PRAISE FOR SUNDARA RAMASWAMY

A classic of modern Tamil literature by Sundara Ramaswamy, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Toronto (2001) and the Katha Chudamani Award (2004)

“Reading Sundara Ramaswamy is like negotiating a minefield. Step on his stories, and something goes off inside your head. Not many can match the sheer thematic and stylistic range of his work and the enduring nature of his vision. Compelling and delightful, his stories have a strong feel for humor.”

—The Hindu

“SuRaa pushed boundaries in both style and substance and was a master practitioner of the craft.”

—“Nine Indian Authors Who Should Have Won the Nobel,” Swarajya

“Perhaps, Ramaswamy’s greatest accomplishment in writing a book of this nature is the fact that by the end, JJ becomes more an obsession of the mind; a wishful precedence takes over and you are left holding a void that Ramaswamy has conjured out of sheer imagination, the modernism from all of which is justification enough to read, reread, and read more of this wonderful writer.”

—Firstpost on JJ: Some Jottings

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 1966 by Kamala Ramaswamy

Translation copyright © 2022 by Aniruddhan Vasudevan

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Previously published as (Oru Puliyamarathin Kathai) by Tamil Puthakalayamin India in 1966, revised and published by Kalachuvadu Editions in India in 2001. Translated from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, based on the 2001 edition. The text was edited by Tashan Mehta working with Aniruddhan Vasudevan and in consultation with the author’s children Thaila Ramanujam and S. R. Sundaram (Kannan).

Published by Amazon Crossing, Seattle

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Crossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542034586 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781542020657 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 9781428519367 (digital)

Cover design by David Drummond

Cover illustrated by Muhammed Sajid

First edition

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

1

1.

While it lived, the tamarind tree stood at the junction of three roads.

In front of it was a cement road that ran twelve miles to the south before vanishing into Cape Comorin, eager for a dip in the ocean. The second road, to the north, stretched past Thiruvananthapuram and Mumbai, perhaps all the way to the Himalayas, perhaps beyond that as well—after all, any place where mankind leaves a trail of footprints is a path, yes? The third road came from the west and split into two around the tamarind tree, before merging with the cement road. Who knows where this western path originated? In fact, isn’t it simply the case that all roads begin at one coast and end at another? Then, in the middle, how can we talk of beginnings and ends? In truth, there were no roads that did not eventually lead to the tamarind tree.

It was quite an old tree and certainly looked it. From a distance, it looked like a hunched old woman with puffs of cotton for hair, her vision clouded over, and who, having transcended her desires, was now immersed in the hidden depths of her own bliss. When I first arrived in this town as a boy, the bus dropped me off at this tamarind tree. At the time, the junction was a busy market, full of rows of shops with every marvel. From salt to camphor, from the proverbial tiger’s milk to elephant tusk, there was nothing that was not available! You could hold an engagement ceremony in the evening and conduct the wedding the very next morning, fully relying on these shops to supply everything you need in time. And in the center of it all was the tamarind tree—tall, proud, stately. How beautiful it looked that day, its canopy like hundreds of floating green umbrellas pulled together and held in place by a single rope. The whole scene had a glorious sense of harmony to it, of perfection, as if creation was pleased with its work.

Now the tree is gone. I firmly believe—and you may disagree—that no matter what we replace the tree with, no matter what wonderful new human invention we put in that spot, our town has lost its allure. Perhaps if we had left the tree alone, it would still be alive today, living in quiet dignity. But man, with his greed and chest-thumping bravado, killed it. How it happened is a story that is still fresh in our minds and will stay forever in our hearts. Some tales are impossible to forget.

Today—even though the tree no longer stands at the junction—cars, carts, and people still circle around the spot. They move around an absence. They must keep this up, if only in the interest of their own safety; otherwise, they’ll collide with one another and create disaster. This is the tree’s lesson for our town. But even those who have learned the lesson might feel embarrassed to admit it . . .

