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Literary Review
Grains of goodness
ZIYA US SALAM
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Janaki Venkataraman’s translation retains the earthy essence of Parthasarathy’s work.
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Wings In The Void; Indira Parthasarathy, Translated by Janaki Venkataraman, Indian Writing, Rs.200.
Here is a man married to his craft. No screaming headlines, no attempt at aggrandisement, not a word stemming from an air of self importance. No conceit, he is never guilty of the ultimate sin: taking himself too seriously.
That is Indira Parthasarathy for you: frank, scathing, even impervious to the consequences. Yet his words are simple, straightforward.
Profound interpretations
There is little that would hurt, hardly anything that would cause you to flip back. The meaning, the profundity comes from the interpretation. He says little, he leaves a lot unsaid.
In Wings in the Void, translated from the Tamil original Tantra Bhoomi by Janaki Venkataraman, he chisels his hero with the care of a sculptor. No rough edges, just a plausible man, the kind you would meet every day yet not bother to give a second look.
Parthasarathy’s Kasturi knows his mind, and believes the world doesn’t! Kasturi is a remarkable creation: educated enough to understand a word not expressed in edgeways, conceited enough to feel he lives in a vacuum of his own volition; yet a man who allows the system to use him just as he is used by the system. Through him, and others like Ramanathan who would not smoke on Kritikai but do so on other days; Vijayan who brings the same passion to faith and pornography, also a guy who would date a modern urban girl and marry the one his mother chooses for him. Or even quick fixers like Mahesh and Surjit who both know how to wield the remote control on the urban landscape to get their deals through, yet put up a façade of moral propriety in social dos. They perpetuate evil through their actions; they seek to perpetuate the good things through their words.
It is a clever dichotomy that Parthasarathy exposes with this little take on the life in Delhi. Frequent references to Karol Bagh, that hub of South Indians, five-star hotels, boardroom and bedroom politics. At the centre of it all is Kasturi, who makes things happen, then does not quite know when they happen to him.
Yet nowhere does the story degenerate to a sermon, or even a bitter critique of a society that is wedded to anachronism. It is a society where the individual is paramount all right, yet he is a slave: slave to his own fears, his own image. Parathasarathy’s guy is no Greek hero, in fact no character is. They are, as Parthasarathy himself expressed, typical Indians. They do not die, they attain moksha! Never mind that even a Kapur, here shown as a small-time rival in the liaison work of Kasturi, and a man who knows how to answer the call of flesh without letting it touch the heart, attains moksha!
Nuances of expression
Venkataraman’s translation retains the earthy essence of Parthasarathy’s work. The nuances of expression, the spirit of the Capital of India, the Sunday morning banter are all retained. And the little throwbacks to Kumbakonam keep the story focussed: it is the story of an Indian from a small town, finding his feet in the big bad world of a metropolis. And discovering that there is a little grain of goodness in us all.
Never mind that the grain lies buried under layers of falsehoods! Surprised? Well, not quite. After all, in another work, Parthasarathy, a recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi and Sahitya Akademi awards, managed to tell us that the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb — much hated by historians for his aversion to music and history — was at one time fond of music; and used to write poetry! So, what’s a little goodness in Kasturi, a mere mortal in Wings in the Void?
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