[SOURCE: Article: 70710 of soc.culture.indian Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian From: ngrjn@milton.u.washington.edu (V Nagarajan) Subject: A Long Short-story from Tamil (recycled) Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Date: Mon, 11 May 1992 18:33:07 GMT]
T. Janakiraman belonged to the worthy tradition of the giants of Tamil fiction, Puthumaippitthan, Ku.Pa. Rajagopalan and Pichamurthy. He, along with Laa.Sa. Ramamirutham and, to some extent, Jayakanthan, constitute the backbone of modern Indian tamil fiction to which the likes of Sundara Ramasamy, Ki. Rajanarayanan, Indira Parthasarathy, Ku. Alagirisamy and Nanjil Nadan have added flesh, blood and skin. Whereas LaaSaRaa's strength lies in his command of the language that is unequaled in modern tamil literature, ThiJaa (as T. Janakiraman is known) excelled in taking the humdrum everyday life as his theme and giving it a unique and timeless quality. There are no morals to his stories, no lessons to be learned. There is always a certain humor that threads through ThiJaa's writings. He had a passion for the river Kaveri and his writings evoke the dialect of the Kaveri delta region; you can almost smell the earth of the Kaveri delta in his fiction. He has written about a hundred short stories and a dozen "novels". His "MogamuL" (thorn of desire), for which he won the Sahitya Academy award, has been hailed as among the best Indian fictional works, by critics who are renowned for their eclecticism. However, I consider "Amma VandhaL" and "Marappasu" as his best novels. (Fortunately these two works have have translated into English as "Sins of Appu's Mother" and "Wooden Cow" respectively; I have not read the translations).
As with any attempt at cross-cultural communication, this too is beset with innumerable difficulties: First, ThiJaa's works aren't particularly amenable to translation. The especial cultural idioms and linguistic devices that lend a local flavor and the strength to his writings, render the translator's task both frustrating and daunting. Necessarily, then, the nuances and subtlities are missing in the translation and ThiJaa's multidimensional literary accomplishment has been reduced here to mere storytelling - a mere shadow of the original. My desire to share ThiJaa with a wider audience has overtaken strong self-doubts about my ability to translate. I learnt the English language from Alistair Maclean, James Hadley Chase, Henry Miller and the Indian Express. My vocab is limited and my sentence construction tends to, at times, be ungrammatical and awkward.:) Without further ado, here's ThiJaa:
Short stories by T.Janakiraman (English Translation):
[SOURCE: From: tamilraj@aol.com (Tamilraj) Reply-To: tamilraj@aol.com (Tamilraj) Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil Subject: Re: T.Janakiraman -A list of his works Date: 5 Feb 1996 08:58:09 -0500]
Other novels by T. Janakiraman:
Malar Manjam : An early novel of T Janakiraman where a marriage arranged even before the kids were born is sought to be conducted and T J weaves the story fo an obsessive lover and how resigning to fate is really the fate of the multitudes. It has great story telling, great dialogies and very nice character sketches.
But my favourite is "Uyirthen" . The story is about Boovarahan who returns to his native village and builds a temple. Chengamma a great soul, organiser and without a mean streak in her is married to Ganesan who is sort of character without much to talk about. Velu has a crush on Chengamma and the obsession (how can a story of TJ will be without obesession?) on her leads him to become the black sheep and questionig the every step of the Boovarahan clan and his doings. He feels the village as a whole is unworthy of such a great person as Chengamma and this leads his to starnge behaviour. When Chengamma senses thsi obsession and confonts him, with an embrace he makes the point of his love for Chengamma and disappears from the village leaving a letter describing his obsession and how the embrace has freed him. Ths novel also introduces the character of Anusuya and early feminst whose full-blown sketch will be seen in Marappasu. A must for TJ fans.
Semparuthy was not a successful novel but its scope and potential is still amazing, as it spans the life of an individual through his life as the de-facto head of the family. The story of Chattanathan Pillai and Bhuvana(who wears a Semparuthy) as they steer the family into almost forty years is a story well told. The psychologial insights into women in the typical Tamil Nadu family structure is worth the read.
Rajaram