If you think about it, what crime did the tamarind tree commit? It only stood there, bearing witness to mankind’s endless games. Did it actively participate in any? Did it care to? What did it do besides bear witness to man’s laughter and tears and see how tears sometimes expressed themselves in laughter; or watch his selfishness or sacrifice and see how selfishness was mixed up with his sacrifice; or observe his jealousies and resentments and see how both of these were born out of love? In what way did it wrong humankind? Did it point fingers at anyone? Did it ingratiate itself to anyone? Did it conspire with anybody against anybody? It came to life on its own and was self-reliant in its growth. Leaves unfurled, then flowers blossomed, and then fruits appeared in such abundance that they hid the leaves from view. Old leaves fell to carpet the ground and merge with it, nourishing the tree that gave birth to them, becoming one with it. The tree’s arms reached for the sky. Its roots wandered deep into the earth. It lived a simple life of contentment.

But when man is willing to gamble his country, money, women, power, and fame in his many games, why would he leave a mere tamarind tree alone? So he bet on it too and played one hell of a game.

This is the story of the tamarind tree’s life and death.

Damodara Asan was at least eighty years old, but he claimed he was sixty-three. He did not want anyone to think, Oh! He looks strong for an eighty-year-old. Sixty-three, however, was believable. This man was immaculate. Even at his age, he could see well enough to thread a needle. Husking a hundred coconuts at a stretch posed him no challenge. Completing his daily five-mile walk was a breeze. His shoulders bulged out like palmyra fruits. Curly dark hair spread across the ridges of his wide back and chest and on the arm muscles that tapered toward his wrists.

He would often hold out his arm and say: “Here, try bending it. I challenge you. Any of you, come on, any of you old enough to have sprouted a mustache!” One by one, we’d hang from it, hoping to bend it. When it was my turn, he’d tease, “Oh, here comes the Brahmin boy, all resolved to bend my arm. Oh! He is going to crush it for sure. Aaaahhh! Sir, this is not a piece of spinach stem you are trying to bend!” I’d try and try, but I would always give up in the end, exhausted.

Asan was a philosopher, but nobody called him that during his lifetime. Humanism was his preferred ideology. He often used to say: “It is man who is Brahma; it is man who is Vishnu; it is man who is Shiva. There is no god beyond man—I do not believe in any power beyond humanity.” We never paid much attention to his sayings; we did not really concern ourselves with philosophy. The only people we feared were our fathers, teachers, and the police.

Still, we idolized Asan. We followed him around like shadows, swarming around him, spending all our time with him. No father could bring himself to like Damodara Asan. No young man could dislike him. At home we were scolded for hanging around with Asan, and our teachers were visibly upset about it. Some nights, when we came home late after chatting with him, our families refused to open the doors, and we had to sleep on the front steps. Yet, enchanted, we always met him the next day.

There was a reason for our infatuation with Damodara Asan; it was not as if he had bewitched us with some magic potion. He was an incredible storyteller. How could one person carry around so many stories? So many stories, and such strange characters! With such crooked and twisted natures! We would listen to him for hours. Then, when we came home and slept, the thousand characters from his tales would rise up to dance in our minds. Asan’s voice would whisper in our dreams.

And so each day after secondary school, we’d rush home, fling our books aside, and by five o’clock we’d all be walking down Asaripallam Road. That was where Joseph’s laundry shop was in those days. Asan would be there too, sitting on a bench in front of the shop. He would always be in the same position. His staff—six feet long, thick as a club, steel-capped at the end—would be planted between his legs. His hands would be wrapped over one end, which came to a good two feet above his head, and the other end would be sunk three inches into the dust.

The moment he saw us, Asan would get up and start walking, his veshti folded so high that anyone could see his loincloth from behind. He never spoke when he walked. We followed him obediently, entertaining ourselves with idle chitchat.

