Red Earth And Pouring Poems

A new translation bravely returns to Tamil Sangam poetry

The astonishment that Tamil Sangam poems are two millenia old and still sound so contemporary, unfortunately, will probably always be part of their dazzle. Once the reader gets past that, she may settle down to enjoy the tart eroticism and sighing despair of its love poetry, the grief and equal despair of the poems of war.

Following in the long line of translators beginning with the mighty poet AK Ramanujan, comes this very modern translation of 160-odd poems from ML Thangappa. This new collection has been edited and introduced by AR Venkatachalapathy. To those familiar only with Ramanujan’s sensuous translation that gave us ‘red earth and pouring rain’, the new rendition of that particular poem may be startling. For the most part this new collection is a chance to re-examine old favourites and eternal themes. Excerpts:

Like a puppet

This man—
from the village
where the valai fish in the wet field
snatches away
a ripe mango falling
beside the field—
has gone back to his son’s mother
throwing to the wind
all his promises to me.
He now kow-tows
before that woman
like a puppet
lifting his hands and legs
as she pulls the strings.

(what the concubine said about the husband, the wife’s people overhearing)

Marutam
—Alankudi Vanganar

To ride the palm-frond horse

If one can make out
morning and day,
desolate evenings
and night when the world sleeps,
and daybreak,
then this love is false.

To ride the palm-frond horse
and be mocked on the street
is a shame.
So is living
in separation.

(what the lover said to the girl’s friend, about his desperation)

Kurinji
—Allur Nanmullaiyar

Love stands alone

In the desolate, rain-forsaken land
the twisted kalli’s pods
open with a crackle
frightening the mating pigeons
with their close-knit downy feathers.

He has left me languishing.
‘In search of wealth,’ he said.
He did not mind the risks on
the way.

If it comes to that,
then in this world
wealth has all support
and love must stand alone.

(what the girl said to her friend)

Palai —Venputhi

Terror And The Minibus

Kalpish Ratna’s two new books traverse the same landscape in very different moods, says NISHA SUSAN

KALPISH RATNA has had two books out in the last two months. The first, The Nalanda Chronicles, is a slender, comic novella about the residents of a Mumbai housing society who share a commute to work. The second is The Quarantine Papers, a book that leaps with agility across two centuries between a pre-colonial Bombay afflicted by riot and plague and a Bombay the week Babri Masjid was broken.

On December 6, 1992, Ratan Oak is forced out of the apathy caused in part by his father’s illness and the defection of his wife. He is also propelled into the embrace of another mind he shares his body with. A mind that he realises, in this violent, concussed week, is the mind of his great-grandfather Ramratan Oak, a brilliant young doctor who married outrageously a young widow and even more outrageously, chose to love her. A bloody cross-section of the city emerges in this twin narrative, its capillaries strumming with cruelty and impossible love. Star-crossed lovers and idealists emerge in every generation that Ratan uncovers through his fragmented alter-memories. Unfortunately for the reader, the cast is a little too populated to keep track of easily and after a while you give up trying to keep track. You like Ratan and Ramratan so you are there for the ride. This is the first of the Ratan/Ramratan books so there are definitely many more intriguing history lessons to be had. And perhaps in the next book, the prose will not jar as it switches (almost from page to page) from lush, knowing passages to bare, journeyman competence.

To turn to The Nalanda Chronicles is to remind yourself of that fabulous writing beast, that formidable duo Kalpish Ratna whose reviews make more than a few writers want to hide their trembling with elegance. While stopping short of brilliance, The Nalanda Chronicles is an excellent reading experience. Part of the charm is in its abbreviated form, like Alan Bennett’s long short stories such as The Uncommon Reader. But the chief allure of the book is its invoking of the miniature deliciousness of the Kalpish Ratna book reviews. Relaxed and witty, the book is over before you know it, every sentence a joy to read. And why not, in their reviewer avatar, the duo are admirers of style, with as little patience for poseurs as for pedestrian writing. With the loony air and swiftly sketched caricatures in The Nalanda Chronicles, Kalpish Ratna creates a thin, buttery crust over the savagery in all our lives, the savagery of living with hatred, current, recurring and inherited, the savagery of our cities. Then they slice into that crust.

Smug and overheated in their small yet mighty rivalries and hatreds, the residents of Nalanda Co-op Housing Society would have taken their minibus to Nariman Point twice a day forever. Except this day, their minibus is hijacked by a terrorist with demands and they know as well as any reader that the narrative demands the death of someone expendable. But even a few days later you will remember with unease that there is not much you can do to make yourself irreplaceable to your fellow human beings. Not just the people who may vote you out of the mythical island of reality television terror, but even the people who sent you to the television island to make some money.

The novella’s swift, descending darkness is much more terrifying than the prolonged threat of extinction in its more ambitious sibling, The Quarantine Papers. Perhaps the next Ratan/Ramratan novel will sprawl more easily onto the pages.