TRANSLATION
A plea for justice
|
`The plot revolves around the intricate operation of patriarchy and its conjunction with feudalism, religion, culture and politics.'
|
IN keeping with the expectation that a new work from an established writer is bound to generate, veteran Tamil writer Vaasanthi's book Birthright seems to have the readership clientele more than satisfied. A tightly written novella on the theme of the girl child and female foeticide, this story goes beyond local value, adding to the number that illustrate gender justice. The plot revolves around issues like the intricate operation of patriarchy and its conjunction with feudalism, religion, culture and politics. Through the conflicts and dilemmas that are dramatised in the narrative, the voices of the women reflect, triumph, grieve, agonise, analyse and politicise, facilitating an exploration into the area of a shared ethos. The tensions that arise when striking a balance between tradition and modernity, superstitions and beliefs, men and women, values and money, form the intricate many-layered workmanship in this deceptively simple and straight-laced storyline.
The ethical debate that underlies the legal and medical practice of female foeticide as practised in clinics is mockingly addressed in the family planning initiatives that have ironically triggered it. Many village and city women dread giving birth to girls and would rather destroy the foetus. The middle-class values encoded in the set beliefs of the social hierarchies and the class positions within those hierarchies are brought into sharp focus, when many laws have stood silent witnesses to many a violation. The protagonist Mano, a successful practising gynaecologist, unmarried, and only daughter of an orthodox businessman in Salem, is at the centre of many concentric dilemmas. She belongs to the privileged class, who are able to follow their dreams, and exercise independent decisions. Yet all this comes at a certain price. She is unwilling to be trapped in the clichés of orthodoxy and traditionalism that rely too much on superstitions and unfair social customs that endorse the secondary role of women. She resists the legal and social controversies pertaining to female inheritance and privileges. An apparently liberated professional woman is caught in the throes of a struggle for empowerment. It reveals insights into the Indian woman's status on the gender platform, foregrounding the uneducated middleclass women against the educated professional women.
Well-knit narrative
Vaasanthi has pulled off a well-knit narrative that blends suspense and climax in calculated stages, even as it binds culture and religion in a changing social fabric that resists change. The architecture underlying the parallel plots of courtship and love between Mano and Shiva on the one hand, and Mano's decision to henceforth protect the female foetus on the other, is transparent and managed not without much contrivance. A sense of immediacy with the narrating voice is achieved as Mano's character doesn't smack of any artificiality. Whether it is her professionalism in the clinic, or her feelings towards either her father or mother or her fiancé, the tone is honest and direct. "I have never tried to make other people think well of me Shiva. I'll only be myself. I can't be different." In moments of solitary analysis, Mano bares the inner workings of her mind, the anger and helplessness, and her assessment of people around her. The author's forte for evocative descriptions like the clinic scenes or the full moon puja, leaves haunting memories long after the read, ever ready for recall.
The spiritual force of myths and beliefs of the people becomes the ethnographic backdrop that is described in rich detail. The dialogue, setting and story line that is rooted in the rural Tamil milieu explores the powerful hold of cult practices that either resolve or reinforce the ambiguity and complexity of the present situation. But the feminist concerns thrown up are real and impact strongly on the reader's psyche, regardless of gender and place.
Labour of love
The translator Vasantha Surya's introduction is a brilliant critical assessment of the novella whose "central plea" is "for gender justice and equality". Translations across languages have tried to come to terms with the distinctive inflectional appendixes peculiar to languages, and have tried to retain or anglicise the same. When reading the Irish dialect in Synge's plays or the translated works of Alexander Dumas or Tolstoy, the distinctive linguistic peculiarities of the respective languages add colour and culture to the context, rather than being distracting. English translations from regional languages approximate to works of creative writing in English by bilingual creative writers, where there is a blend of the regional language with English. It must have been difficult to translate the unmistakable ease with which the original Tamil narrative has grappled with the nuances of regional dialect to capture the rural way of life while unfolding a contemporary issue. But the translator has revealed a like-minded commitment to the author's principles of creativity and passionate involvement with the theme, and the effort emerges as a labour of love.
PADMINI DEVARAJAN
Birthright: A Novel, Vaasanthi, translated by Vasantha Surya, Zubaan, 2004, p.147, Rs.195.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
