into the river. It soaked and dissolved in the water and disappeared.

“Let’s go…” Doctor said. Esther nodded her head.

[1] grandfather’s beard or Indian milkweed

[2] grandmother’s beard

[3] traditional attire worn by the Syrian Christian women of Kerala

[4] waist pouch

[5] a long hoop that is normally worn on the ears by elderly Christian women

[6] classic south Indian sweet dish

[7] Hey girl

P. F. Mathews is an Indian author who writes in the Malayalam language. He is a recipient of multiple literary awards including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and a National Film Award for Best Screenplay.

Ram Anantharaman is an engineer by profession. He has done translations from English to Malayalam and Malayalam to English.

Categories
Editorial

When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall…

                     “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
                      Think not of them, thou hast thy music too…”

                                 — John Keats (1795-1851), To Autumn
Art by Sybil Pretious

For long writers have associated autumn with “mellow wistfulness”. That loss of spring, or loss of youth is not bleak or regretful has been captured not just by Keats but also been borne out by historical facts. Anthropocene existence only get better as the human race evolves … If we view our world as moving towards an autumn, we perhaps, as Keats suggests, need to find the new “music” for it. A music that is ripe and matures with the passage of time to the point that it moves more towards perfection. Though sometimes lives fade away after autumn gives way to winter as did those of  Queen Elizabeth II (April 21st 1926 – September 8th 2022) after a reign of seventy historic years and Mikhail Gorbachev (2nd March 1931 – 30thAugust 2022) with his admirable efforts to bridge divides. Both of them have left footprints that could be eternalised if voices echo in harmony. Thoughts which create bonds never die – they live on in your hearts and mine.

Imagine… ten thousand years ago, were we better off? Recorded history shows that the first war had already been fought 13,000 years ago. And they have continued to rage – but, at least, unlike the indomitable Gauls in Asterix[1] comics – not all jumped into the fray. They did during the last World Wars — which also led to attempts towards institutionalising humanitarian concerns and non-alignment. Yes, we have not had a perfect world as yet but as we age, the earth matures and we will, hopefully, move towards better times as we evolve. Climate change had happened earlier too. At a point, Sahara was green. Continental shifts split Pangaea  into seven continents – that was even earlier. That might have driven the dinosaurs to extinction. But I am sure mankind will find a way out of the terror of climate change and wars over a period of time, as long as we believe in deciphering the sounds of autumn as did Keats in his poem.

Tagore had also sung of the joys of autumn which happens to be a time for festivities. Professor Fakrul Alam has translated three such songs, reflecting the  joie de vivre of the season, The translation of a small poem, Eshecche Sarat[2], brings the beauty of the season in Bengal to the fore. We have a celebration of youth and romance in a Balochi folksong, an anti-thesis to autumn and aging, translated for us by Fazal Baloch and also, poetic prose in quest of God and justice by Haneef Sharif, translated from Balochi by Mashreen Hameed. Lost romance recapitulated makes interesting poetry is borne out by Ihlwha Choi’s translation of his own poem from Korean. But the topping in our translation section is a story called ‘Nagmati[3]’ by eminent Bengali writer, Prafulla Roy, translated by no less than a Sahitya Akademi winning translator – Aruna Chakravarti. This story illustrates how terrifying youthful follies can lead to the end of many young lives, a powerful narrative about the snake worshipping community of Bedeynis that highlights destruction due to youthful lusts and an inability to accept diverse cultures.  

When this cultural acceptance becomes a part of our being, it creates bonds which transcend manmade borders as did the films of Satyajit Ray. His mingling was so effective that his work made it to the zenith of an international cinematic scenario so much so that Audrey Hepburn, while receiving the Oscar on his behalf, said: “Dear Satyajit Ray. I am proud and privileged to have been allowed to represent our industry in paying tribute to you as an artist and as a man. For everything you represent I send you my gratitude and love.”