We’d walk two miles down the road to the ruins of an old mandapam where they used to hang murderers in the olden days. The place still had this aura of a bygone era, as if we had leaped across half a century in just two miles. We often came across a madwoman there, always standing still, poised as if to jump into a swimming pool. She seemed to live in that mandapam.

Asan would sit in front of these ruins, and we’d arrange ourselves in a semicircle around him. Then one of us would humbly offer Asan a packet we’d purchased on the way and kept ready. Two stacks of Ittamozhi betel leaf, a dozen or so betel nuts, and two wads of Jaffna’s Number One tobacco. Asan would chew the betel, spit it out, and glance around. Then, finally, with some unnecessary theatrics and grunts, he’d clear away the tobacco juice lingering in his throat. This meant that a story was about to start.

But Asan’s stories never began in that well-worn style of our grandmothers. He never said: “Long, long ago, in a faraway land, there was a king . . .” Oh no. Asan had mastered the art of storytelling. He knew all its tricks and techniques. After staring intently at a nearby plant, he would say: “Does any of you know what plant that is?”

We’d peer at it, frowning.

“You don’t know, do you? Hmph! I can tell from those stupid looks on your faces. All right. Crush two leaves in the palms of your hands and take a sniff. What does it smell like? Doesn’t it smell the way new clothes stuffed in a coir basket for a long time do?”

We’d gape, awestruck. What a perfect description!

“You see,” Asan said, leaning closer, “it was with this leaf that the wretched woman killed her husband. How could a woman bring herself to do such a thing? But then she had dared to desire another man. It wasn’t that her husband was disabled. Or hunchbacked. Or blind. Or that he had found another woman on the side. Every harvest, give or take, he got no less than a hundred sacks of rice. He had enough to eat and entertain; every day at least a hundred banana leaves were thrown into the trash in his backyard. If you let his cattle out, it’d take half an hour to vacate the cowshed. One day he went to the Vadaseri market to find some bullocks for his cart, and he got two bullocks as sturdy as Arabian horses. He also bought some flowers for that damned woman to wear on her head. He thought she was offering him some milk to drink, that’s why he drank it. He vomited blood twice.” Asan leaned back. “End of story.”

This was how Asan set up his stories. Then he’d start chewing on betel leaves again. He was like a conjurer who offered a teaser, promising to show something thoroughly beyond our expectations, before he laid out his paraphernalia and got ready for the trick.

Later, the story would start from the poisoner’s childhood. Her village, the people who had lived there, their relationship patterns, land ownership, marriage—all these details would be filled in. Just when the story got tense, he’d stop and chew his betel leaves again. We’d be left floundering, caught in the story, desperate to hear more.

Then the bell of the nearby parsonage would strike ten, and we’d realize how late it was. It was as if the bell’s clapper had grown longer and was striking blow after blow on top of our heads, bringing us back to our senses. Home, mother, father, school, tests . . . Off we would run, back to our lives.

Damodara Asan is no more; he died even before the tamarind tree was destroyed. No one can tell stories like Asan did—one can only try. We heard all the old stories about the tamarind tree from him. He described what the area around the tamarind tree looked like fifty years ago, and what a glorious transformation had occurred since then. He took great pride in the fact that he had seen all those old sights, things we’d never see. How envious we were; we would have done anything to see those old places he described! Damodara Asan was indeed a very fortunate man. Yet we were lucky enough to know him. If we’d been born a few years later, we might never have heard any of these wondrous stories about our town and the early life of the tamarind tree. After all, historians don’t write about tamarind trees. So perhaps we were fortunate too.

In those days, the tamarind tree was surrounded by a pond they simply called “the tamarind pond.” Stagnant water reached down to incredible depths. At the pond’s center, on ground that rose up like the back of a bathing elephant, was the tamarind tree, standing majestically with its incredible expanse of canopy and nodding its head. The little island-like mound was very narrow, just wide enough for two teams to stand close together and play a game of kabaddi. A little to the south of the tamarind pond were casuarina trees, swaying with a ghostly frenzy. They were so numerous and packed so densely that it was impossible to separate and hold a single tree in our minds. This casuarina grove was where local dawdlers went for their naps. To the east, lush paddy fields stretched all the way up to the point where the sky reached down to stop their advance.

