Again that circular sweep. But he still held onto the fishing line. He looked at the sky. Not even a star was visible. All his stars had disappeared. The clouds had covered them over.
Palani stood up in his boat and looked around. Until then he had seen the sea stretch. Water on all four sides! Now it wasn’t so. He was surrounded by a ring of mountains. He and his boat were in a hollow. The helm of the boat was raised. The sea mother’s palace was on the ocean floor deep in the sea. That was where the sea mother lived. Palani had heard descriptions of that palace. You reached there through a whirlpool. A whirlpool that churned up the entire ocean and tunnelled its vortex to knock at the doors of the sea mother’s palace.
Palani felt as if the mountains on all four sides were looming more than ever. He slackened the line a bit. Once again the boat raced at an unbelievable speed. Had Palani escaped that whirlpool? Had he crossed over the mountain?
From somewhere a fierce roar could be heard. He had never heard such a sound before. A whirlwind.
Waves rose as high as hills. One by one the waves quickened and drew closer. He had never seen such waves before. These waves didn’t come in lengthwise. Instead, they rolled in with ends meeting and gathered around him in a circle.
Palani understood this strange anger of the sea in a moment. He knew how to ride the crest of a wave. He had learnt how to battle whirlwinds. He had rowed through pitch darkness.
Lightning flashed. And the gigantic heave of thunder. Palani slackened the boat. If he reined in the line and the boat paused, the shark would break the boat into bits. Let the shark of the sea drag the boat at its own pace.
As the boat rode the crest, Palani used the paddle as a lever to throw himself up and so reduce the weight in the boat. And as the boat reached the crest, he would fling himself down. At that time the boat would almost be on its head. And there would be yet another wave waiting with gaping jaws to swallow him and his boat.
Roars resounded. The sea roared furiously at that wretched fisherman. The whirlwind tuned that roar up. The thunder beat a rhythm. What diabolic dance was this? He was a mere mortal. Did the sea mother have to unleash such powerful forces to vanquish him? How easily she could drag him to her depths!
Perhaps these waves might have rolled onto the shores. And flung itself over the tops of the houses there. Perhaps now venomous serpents were crawling on the shore. In the distance something high could be seen. Was it the crest of some strange wave? Or was it a sea monster rearing its head up and opening its cavern-like mouth?
Had that fisherman’s indefatigable strength been broken? When a wave came, he threw himself up but couldn’t rise. That wave with its open mouth washed over him and his boat. In one mighty flash of thunder and lightning, not just the clouds but the sky itself was shattered.
All the waters of the sea gathered in one place. The whirlwind screamed, wanting to wreck everything. The boat’s helm could be seen atop a wave. When the wave had subsided, it was seen that the boat had capsized and Palani was clinging to it. He was grabbing at it so as not to lose his grasp. For one moment, he exhaled and screamed, ‘Karuthamma!’
Palani’s call triumphed over the whirlwind’s roar. The call rose above all that.
Why was he calling for Karuthamma? Wasn’t there a reason for that? The goddess who protects the fisherman at sea is his fisher wife at home. And so it was to her he was appealing for prayers as that first fisherwoman had prayed for the safe return of her husband. Didn’t that first fisherman return despite being caught in a whirlwind storm? Only because of his wife’s penance. Palani too believed he would return. He had a fisherwoman. And she would pray for him. Hadn’t she promised him this that very day?
The fury of the storm grew. But Palani vanquished that as well. The storm aligned itself with the waves. Yet another wave came towering in! By the time his lips formed ‘Karu…’ the wave was on him. Nothing was visible. The winds, thunder and lightning all together vented themselves. It was a last big effort. All the forces were united in their fury. They were putting the final touches to that act of destruction.
The water rose sky-high and cascaded. The sea became a cave. The whirlwind became a tangible force. It could be seen.
Again the boat rose above a wave. Palani lay on his belly over it. He was still holding on. Would that head rise?
Was the merciless act of annihilation complete?
Caught in a cross-current, the boat stood erect like a pillar and then sank.