This and more has been revealed to us in a book, Satyajit Ray: The Man Who Knew Too Much, authored by a protagonist from Ray’s film, Barun Chanda. This book brought out by Om Books International reflects not just Ray as a person but also how he knitted the world together with his films and took the Indian film industry to an international level. Barun Chanda has been interviewed with a focus on Satyajit Ray. Keith Lyons has also interviewed a man who has defied all norms and, in the autumn of his life, continues his journey while weaving together cultures across, China, India and Thailand by his ethnographic studies on tribes, Jim Goodman. Goodman says he left America when speaking for a war-free world became a cause for censorship. This makes one wonder if war is a game played for supporting a small minority of people who rule the roost?  Or are these ramblings of a Coleridge writing ‘Kubla Khan’ under the influence of narcotics?

Poetry also brings the season into our pages with an autumnal interpretation of life from Michael Burch. More poetry from Sunil Sharma, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Gayatri Majumdar, George Freek, Ron Pickett, Sutputra Radheye, Marianne Tefft brings a wide range of concerns to our pages – from climate to the vagaries of human nature. Poetry by an Albanian writer, Irma Kurti, and photographs by her Italian spouse, Biagio Fortini, blend together the colours of humanity. Rhys Hughes as usual, makes it to the realm of absurd – perhaps voicing much in his poetry, especially about the environment and human nature, though he talks of woodpeckers on Noah’s ark (were there any?) and of cows, yetis, monkeys and cakes… He has also given us a hilarious cat narrative for his column. Can that be called magic realism too? Or are the edges too abstract?

A book excerpt from Hughes’ Comfy Rascals Short Fiction and a review of it by Rakhi Dalal makes us wonder with the reviewer if he is a fan of Kafka or Baudelaire and is his creation a tongue-in-cheek comment on conventions? A book review by Hema Ravi of Mrutyunjay Sarangi’s A Train to Kolkata and Other Stories and another by Bhaskar Parichha of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s Life, Struggle and Politics, authored by Netaji’s nephew’s wife, Krishna Bose, translated and edited by her son, Sumantra Bose, unveils the narratives around his life and death.

A leader who quested for freedom and roamed the world after being passed over by the Congress in favour of Nehru, Netaji raised an army of women who were trained in Singapore – not a small feat in the first half of the twentieth century anywhere in the world. His death in an air crash remained an unsolved mystery — another one of those controversies which raged through the century like the Bhawal case. In his review, Parichha spells out: “Aiming to bring an end to the controversies and conspiracy theories surrounding the freedom fighter, the over 300-page book gives a detailed and evidence-based account of his death in one of its chapters.”

Our book excerpts in this edition both feature writers of humour with the other being the inimitable Ruskin Bond. We have an excerpt of Bond’s nostalgia from Between Heaven and Earth: Writings on the Indian Hills, edited by Ruskin Bond and Bulbul Sharma.

Our non-fiction also hosts humour from Devraj Singh Kalsi about his interactions with birds and, on the other hand, a very poignant poetic-prose by Mike Smith reflecting on the vagaries of autumn. From Japan, Suzanne Kamata takes us to the Rabbit Island – and murmurings of war and weapons. We have the strangest story about a set of people who are happy to be ruled by foreign settlers – we would term them colonials – from Meredith Stephens. G Venkatesh delights with a story of love and discovery in Korea, where he had gone in pre-pandemic times. Paul Mirabile travels to Turkey to rediscover a writer, Sait Faik Abasiyanik (1906-1954). And Ravi Shankar gives us an emotional story about his trek in the Himalayas in Nepal with a friend who has passed on. Candice Louisa Daquin has written of the possibilities towards integrating those who are seen as minorities and marginalised into the mainstream.

The edition this time is like Autumn – multi-coloured. Though I am not able to do justice to all our contributors by mentioning them here, my heartfelt thanks to each as every piece only enriches our journal. I urge you to take a look at the September edition.

I would like to give huge thanks to our readers and our team too, especially Sohana Manzoor and Sybil Pretious for their artwork. We could not have come this far without support from all of you.

Thank you.

Happy Reading!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

[1] The men in the indomitable Gaulish village (which the Romans failed to conquer) in times of Julius Caesar loved to jump into a fight for no reason…Asterix was the protagonist of the comics along with his fat friend Obelix

[2] Arrival of Autumn

[3] Snake Maiden