DEAR READERS ,
TO CONTINUE READING MY NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS ALONG WITH THE OLDER POSTS, YOU CAN USE THE FOLLOWING NEW WEB ADDRESS.
WARMLY,
SARAVANAN KARMEGAM
Part 3 (30-34)
Original : Ba.Venkatesan's short novel "Mazhiayin Kural Thanimai"
In English : Saravanan Karmegam
*****
During the time he had been active in the profession, Paramasivam Pillai used to have a bizarre agreement with rich men and English lords. That was, from the date of handing over the keys after the construction of the buildings, a particular amount had to be sent by the owners to Pillai every month as remuneration. In turn, Pillai had to assume the responsibility of incurring expenses when there was any untoward accident or any requirement for specific maintenance during the contract period. Most of the time, both parties didn’t have the opportunity to execute the second clause of the agreement. Everyone knew that the buildings built by Pillai enjoyed the guarantee of standing the test of time. No architect other than Pillai had the fame and courage to convince the heavyweights and lords to accept the agreement, such as that. There were many wonderful buildings from Karimangalam to Mysore created by the dexterous hands of Pillai. One could see them along the sides of the highway. Pillai’s skills were his hereditary asset, which he had inherited from his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. So he was not interested in building modern mediocre constructions. But it had never been sort of lacking. Many solitary rest houses in the hilly regions of Hogenekkal, Yelegiri, and Hosur and cold regions like Thali and Mathagiri were actually built by Pillai for English lords according to their taste, both in Tamil Nadu style with lime mortar and Kerala style with tiled roofs. They had possessed many secretive, traditional architectural marvels unknown to Western countries, especially the scent of golden Champak flowers from the interior walls of the buildings built by Pillai. The mixture of things that gave that scent remained a family secret known only to Pillai. The buildings, unlike having an incongruous appearance as if coming out tearing off the ground, had a natural appeal of plains having habitats in their course with gentle undulations. (Pillai’s skills did match the deftness of birds’ nests). The interiors without much complexity, the outer appeal that didn’t hurt the eyes, the apertures for light that soothed the mind, and the ventilated entrance were the unique features of the buildings Pillai built. He didn’t know any other methods. In other words, he wasn’t aware of creating astounding structures. (It was why he stood stunned, oblivious to even breathing when Sarangan brought him before the rain house). Pillai was a king in his skills; he could bring the resemblance, serenity, and propinquity of a plant in a shed made of leaves. The fame and name he enjoyed from that were just enough for him. Ever since Pillai’s great-grandfather constructed the Uttanapalli Zamin bungalow, there had been a friendship that continued for generations between the Zameen and Pillai’s family. Based on that friendship, Zamindar made Pillai accept his request to build a beautiful bungalow for his second wife. A cart was arranged for him daily to commute from his residence at Kelamangalam to Hosur Agraharam to attend to his construction works. Despite knowing that the land was criminally grabbed from an innocent farmer called Basavanna and erecting a building on that land would truly mean erecting it upon the hatred of villagers and the curse of Basavanna, Pillai accepted the offer for the sake of his friendship. As an architect, on the pretext of building the Zamindar’s palace of love, he wanted to add one more feather of fame to his crown. Even if his entire life was wasted in his efforts to build, as warned by the villagers, he thought he would nevertheless be proud of it. He had the audacity to fight an elephant to face failure rather than fighting a hare to win. Above all, he had immense faith in his skills. But as the time passed, he understood that Basavanna’s resolve was many times stronger than he had thought. He didn’t expect the events to turn out that complicated. When the works were underway up to the ceiling, a woman from another village, while buttressing it with wood logs, saw the corpse of Basavanna hanging on one of those logs and slit her throat herself out of horror. Unable to bear the weight of the dead body, the supporting log broke and hung like a swing. The other day, the entire mixture emitting the scent of champak flowers kept under conditioning for six days had to be thrown away after it was found with lizards in it. Pillai ordered the pot in which the mixture was kept to be broken into pieces. The snakes entered the holes made in the walls for the wood logs to be fixed, for the workers to stand. Since the workers plastered those holes inadvertently, the entire building developed cracks in a night due to the bodies of snakes. The workers