One star was visible. It was the star that fishermen navigated by. The fisherman’s guiding light. But its radiance seemed to have dulled.
As if nothing had happened, the next morning the sea stirred itself at dawn. Some of the fishermen who had woken in the night said that there was a huge haul in the deep seas. The waves had come as far as the doorsteps of some houses. Some sea snakes were seen on the white sands.
On the shore, Panchami wept, holding the baby who was screaming for its parents. Her brother-in-law who had gone out to sea the night before hadn’t returned. And Karuthamma who had gone to sleep with her was not there either. She wept and tried to console the baby at the same time.
Two days later, the dead bodies of a man and a woman locked in an embrace came to rest on the sands. Karuthamma and Pareekutty.
At Cheriazhikal, a dead shark with a line still attached was found on the shore.
P.S.
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The Story of My Chemmeen
Translator’s Note
Chemmeen that Gifted Me Both Good
Fortune and Sorrow
K.K. Surendran
On Adapting Chemmeen: Myth
as Melodrama
Meena Pillai
List of Works: T.S. Pillai
Glossary
The Story of My Chemmeen
Thakazi Sivasankara Pillai
I kept putting it off for a very long time. Perhaps it was best that it happened this way. The idea lay in my mind germinating. On and off these days, it occurs to me that if I had let the thought lie for a longer while, it would have ripened and burgeoned further…
For many days, I had talked at length about it. At times, the novel Chemmeen that I was planning to write sounded almost like a threat. Many of my friends assumed that it would deal with the lives of fishermen; that it would be about the coalition of fisher folk, and would stir up unrest and revolution in their minds. This included Mundasseri Master who was like a venerable older brother to me. It was quite natural for anyone who had observed my literary growth until then to think on those lines. It wasn’t that all that I had written until then had to do with only the workers’ union and unification of their forces; but that thread of thought was what bound them together. My friends, no matter how close they were to me, couldn’t comprehend either the company I kept when not with them or my state of mind; neither did they have a proper understanding of the physical realities of the world we lived in, I presume.
It was a time when progressive literature was grappling with the Gordian knot of maintaining structural sanctity. No matter what Dev and I wrote, we were hemmed in by catcalls and howls of outrage. We couldn’t even whisper a protest. Dev was unable to even sleep in his house in Pudupally. They wouldn’t let him. In an insidious way and almost without his own knowledge, a land dispute had slowly led to his becoming part of the Congress party. Could there be any peace thereafter? Naturally, it put Dev’s back up too. He claimed that the people of Pudupally disliked the fact that he had become a landowner.
At Thakazhi, I didn’t have to endure the serious dislike that Dev had to suffer in Pudupally. The people of Thakazhi didn’t form mobs to yell their displeasure. There were no raucous cries or declarations of disgust. No study classes were organized against me. It makes me want to laugh thinking of those days. The arguments in favour and against what I wrote ran a peculiar course. And there were enough protest groups who expressed their antipathy towards me.
&
nbsp; It was a chaotic literary environment. However I continued to write. I couldn’t but write. I remember a story from K. Balakrishnan’s Kaumudi, ‘Chendakotu’ (The drum beat). Yes, writing like the drum beat has a purpose – to disrupt everyone.
The Thakazhi of then isn’t the Thakazhi of now.
The Thiruvalla–Ambalapuzha road runs in front of my house. This is an important road. There is the constant whine of traffic. In those days, this road was a narrow canal. I kept two boats locked to the pier there. I brought the stone, lime, timber and gravel required to build my house in these boats. The gate that you see now was the pier from which I accessed the canal for my daily swim and bath. In those days what was unique and convenient about my house was its proximity to the canal. The land was 28 cents in all. Kaatha, our children and I lived in a two-roomed house with a lean-to. It was built of laterite stone with bamboo rafters and a coconut palm leaf thatch. Kaatha and I dreamt day and night of making this into a more solid and secure structure. Though I had written over seven novels and several stories, I was unable to build this dream house. Some of those novels had even been successful. Suddenly, I had two sources of inspiration: one, to provide a fitting retort to the drum beat of speculation around me; two, to roof our house with wood and tiles and make it into a light and airy home.
