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Literary Review
The randomness of life
S.THEODORE BASKARAN
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Kandasamy’s concerns like the inequities of our times and deprivation of those at the edge of society are reflected in this story
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The incidents in the novel focus on the fragility of human relationship, the warmth received from unexpected quarters and the element of chance in life.
Sons of the Sun; Sa.Kandasamy, Translated by Ka.Sa.Subramanian, Indian Writing Today, Rs.200.
Ka.Na.Subramaniam (1912-1988) novelist, literary critic and translator, was mentor to a group of young writers in Chennai in the 1970s. Some of them grew up to influence various dimensions of contemporary Tamil literature. Sa. Kandasamy, the author o
f the novel under review, was one of them.
A polyglot, Ka.Na.Su — as he was known to his readers — was familiar with the literature of world and introduced works of authors like Knut Hamsen and epics like Gilgamesh to Tamil readers. He translated Tamil works and wrote in English about Tamil and related subjects.
Based in Delhi, he published insightful articles in the dailies there in which he often handled FAQs about Tamil and Tamils. (“Why are the Tamils so touchy about their language?”) He is the translator of this novel by Kandasamy. As soon as it came out in 1983, Ka.Na.Su translated it.
The story
Sons of the Sun (Suriya Vamsam in Tamil) chronicles the travails of an adolescent, Chelliah, a school boy who grows up in a village on the banks of Cauvery near Thanjavur. His father, who had ambitions in politics, dies young. Growing up fatherless, he flounders in school and his mother persuades him to work instead of studying. She has to fend for herself with two children, the elder of which is a girl.
Young Chelliah starts his work as a grease monkey in a mechanics shop and is quick in learning the trade. Good with the spanner, he wins the goodwill of his employers and finances his sister’s wedding.
Ramu, his employer, takes him to Chennai where he works as a truck mechanic. Eventually he gets a position in a government transport corporation. Chelliah’s election as a union office bearer in that organisation forms the final denouement of the story.
Kandasamy wrote this novel in one stretch, in a month, at a writers’ workshop in Mysore in 1983. He says that the randomness of life and the tangled web we weave in the name of relationship form the basic theme.
The incidents in the novel focus on the fragility of human relationship, the warmth received from unexpected quarters and the element of chance in life. Like his other works, this is also about the marginalised people in small towns and their preoccupations.
Concerns
Kandasamy’s concerns like the inequities of our times and deprivation of those at the edge of society are reflected in this story. His social criticism is elegantly understated. He brings out the ambience of the delta landscape by his description of birds — the kingfishers, pond herons and egrets — effectively...
Ka.Na.Su’s translation is smooth and pretty much retains the style and the spirit of the source. Such translations can help the development of Indian languages. In fact he has improved on the readability of the original.
For instance, Ka.Na.Su uses the names of the protagonists while Kandasamy is given to using pronouns a lot, causing confusion at times.
Mistakes
But when it comes to flora and fauna the translator makes bloomers. He either gives wrong names or skips the mention of birds or trees. This robs the character of the landscape in which the story is set. He talks about a flamingo settling on a tree. It is actually a crow-pheasant in the original.
Similarly a snake does not shed its skin, it sloughs its skin. Both Fish-tail Palms and Date palms are refereed to merely as ‘palm trees.
The opportunity to rectify these mistakes in the editing has been missed by the publishers. It is an impressive imprint, produced elegantly, with attention to the choice of reader-friendly fonts and the lay out. However, a photo of the Gujarathi kooba (hut) on the cover is incongruous.
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