were changed four times in seven years. Sufficient time was required to explain the abstract layout of the building and structure to the new workers and get them accustomed to it. Pillai didn’t like to use his workers as mere machines who would only stack up the stones and plaster the mixtures. Climbing on the ladder inch by inch and then falling into destiny’s mouth to plunge to where he had started was repeating like a Ludo game. However, he was not worn out at any stage. Though the Zamindar had permitted Pillai to stop the work at any stage whenever he liked, Pillai never considered that option. At the time when the Zamindar’s interest was decreasing gradually, Pillai’s interest didn’t diminish; rather, it grew stronger like fire instead, being teased by Basavanna’s ploys and impediments. His repeated failures made him more stubborn. As the days passed, it grew into a frenzy and drove him crazy. For some while, he passed his days waiting for the Zamindar’s cart when it dawned and returning home in the night. Then the days of his coming home had also started dropping. After three years, when he felt that the effect of Basavanna grew too intense, Pillai completely stopped coming home. He liked to confine himself to that building, which would never be completed. His wife, determined to take him back home, ran back home alone, panic-stricken after seeing her husband speaking to the door and holes drilled for fixing windows. She informed her sons and daughter that their father very closely resembled Basavanna. After that, she and her children didn’t see each other for four years. Seeing the food and clothes she sent to him through her children being returned by him, she kept crying, glancing at them. Most of the time, she was abusing the Zamindar, who was responsible for the state of her husband, with the choicest mouthful of invectives. She beseeched her husband through her children that they could move to another place, in case they wouldn’t be able to afford to make the Zamindar uneasy. Pillai didn’t budge even an inch. Even the village Ambalakarars who went to him at her request to convince him returned with the same shock. (The one who was sitting there was not Paramasivam Pillai. It was Basavanna, with his unrelenting stubbornness and undying love for his land). Seeing all the efforts to bring him back home turn futile, the villagers and his family members concluded that he would never come back. As time passed, they got accustomed to his absence. They almost forgot his existence. It was at that time that Pillai appeared suddenly at the doorway after seven years with a new-born baby in his hand. It was raining heavily at that time. Pillai was fully drenched. He gave the baby to his wife, who was standing there in hell-shock, unable to infer whether it was a dream or real, with delight and shock overlapping each other.
This is an English translation of “Mazhaiyin kural
thanimai”, a short novel written by Ba. Venkatesan. Translated into English by
Saravanan Karmegam.
***
Part 2 (24 –30)
By the time
Uttanapalli Jamindar brought a woman from Mysore after marrying her as his
second wife since his first wife died without giving him an heir, his youth had
long ago deserted him. The woman he brought was very young. Jamindar was aware
that the villagers were laughing at his back, seeing them in pairs. He had
never been worried about it. (One would feel the pain of fever and headache
only when he suffers from it). But, after some days of his marriage, when he
felt that she was laughing at him after the lights were off on the bed, he was
unable to take that lightly. He was suffering from an aching desire to prove to
her that he was in no way inferior to young men in the display of love. His
greyed moustache proved his desire outdated. (But love doesn’t mean the union
of bodies. Does it?). Though his body was growing old, he had been spending
many sleepless nights thinking about how to prove himself as a youthful lover
at heart. At last, like a king in the north who built a memorial for his wife,
he also decided to build something similar for his wife. His wife casually
pointed out a vast stretch of land lying outside Hosur, which was at a little
distance from Uttanapalli, facing the Ramanayakkan lake, sitting at the edge of
the entire Agraharam with wonderful weather throughout the year. The task
seemed to be extremely easy while assessing the place within the span of time
the chariot took to cross it. But the reality proved otherwise. The owner of
the land, Basavanna, told the Jamindar’s men not to speak about the land
anymore. Jamindar felt it was a slap on his face. Now he had been under
pressure to prove to his young wife that he was an influential man as well,
when he was already suffering from the aching desire to prove his mettle of
being a great lover. He tried hard to bring Basavanna on track by employing all
his tricks – sending his men secretively and then openly to coax him and
meeting him in person first with sweet-coated words and then with intimidation.