Since there was water all year round in the tamarind pond, it was a convenient place for people’s morning ablutions. But since moss spread over the surface of the pond like lotus leaves, there was not much of a stench. Still, the pond was mostly bereft of people for the rest of the day. Only curly-tailed pigs grazed happily. Back then, the main road was two miles away from the tamarind tree, winding through a longer route to its various destinations, so the area saw very few travelers as well.

But once the rains came and the grass grew lush and green, the cattle arrived to graze. The herding boys would drive them into the pond and give them a thorough wash, rubbing them with tender care. Then they’d drive the cows back onto land, and the boys would head straight for the tamarind tree. The elephant-like island mound would come alive with games, fights, and arguments. When twilight began to fade into night, they’d head back to town.

“Young girls didn’t dare to head in that direction, not even by chance,” Asan told us. “Old women came to gather cow dung, and little kids came. But not young women. They wouldn’t even dream of being anywhere near the pond in those days.”

“Why?” one of the boys asked in pompous Tamil. “Was it because sturdy young men waited there, ready to aim their arrows of love?”

“Nonsense! Earlier, everyone came to the pond. There was nothing unusual about it. But once they came to know what happened to Kaliappan’s daughter, Chellathayi, how could any woman dare to go there? A man showed up . . . No one knew where he was from, no one knew his name—in fact, no one had even seen his face. He dragged her by the arm, laid her down under the tree, and . . .”

Asan’s story had begun. He’d told this same story many times before, and we’d all heard it, but we never got bored. He was ready to tell it again, and we were ready to listen to the story of Chellathayi and the moonlight stranger.

On her way home after a day of planting in the fields, Chellathayi fell out with her girlfriends over something trivial. She broke off from them and took the shortcut by the edge of the pond. It was the night of the full moon. The place looked enchanting. The pond was full to the brim after the heavy rains the night before, and the water lapped against the banks in little waves.

Chellathayi’s excitement knew no bounds. She waded into the pool up to her knees and swirled the water joyously with her hands. She cupped water in her palms and poured it over her face. She took a mouthful and spat it out, as far as she could. She felt a sudden urge to have a proper bath, so she ventured farther. There was no one around as far as she could see. Right in front of her, a low-hanging branch of the tamarind tree sliced the moon in two. She savored this sight as she enjoyed her bath, making herself quite comfortable by removing her clothes.

Only when she began to shiver, her body having gone as cool as a banana stem, did she realize how long she’d been there. “Just one more plunge,” she murmured, taking another dip. As she lifted her face above the surface of the water, she saw the tamarind tree in front of her. Even though the tree had always been there, and even though she was fully aware of this, she still found it incredible that a lone tamarind tree should be standing on a mound that looked like the back of a giant, sleeping elephant. She felt a sudden urge to swim up to the tree and back. So she slid deep into the water and started swimming.

When she stopped at a spot closer to the tree and looked around, she felt as if she had arrived at a distant and unfamiliar land. The casuarina trees swayed madly in the wind. Far off in the distance, the very field in which she had toiled from dawn to dusk now looked like a green shawl that had slipped from the shoulders of a hurried passerby. Her gaze drank in the landscape. She laughed in delight. Stretching her arms high over her head, she let the water trail down her body.

Then, suddenly, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned in alarm. A tall, powerfully built man stood there. He wore his hair in a knot at the back. Studs in his ears. A silk shirt. And his arms were long enough to reach his knees.

Her arms crossed and covered her chest. She couldn’t speak. She stood, frozen. He gazed into her eyes for a few lingering moments. Then he walked toward her confidently, taking his time, and lifted her up as if he were lifting a child, carried her over to a spot beneath the tree, laid her down, and fell on top of her.

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