My intimacy with the seaside began when I was nine years old. I knew all the faces and moods of the sea goddess. My mind was flooded with thoughts of the sea goddess and the chakara. One morning, I stuffed a few shirts and mundus into a bag and walked to Ambalapuzha. I was on my way to Kottayam. In those days, to reach Kottayam, one had to go to Ambalapuzha and then catch a boat from there. If I set out from Thakazhi in the morning, by the time I had caught the connecting bus and boat, it would be 2.00 in the afternoon when I reached Kottayam. This wasn’t the Kottayam as we know it now. But that’s another story.
In what is today’s private bus stand, there used to be a two-storeyed building with seven or eight rooms. A lodge. It was managed by one Mr Mathai. Mr Mathai ran a strictly vegetarian restaurant on the east road. The food there was cooked to very exacting standards and in the utmost of hygienic conditions. I don’t mean to ridicule but the people of Kottayam referred to Mr Mathai as Mr Mathai Pottey.
The lodge that Mr Mathai ran was owned by the Karapuzha Arakkal family. In those days, DC, who was the sales manager of SPCS, handed me over to Mathai’s care.
‘That father of mine talks of buying a boat and nets…’ I began writing. It was the dialect of the seaside that I had heard since I was nine.
Of the many people who visited the lodge every evening, or the Boat House Lodge as it was called, one person deserves a special mention. C.J. Thomas.
CJ’s visits had a purpose. To read what I had written that day. He wouldn’t speak a word; he would read and then leave. And so C.J. Thomas became the first person to read Chemmeen. In those days, CJ was a cover designer at Sahithya Pravarthaka Sahakarana Sangham.
D.C. Kizhakkemuri was also one of my regular visitors.
And thus by the eighth day, the story of Chemmeen fell in place. Only then did Mathai Pottey let me drink some beer.
It wasn’t difficult thereafter to renovate our home in Sankaramangalam. Chemmeen sold very well. We made rafters of timber and laid tiles on it. We added a few more rooms. But how we added to the 28 cents land is yet another story.
Chemmeen was the first Malayalam novel to receive the then just announced Sahitya Akademi award. I received it from Jawaharlal Nehru. Radhakrishnan looked on and applauded. With that money, I bought 60 para of paddy fields at Kolathadi padam.
Chemmeen was translated into many languages. It was first translated into Czech. Kamil Zelabil was the translator. He was a Tamil scholar who later studied Malayalam. When he came to Madras, he heard about this Malayalam novel Chemmeen. And, he didn’t think he would have trouble understanding or translating it. He also translated Rand Edangazhi (Two Measures) into Czech. Later, under the auspices of UNESCO, Chemmeen was translated into all European languages. In between, after the Czech translation, the Russian translation appeared. Among the Asian languages, Chemmeen was translated into Arab, Japanese, Vietnamese, Sinhala and Chinese.
Who would have thought the drum beat would have helped accomplish as much? Was it an act of triumph? It would be presumptuous of me to claim that. For only time will tell.
31 October 1995
Translator’s Note
Anita Nair
In Peggy Mohan’s novel, Jahajin, I stumble upon a phrase: un coup de foudre. An attack of madness.
She describes it as ‘a swarming melee of manic energy seeking a focus’.
Chemmeen – the translation – was born of one such coup de foudre.
I was between novels. The writing of Mistress had filled my life so absolutely that suddenly I had a huge empty space when the novel was written. What was I going to do with myself?
And then came a thought: Unayi Warrier’s Nalacharitham. I had fallen in love with Kathakali all over again on reading Nalacharitham. Surely the rest of the world ought to be able to draw pleasure from it as I had. Find the solace it offered in moments of abject darkness. It became a dream project that grew in my mind until one day I mentioned this grand obsession to Karthika at HarperCollins.