Jamindar tried to tempt him with an assurance that he would offer a piece of land
worth double the price at Mathagiri or Andhivadi. But Basavanna didn’t budge
even an inch. The real problem was not the location of Basavanna’s land, nor
its size, nor its value. It was its heritage significance. It had the
reputation of being a stable used by the king Tipu Sultan for maintaining his
horses. The land could retain its potency of manure for longer than any other
land due to horse dung. Selling it just meant selling the reputation and
blessing of the ancestors resting in burial pits along with the inherited fame
and pride. But the Jamindar remained stubborn. Even if he became flexible, his
wife wasn’t. When the situation went out of hand, rendering the Jamindar
frightened even to put out the lamps during nights, he decided to crush
Basavanna with his influence after his repeated failures in all possible
tricks. The district collector promised him to help despite the disgrace of
dwindling influence of the Jamindar due to his second marriage, which forced
him to approach the collector to settle a petty matter such as that. The
collector fulfilled his promise. As he had expected, Basavanna shuddered at
seeing the paper envelope with a government stamp. He had to go to the
collector's office with documents that would prove his ownership of the land
located on the banks of Ramanayakkan Lake, the paper read. Basavanna didn’t
have any such documents. It didn’t occur to him, his grandfathers and his
great-grandfathers to get that land, the King Tipu Sultan gifted it brusquely, registered it in writing. There
were two reasons behind it. One, all those who had been with him now were the
heirs of those who were friends growing up with his grandfather and
great-grandfather. Everyone knew that
Basavanna’s land was once a horse stable of King Tipu Sultan. Second, they were
living longer during the reign of Tipu Sultan. They were not aware that the
ownership of lands lying beyond Hosur, Uttabnapalli, Pagalur, Andhivadi and
Mathigiri had been registered in writing on papers. Even if one had those
documents in hand, it would give two different meanings to its owner and the
one who wants to grab it. That too, more specifically, if the land was meant
for the English lord or government, its allegiance would overlook its
historical importance and change its place. Basavanna was sure that his land
would never be his if the Englishman intervened in the matter. Since the matter
had become very serious, the Jamindar wouldn’t consider compromise. Being the
owner of the land, Basavanna’s self-respect prevented him from approaching the
Jamindar, and at the same time he wasn’t ready to accept his defeat either.
Basavanna hatched a plan. He fed his wife and children with poisoned rice,
killed them and then killed himself by hanging on an Indian beech tree. His
ownership of the land that had been passing through the narratives was finally
confirmed with his death. It then settled on the soil strongly, mixing with the
weather that stood frozen on the land he owned. The government didn’t expect
Basavanna’s death. Jamindar too. The government forgot his death. It had
problems more important than this. But for Jamindar, the victory of Basavanna
had turned into an unforgettable nightmare. He first thought of dropping his
plan of building a bungalow. Since his wife insisted on not abandoning his plan
when the task became handy after steadfast efforts, he accepted it half
heartedly. He assigned the task of building the bungalow to Paramasivam Pillai,
who had been a famous architect in the Paramakal area (Dharmapuri) and a family
friend of Jamindar. Both he and the villagers knew that the task would never be
completed. The Jamindar was ready to sacrifice his money for the sake of his
hollow vanity. The people remained unconcerned, leaving the Jamindar to suffer
by losing his wealth and peace of mind in the tussle between the curse of Basavanna
and his desire. It wasn’t one or two years; the construction work went on for
seven years without even erecting a single floor. Basavanna’s curse threw away
a plethora of bad omens. In the first year of building construction, the child,
the heir of the Jamindar family, in the womb of Jamindar’s wife, was born dead.
The people gossiped that the Jamindar must be secretly happy about it (for
there had been no history that the real heirs of Jamindar were ever born dead).
