Vibrancy of a language
PREMA NANDAKUMAR
SARUGU — Dried Leaf: by Puthumaithasan, Ma. Poongundran, Tamizh Nilam, Chennai-600035. Rs. 400.
Presenting world short stories as dramatic capsules written for the Singapore Radio, Sarugu reveals the vibrancy of a language that has kept itself functionally alive and creatively exuberant in its chosen land.
Puthumaithasan’s experience in this genre spans half a century. Even when the audible voice is lacking, we are able to visualise the drama because of his unerring selection of contexts and conversations from the stories.
And his choice is good. There is variety and the underlying note of seriousness lends credibility to every story. Guy de Maupassant’s ‘The Diamond Necklace’ has been translated and transcreated repeatedly and yet the tragic sting in the last line comes through without fail. “Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! ...” In fact, Maupassant is the favourite for the volume with six recreations in the anthology.
Lu Xin (‘A Madman’s Story’) and Edgar Allan Poe (‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘The Oblong Box’) among others, provide a variety of terrors for the volume. All-time greats like Tolstoy, Strindberg and Vsevolod Garshin rub shoulders here.
Special
Two titles stand out for special mention. Victor Hugo’s novelette, ‘Toilers of the Sea’, set in the Guernsey island is a timeless tale of maritime life, the goodness of man and the passion for one’s profession. With the sounds of the sea as a constant backdrop, Puthumaithasan must have found the story ideal for a radio play. Mess Lethierry, who loves his niece and his ship (Durande) deeply, Deruchette, Ebenezer Caudray are all good people and so is Gilliatt, the fisherman. But fate is inexorable!
Though Puthumaithasan generally avoids any change in re-shaping a story, Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Bet’ is totally transformed except for the central theme of a young man accepting self-imprisonment for 15 years to prove his point against capital punishment at a party.
In Chekhov, there are only two characters and they are simply the “banker” and the “prisoner.” The bet is 15 years of solitary confinement against two million roubles. Chekhov records the studies, silences, music and meditations of the prisoner and presently we come to the end. The banker is not rich any more and will be broke to pay the prisoner if the latter succeeds. Should he kill his prisoner? But the prisoner walks away to his freedom leaving a note: “To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two million of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact ...”
Puthumaithasan has changed the entire story, brought in more characters and given all of them names and made the banker’s daughter fall in love with the prisoner. The emaciated body of Puthumaithasan’s triumphant Igor slumped over his letter of farewell to this unhappy world, which is itself a global prison remains so in one’s memory long after one has closed the book.
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