DIFFERENT REGISTERS
When the floodgates open
C.S. LAKSHMI
IT is so heartening to see so many novels and short story and poetry collections flooding the market in Tamil. All of them are well produced although many of them reproduce European and other painters with absolutely no qualms, for their covers and some even spread them out in the inside pages. And there are now many adventurous publishers who are willing to publish new writers. And it has become fashionable to print the photographs of the writers — especially women — on the back cover and sometimes even on the front cover. For some strange reasons, some recent publications have women writers leaning on a wall or a door and looking out. One does not know if this is part of some global conspiracy but all these women look rather beautiful and content! And when one opens the book one is overwhelmed by the kind of excellent writing that is being done these days. The prolificacy of some writers is amazing. Sometime back a writer published two novels at the same time brought out by two different publishers. These are her first novels but she puts together images of a village community with great ease and dexterity. The writer is S. Thamizhchelvi who is a schoolteacher and she writes that she completed writing her first novel in 25 days. The second one took about four months. The first novel, Manickam, has no grandiose introduction by some senior writer introducing the writer. There is just a short note of acknowledgement and then one gets directly into the novel. The novel is about the travails of a family that gets into the fishing profession and one is happy Thamizhchelvi has not packed it with introductions and prefaces, for we slip into the novel as easily as a boat slipping into the sea.
The seaside region of Thanjavur is the setting of the novel. The protagonist Manickam and his wife Chellayi are at the core of the novel. The novel depicts the journey of Manickam, who strays into many careers before getting into the fishing career and the stormy life he leads and drags his family into. Love, affection, warmth and friendships figure in the novel not in a sentimental or romantic manner written in a syrupy language but as undying emotions in life which ease the rough stretch of life filled with the monotony of efforts to make it possible to survive each day as it comes. There are some chilling moments frozen with emotion and violence like the one where Sakubai, the girl from another community whom Manickam loves and is forced to abandon, decides to end her life in the jungles by hanging herself. Manickam decides to bring her into his life after becoming the father of a child and sends a message to her to wait for him near the temple. She packs a bundle of clothes ready to run away with him, for, the torture of her brother forcing her to marry someone is unbearable. But Manickam never turns up. She has to think of so many things before taking the decision to die. She has to hide her intent to leave her house for even in death she cannot dishonour herself or her family. She takes out a sari from the bundle and pushes the bundle into the pond so that people won't know that she had actually left her home with other intentions. She then hangs herself quickly and efficiently. When Manickam's messenger who first informs her to wait for Manickam and later comes to the temple and gives her the news that Manickam will not come to take her, finds her body, it is still warm and the people around are commenting that she must have hanged herself because of the torture of her brother. Only he knows the truth and he leaves with a heavy heart. Sakubai's death changes the entire course of Manickam's life and his nature. Somewhere at the back of his mind her death remains as a painful memory to be endured. And for Chellayi, even though Sakubai has destroyed her physical self, she is a constant presence.
Manickam in his old age finally decides to end his life in the sea. He takes leave of Chellayi who has been in a coma for three years. He arranges his death in such a way that his family may get a government compensation for his death. That is probably the only successful thing he manages to do in his life apart from inventing a new kind of net to catch fish. The novel begins and ends with the sea as a witness. In between there is the blood of goats sacrificed to Maadan, the god who supports them, Chellayi's deliveries, small pox, family feuds, battering, home medication, inventing food to eat out of nothing, drinking, eating and merry making. Thamizhchelvi says it all with the least attempt to describe reality avoiding details and embellishments. The only time she reveals the poet in her is in the beginning when she describes a group of people going to the sea at midnight to catch fish and their being on the sea.
Alam, the second novel is written like a family saga. It is about a family whose main breadwinner, Subbayyan, decides to go to Singapore with a contractor from the village who regularly takes people to Singapore for work. Subbayyan does not have a good track record of sticking to any job but his family, consisting of his wife Sundarambal and three daughters, hopes that a good future awaits the family now. Till the end of the novel Subbayyan never returns. But Sundarambal takes all the decisions saying, it has to be that decision for she is answerable to her husband. What will she tell him if comes back and asks her why she took a particular decision? She works in the fields and does anything which can earn money and finally it is the salt field she and her daughters decide to work in. The work is strenuous and demanding but they have very little choice. Vadivambal, the eldest daughter, is dark and no one is interested in marrying her. Finally an offer comes from a well-to-do person who suffers from epilepsy. She is forced to marry him but he keeps her well but dies very soon and she comes back to her mother. The second daughter Rajambal has a good marriage for a while but her husband marries a second time and she comes back home with her children. The third daughter Anjammal is the one who goes to school for a while. Through floods and famine the family survives eating roots and leaves and watching heavy rains wipe out their crops.
The various efforts Sundarambal makes to survive reveal the life in rural areas and some of them are beyond the imagination of people in urban areas. Only someone who has grown up in this region and has known this kind of life can write this without stressing the details. There is one particular instance of Sundarambal trying to earn some money by going deep within the forests to cut jackfruits to sell them. She goes with Anjammal and the trees are heavy with the fruits. Anjammal climbs first but is bitten badly by red ants. Sundarambal climbs and begins to cut the fruits but at one point a red ant enters her eye and bites the pupil and refuses to let go. Sundarambal jumps down the tree in terrible pain with her one eye refusing to open. Anjammal holds her eye open and with her nail pulls the biting red ant out. This kind of everyday effort to survive against all odds is the basic premise of the book. Built into this framework are little joys of births, festivals, stories, songs and visits to temples.
Sundarambal is not a gentle mother whose touch is soft and tender. She is rude and irritable and constantly thinking of ways of earning money to feed her children. But she stands by her daughters and the family survives by clinging to one another. There is also the constant fear of what people would say about Sundarambal and her children for she is a single woman bringing up three daughters At the end of the novel the family is in the salt field still struggling to survive. And Subbayyan has not returned. The last daughter Anjammal has a soft corner for Poochi, her playmate from school times. He tells his family that he would only marry her and they disapprove and Sundarambal beats up her daughter when his family complains that their son is adamant. During pre-dawn hours one morning, when the rest of the family has gone to the salt field to work, Poochi approaches Anjammal and tells her both of them could run away to Kerala. " I am not the kind of girl who will run away. My mother has not brought me up that way," replies Anjammal and starts walking towards the salt field.
After completing both the novels one feels that Thamizhchelvi just sat down one day and opened the floodgates of memories she has of this region. The two novels, in that sense, complement each other although they are of two different kinds of living experiences. The song of lament that Sundarambal sings asking sparrows of the field if they had seen her man anywhere in their flight to other lands, remains in one's memory long after reading both the novels.
C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder-trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women).
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