Jamindar believed that his discomfiture would come to an end with that incident
because that woman became mentally unstable and confined herself in the room
where she gave birth as soon as she came to know that what she had been
believing was her child in the womb was actually a dead body. No one saw her
after that. The bungalow, which was under construction in Hosur for her, also
slipped out of her memory completely. Due to mental agony, her age doubled
every year, and she became older than the Jamindar with age and disability
after two years. The Jamindar also felt relieved that there was no need to
build the bungalow anymore. His wife’s ugly appearance and the foul odor
emitted from her body were so repulsive that they prevented him from even going
near her room. He requested Paramasivam Pillai to stop the construction works
and promised him to give back the total amount committed. But to his dismay, it
wasn’t easy for the Jamindar to abandon Basavanna’s land as he had surmised.
The problem took a different shape. Paramasivam Pillai thought stopping the
work before completion would infringe on his fame and professional ethics. So,
he didn’t pay heed to Jamindar’s words. He then announced that the construction
work would resume, no matter if the Jamindar accepted or not and gave him the
money or not. Paramasivam Pillai was also one of the rich men in the Paramakal
area. Jamindar knew that Paramasivam Pillai would give a damn for money. He
remained helpless. The construction works were in full swing, rendering him as
helpless as holding the tail of a tiger. He knew that everything had gone out
of hand. He had become so unconcerned that he grew unattached to everything
happening around him. He had money to spend. As long as he was alive, he spent
it without inviting any complaints. He had ensured that the money reached
Pillai’s family (Pillai was staying in Basavanna’s land) on the right dates.
But it was unbearable for him to see his friend wasting his skills and time on efforts
that would never bear fruit. Seeing Pillai not pliant in his resolve, the
Jamindar was struck deeply with guilt that the death of his friend would also
happen in Basavanna’s land. (Due to the undying desire, now condemned with a
curse and responsible for the death of two innocent people). But when the
problems are born, their solutions are also born along with them. Most of the
time, they wouldn’t wait for the brain that connects them with debate.
Paramasivam, who went to his home in the severe rain that shook the entire
Paramakal area in one day after seven years, did not return to Basavanna’s
land. The villagers said that he went away running, yelling that he had found a
child from that land and he would return after handing it to his wife. The Jamindar
came to know that the rain had struck him from returning. Though his health
condition didn’t allow him to pay a visit to him (this was the excuse he gave
himself), the villagers had their version, which said that the Jamindar didn’t
dare to face Paramasivam Pillai’s wife. Even after Pillai stopped his work, the
Jamindar kept sending him money for his satisfaction. When he died suddenly
after seventeen years without leaving any will, the government announced that
all his properties were nationalised. One of the unmarried brothers of
Jamindar’s wife, loitering around, filed a case on behalf of Jamindar’s mad
wife and was ruining the remaining money and name. It was the only property
that escaped the claws of the government, ie. the land grabbed from Basavanna.
Knowing that the land had been written in the name of Paramasivan Pillai, with
the utmost honesty, the government handed over that land to his family. The
document was registered after two months of rain that drove Pillai out of
Basavanna’s land. Pillai’s wife received it just out of reverence for the dead
soul; she tossed it somewhere immediately after that and forgot about it the
next moment. People said that the Jamindar went to that land last time on the
second day the rain had stopped. The village remembered him, for a very long
time, the way he wept inconsolably, looking at the half-erected building that
the rain had pierced into a bundle of holes, forgetting his age and status as
everyone around him was watching. None of the villagers ever placed their head
while sleeping towards that side after that incident. The forest cover that
grew between that area and the village gradually separated the building and
pushed it into an inaccessible distance and solitude. In the middle of the
forest, the dream of the Jamindar had stood ruined as debris.