As all good editors and as all good friends, she counselled that I cut my translation teeth on something not as ambitious but just as magnificent.
Like what? I asked.
Chemmeen? she suggested.
From somewhere the strains of a song wafted in my head. The desolate Pareekutty singing his heart out on a moon-drenched seashore. The restless Karuthamma standing with her bosom heaving, wanting to escape everything and run to Pareekutty’s side. The gleam in Chemankunju’s eye when he spots Palani for the first time. Scenes from the film Chemmeen played out in my head.
Was chitchat turning into something of consequence? Was that how it happened? Was that how I took on Chemmeen? Un coup de foudre. What else?
I had no formal education in Malayalam. What I did have was an ability to understand and comprehend the nuances of the language. I was already enchanted by its wondrous innate lyricism where a butterfly has the magical wings of a ‘chitrashalabam’ and a weevil is a ‘nikrishtanaya puzhu’.
During the writing of Mistress I had worked in a few translations of Kathakali attakathas into the narrative. But this wasn’t going to be enough. A translation would require me to walk the way of another writer and see his landscape and characters through his eyes. Would I have the restraint to bridle the desire to tweak a thought here, add a dimension there? I am a writer of fiction first and it was going to be hard to keep myself out of Thakazhi’s Chemmeen. To bring forth the beauty of a book without succumbing to the need to edit. To let the grammar of the region prevail without making it seem like an idiomatic translation … In contrast, the author has it easy. Write as your heart leads you and damn everything else…
And there was one other thing. I was going to have to summon great stamina. Each time a word flustered me, I would have to dive into a Malayalam Nigandu. (Dictionary is too sanitized and limited a word unlike the bottomless abyss of the Nigandu.) I would have to find my way through, inch by inch, word and word.
The very first line of the book had me in knots. Chemmeen is written in fishermen’s dialect. This was unfamiliar territory and I put the pen down. What was I going to do?
From somewhere the mysterious voice of the God of translation spoke to me: Dialect – Ear – Hear it – and that became the key to this translation.
Over the course of the next fortnight, I roped in my secretary Mini Kuruvilla, a Malayali, to read out the book to me. I heard the novel read rather than read it myself. A certain familiarity with the cadence grew into a natural ease. I heard it read again and then one day I was ready.
Thakazhi wrote his Chemmeen in eight days. It took me two years and at least four rewrites before I was satisfied to let it go. Over the two years it took to comple
te the translation, words and phrases that weren’t in Nigandu had to be deciphered. Help came from a friend in Trivandrum – V.S. Rajesh of Kerala Kaumudi. And then it was done.
It is ironic but most of the books that we consider to be the finest examples of contemporary writing are translations. Whether it is Marquez or Kundera, Grasse or Xingjian, what we have had access to are the translations of their works. Here is one more. A classic novel that no matter how many times you read it nudges your soul.
Chemmeen is a novel about forbidden love. It is also a novel that bares the seams of the mind of a fisherman who goes out into the sea. What brings him back to the shore? What causes him to lose his way? Chemmeen is about hopes and hopeless love. It is a story that lives long after the book is read. And reverberates in the mind just as the waves dash on the shore. Again and again.
Chemmeen That Gifted Me Both Good Fortune and Sorrow
K.K. Surendran, Kerala Kaumudi
The noble patriarch once said, ‘That there is a language called Malayalam and that it has a literary tradition is universally known. It was with Chemmeen though that a Malayalam novel first found its place among many other languages of the world. In fact, Chemmeen can certainly claim that honour. However, nobody need assume it is because of this that I consider Chemmeen to be the best novel written in Malayalam. It was one of those strange and happy quirks of destiny! Chemmeen changed my financial position for the better. Instead of that ramshackle hovel, the house came in its place. And I acquired some paddy fields.’
Chemmeen – the novel that brought Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai international acclaim and changed his life for good – was also the reason for much anguish in his later years. Like the end of that love story that was tainted by grief, the storyteller of Kuttanad who became the storyteller of the seashore too was haunted by sorrow.
Chemmeen Page 21
