Some years ago, an American friend was in India on a Fulbright. With all the enthusiasm of a late bloomer, she plunged into reading books by Indian authors, a majority of them translations. One evening, she flung a book across the bed and said with feeling: “My god, they’re morose!” I sympathised with her. The book was one in a series of path-breaking titles from a publisher making waves for familiarising readers with bhasha literature, but, yes, the stories tended to be unrelenting in their bleakness.

Now, that charge cannot be laid at the door of The Tamil Story , a unique compilation of 88 short stories translated from the Tamil and providing a sort of creative historical movement of the genre in this language.

As the editor, Dilip Kumar, himself a prolific and popular writer in Tamil (though Gujarati by birth), says in an illuminating introduction: “Contemporary Tamil prose is believed to have evolved from its rich oral tradition of storytelling. But this genre, introduced from the West, was a distinctive, fresh literary form. Unlike the novel, the modern Tamil short story could rely very little on the oral tradition; instead, it had to invent a tenor and sensibility that was compatible with, conducive to and reflective of the new genre.”

Those changing years The fact that the selection was made from thousands of stories and spans the decades between 1913 and 2000 is testimony to how deep the roots of the genre dug in, and how swiftly. As Kumar explains, “The newness of the genre resulted in a flood of fictional imagination and it was interesting to observe how a society conditioned by various religious, cultural and political influences negotiated the form of the short story to convey its own experiences, ideas and dilemmas.”

The proliferation of popular magazines spurred it on, and in a sense influenced content and style, changing through the decades as the socio-political impulses and concerns changed.

So, no, far from being morose, this anthology is a lively record of voices — of the storyteller and those inhabiting the stories. Very few of the writers are/were fulltime writers and maybe that’s another reason for their freshness and direct appeal, and the absence of self-conscious stylistic devices even at their most artful.

Take story No. 1, ‘Expectation and the Event’ ( Sankalpamum Sambavamum ), by Ammani Ammal, culled from the March 1913 edition of the journal Viveka Bodhini . The story is told from the perspective of a tree that dreams of grandeur — in this case, becoming the mast of a ship — but is pulped for paper on which are printed cheap advertisements that literally break the tree’s spirit. But the story doesn’t end there: the denouement, even as it is prescriptive, is startling in its implications.

Contrast this with story number 80, by S Ramakrishnan — ‘The Proofreader’s Wife’ ( Pizhai Thirutthubavanin Manaivi , 2006). Written nearly a hundred years later, also to do with paper and words, it is about a woman tormented by her husband’s obsession with his job. The universality of sentiment, and timelessness of theme is a feature that runs through all the stories in the book.

More in less In terms of thousands, 88 is a small number, but by itself, it offers a range of disparate experiences while at all times maintining a sense of ‘Tamilness’. The exception is The Bird (Paravai, 2010) by Gokula Kannan, set in the US. It’s true that several stories require a context in order to fully be appreciated — stories such as ‘Village Road’ ( Koodusaalai , 1945) by Ci Su Chellappa.

Beneath the seemingly innocuous spectacle of carts plying on the road runs a powerful, menacing, play of caste politics and domination. The question of caste pops up is almost always present, although it was when the Dravidian movement took centre-stage that it began to overlay the Tamil literary scene.

There’s humour underlying ‘Milk Account’ ( Paal Kanakku , 1946) by SVV in which a husband and wife try desperately to balance their milk calculations, until finally the husband decides to enlist the assistance of his office accountant. The conversation and repartee-oriented style in some stories render them light even if the themes are not quite so.

On the whole, the stories are ‘slice-of-life’. There’s imagination, but little fantasy; there are perspectives and insights; there are bold themes, there’s intimacy and distance; there are stereotypes and clichés, and dramatic detours; but whatever the case, you can always smell the wetness of the earth.

‘The Great Graveyard’ ( Mahamasanam , 1941) by Pudumaippittan follows a child’s first brush with death, replete with innocence and wisdom. This is a powerful counterpoint to Shenbagam Ramaswamy’s ‘The Saga of Sarosadevi’ ( Sarosadeviyin Kathai , 1981) about the short life of a child born without hope.

Well-known writers such as Sundara Ramaswamy, Mouni, Pudumaippittan, Ashokamitran, Jayakanthan rub shoulders with others such as the unknown Ammani Ammal, but they pull their weight equally. This is as much a measure of the quality of the translation — remember, few stories (even today, in popular magazines) benefited from the editor’s touch, and it isn’t the job of the translator to do that — as the creative selection.

As Subashree Krishnaswamy explains in the translator’s note: “…we didn’t want to give the mistaken impression that they are reading the original, by ironing out all the peculiarities of the Tamil text so that it better suits English…”

Enriching The Tamil Story certainly is, although given the subjective nature of the liberal arts, some issues are up for debate. For instance, the use of the word ‘only’ (the equivalent of the Tamil ‘ thaan ’ suffix or the Hindi ‘ hi ’). It could be argued that while it worked in certain contexts, in others it is in danger of changing the tenor of the text. But in the overall scheme of things, this is a small matter. Now, after reading the stories, I want to know more about the writers. You would, too.

MEET THE AUTHORS

Dilip Kumar is a well-known short story writer in Tamil. He has published three shortstory collections and a critical work on the late Mauni, a pioneer of Tamil short stories.

Subashree Krishnaswamy is an editor, translator and writer. She edited the Indian Review of Books.

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