***
This is an English translation of “Mazhaiyin Kural thanimai”, a short novel written by Ba. Venkatesan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
Part 1 (Page 20 to 24)
Paramasivam and Chinthamani got off the coaches separately from their respective ages as soon as the coach stopped in front of the rain house. The rain also stopped as though it was aware of their arrival. When the coaches that brought them had disappeared from the sight, the rain rose up suddenly from the opposite direction, announcing its mammoth volume. Both stood astounded for some while at seeing the stone logs deftly stacked up one above the other standing against the skyline, the colours diffusing in all eight directions, offering a new meaning to the afternoon light on the dexterously smoothened stones and the garden that lay sprawled as long as one’s eyes could see. Chinthamani couldn’t believe that the stuff was made of hard stones. Even Paramasivam Pillai’s professional acumen was also startled at the fact how the softness and the lightness of sponge could have been infused into the stones without compromising their strength. The way the belvedere was built—elongated, smoothened, extending outside to the point after judging the expanse of the sky that could be seen in the rear—had in fact added the sky as a part of the house. At the very moment he saw the outer wall, Paramasivam Pillai understood that it would absorb any colour, be it orange or blue, or pale green or red or yellow or dark blue, emitted by the cycle of the day, and adapt its colour accordingly. The collective warbling of birds—flying from the façade of the house to the group of trees that were found sprawled in the front, and thus making a magic bridge between them—was offering an exquisite language to the complete surrounding as if to fix the defect of that spectacle possessing no mouth. The varieties of vines with small pearl-like leaves, grown considerably abundant on the upper floor, crept over the parapet, slunk outside, and were descending fast towards the ground. The building assumed the appearance of a big ancient tree as the wall hid behind its denseness. The fear and hesitations of the birds were completely absent as the arcs, cones, and bunds—fixed intermittently here and there along the slant of the outer wall without overtly affecting its appeal—had amiably merged with the expanse of the green stretch. The sandpipers picking the ticks from the gaps of leaves by holding the cones with their claws, the parrots swinging in the vines, the sparrows that made their nests in the arcs they found hiding inside, the owls that returned to the arcs to sleep so as to get rid of their fatigue from wandering all through the night, the minas that were flying restlessly intending to sit nowhere and looking at everything suspiciously, and in addition to all these, were found cuckoos and varieties of squirrels and the rain that was falling as though cuddling everything—all these made that area an unknown spectacle from another world. When the horses that drew the coach stamped their front feet on the ground to relax themselves a little after being relieved of the load with the passengers getting off the coach, hundreds of feathers spread across as if the sounds of hooves, though negligible, caused a huge mishap in the tranquility that had filled in front of the house and disturbed the complete spell of harmony. The building rose in the air with its mammoth proportion like a cursed giant. The stones from the bottom to the top shook along with various vines. They yelled out, expressing their fear and dissatisfaction. The house expressed its displeasure by shedding the leaves. Both stood stunned, expecting the building that stood before their eyes to fly away and disappear. The fear and inauspicious omen made their face look pale for a second. ( There were hands to comfort Pillai. But Chinatamani, who came alone, had to comfort herself. They were waiting patiently until the building completed its show in front of them. That bizarre beast became restless and had been unable to reconcile with the uncertainty of its existence until the echo of the horse hooves’ sound disappeared and tranquility returned. After that, it settled itself in its earlier state, meekly gesticulating that the disquiet had somehow been calmed down and turned to normalcy. When Paramasivam Pillai and Chintamani moved out of their respective times to walk through the path lying between the outer wall and the house to reach the doorway, the trees obstructed the rain, petered it out, formed an umbrella over their heads, and led them in. The banana trees and festoons tied at the entrance welcomed them, easing off their anxiety. The huge front hall lying immediately after opening the main door and the square-shaped yard located at the other end of the passage that extended from the front room opposite to the doorway were filled with visuals. One could see the rain and light flooding the house through the opening above that had the size of the square below. It resembled a brilliantly washed, hanging muslin fibre-net. At the very first sight, Paramasivam Pillai understood that the total structure of the house had been designed by keeping the square in the centre. It was a healthy, archaic architectural design of buildings. After the arrival of the British, there were some changes in the general construction of the building that made the design of the