![]() What will happen if the goddess sets down her raised foot? Nothing at all. “If Nataraja sets down his raised foot, an aeon ends the universe and all matter, animate and inanimate, will perish-that’s the story. In a telling moment, the narrator refers to Lord Shiva’s cosmic pose holding an entire world aloft. Like Shiva’s consort, Parvathi-who stands on one leg in the yogic vrksasana posture with her upper arms held raised above the head-the grandmother too seems to have been in an eternal penance, sacrificing everything, including her gift, that of a melodious voice, for her husband’s sake. As if to demonstrate this, when the grandmother in the story leaves the world, her bent, unbroken spine literally, bears testimony to her resolve. The second story asks this question: What if one’s greatest ideal was to let go simply in order to safeguard the peace? What if, for the sake of upholding the peace and balance of family life, one must be ready to both endure hardship and sacrifice one’s identify? By the time it ends, The Penance of the Goddess equates sacrifice also to steely resolve. In such a complicated world as the one we live in, isn’t it too much to expect an adherence to “aram”? The author’s foreword on the subject (see below for an excerpt) is infinitely thoughtful and moving. I wonder if it’s really closer in meaning to a confluence of righteousness, selflessness, generosity and moral rectitude. Aram-The Song Of Righteousness is the title of the first story.Īs the translator observes astutely, the Tamil word “aram” is extremely hard to translate perfectly: “A complex and, I’d dare say, untranslatable word.” Ramkumar notes that “while ethics is probably closest in meaning to the word, “aram” is a much more capacious word”. While each narrative is grounded in values that are central to Hindu philosophy, the overarching theme of the book is about always doing the right thing. It seems unfair even to make this observation, however, given that Stories Of The True is Ramkumar’s debut translation.Įvery tale in Jeyamohan’s collection is based on the lives of real people. The writing that often seems perfectly acceptable in a regional language can feel a little bloated and gratuitous in English. While the credit for this experience certainly owes so much to the smoothness of the translation by Priyamvada Ramkumar, I did feel that there was scope for more tautness in the prose without sacrificing the authenticity of its rendition. ![]() Despite the many holes in my Tamil education, as I read Jeyamohan’s stories, I did actually feel I was reading them in Tamil. Both have sullied (and buoyed) my Tamil in equal measure. The Tamil I use daily is colored by my connections to the state of Kerala it is also shaped by a Brahmin milieu and the Chennai street lingo that I’ve been a part of. Tamil is a diglossic language and while I can speak a lowbrow, contemporary Tamil, I would not trust my comprehension of the “other” Tamil used in literature and in formal education. Although I can read and write in Tamil, my grasp of literary Tamil is inadequate. I could not, however, have read Jeyamohan’s writings in Tamil and understood it to my satisfaction. It dropped me into the world of Tamil culture, with unexpected dives into expressions from my mother tongue that I responded to instinctively. Jeyamohan’s Stories Of The True -translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar and published in 2022 by Juggernaut-brought me into a world I identified with in terms of geography. It combined several of my interests in soul-satisfying ways. This week’s pick of Tamil tales not only reinforced those feelings about learning and growing at every stage of my life. Jeyamohan have expanded my understanding of the world, fortifying my belief that the world of English is much too narrow in scope, and that the more we hear from writers in other cultures and languages, the greater our scholarship. A moment captured a morning near Lovedale in Tamil Nadu
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