front hall deciding the other parts of the house. It must be weakening the inherent equitable balance that every beam of the house must possess in them, cooperation and weight. The wooden beams set above the corridor built along the four sides of the square in the rain house were positioned in such a way that they were offering support to the interior pillars of eight rooms, two on each side around the square. The wooden pillars erected in rows on the outer edge of the corridor along the square were standing on the other edge so as to counterbalance the weight the pillars inside the room were carrying. Under the shining tranquility, they were standing with their dark brown hue, in imperturbable penance in the collective space where the rain and light were coalescing. There shone in their existence a disposition and responsibility that decided not only the structure of the rooms but also a minute disturbance in the rooms. The rooms were hiding in the gentle darkness that offered a warmth from the balminess of the tiled roof that covered the upper part of the corridor. The long passageways that extended from the curved walls and the branches that ran on the right and left led them to other rooms. (Chintamani was not allowed to enter the bedroom). The reflection of the square came along the passage with the pleasant warmth that didn’t intimidate one’s mind and shadow. The moist mist, generated by the rain when it hit the black stone floor, had filled the entire house like a layer of spongy mattress. The windows on the room walls had been very carefully designed so that not a corner in the house could escape the rain during rainy season. The curves in the passageways were constructed with specific designs such that they turned blunt suddenly at some places and took a ‘U’ turn at some places to allow only the required amount of rain that the temperature in the interior rooms could bear by way of controlling the rush of rainfall even if there was a torrential downpour. So, be it rain or sunlight, the danger of their assault and hurt upon the inherent coziness of the house due to their hasty fall on the square and getting distracted with the same speed had thus been avoided. While every nerve of the lower floor had been joined with the main part of the square located at the centre of the house, every direction of the upper floor was left to stand with its innate appeal contradicting and equalising the former. Since the main dual-layered wall that decided the life of the house, located in the lower and upper floors, and the point at which it had to settle in order to counter the gravitational force were designed in such a manner that they were both focusing and leaving the centre at the same time, the tautness at the layer that connected both floors possessed a very delicate balance. The life of the house would last more than several hundred years, Paramasivam Pillai said to himself. Like the lower floor, which manifested the niceties of the architecture in their fullest, the upper floor had attained the completeness of the aesthetics of who imagined it. It was the villagers who had named the rain house its name. There was no nameboard hanging on the outer wall carrying that name. But Chintamani could witness things from the upper floor that proved the house deserving of that name. The rain that fell in the open space descended through the evenly made slopes, ran through the watercourse set a little below, got collected, and then finally entered the holes arranged a couple of feet away from each other and dropped down straight outside the upper floor like a curtain. As it fell onto the tin panes sticking out at the bottom of the upper floor, it got further filtered into a thin screen through the holes fixed two inches away and reached the ground like a mild film of mist surrounding the house on all four sides. Its free flow had been facilitated through the canals that ran gradually longer with the regular stroke of the shovel amidst the grasses on the ground to get it merged with the greenery on both edges of the canals. The four masculine Yalis standing on the corners of the protection wall of the open terrace were staring towards the town’s direction, arching forward as much as they could. (They carried a bearing that they were ready to swallow up someone dug out from everyone.) There was a big stone pouch hanging on their back. During rain, they collected the water in that stone bag. As the water filled in the pouch, it trickled out through the hole in the centre of the pouch, reached the wide-open mouth of Yalis, spurted with full speed from there, and fell onto the ground twenty feet away like a huge water pillar. It was rumoured that Navabashanam, medicinal leaves, rare nuts, and barks must have been buried in Yalis’ bodies. The saliva of the Yalis radiated a mind-intoxicating aroma around the town during rainy days. The children that were born inhaling that aroma possessed strength without physical defects and immaculate charm. The nights of those times had the scent of jasmine and blue colour that enhanced the desire for coition. The rain house kept continuously transforming the profusion of the rain into light, scent, and state of mind—with the permission of the rain. When they mingled with the indispensable air of Hosur, they had become a permanent storyteller for ages who would tell the story of the rain house to the new visitors coming to that house.
***
