The Coloured Curtain

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The Coloured Curtain

Author:

Subrabharathi Maniaan

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

The Coloured Curtain

(Translation of Novel Chayathirai)

Subrabharathimaniaan

Dedicated to

G. NAMMAZVAR

(Natural Farming Scientist)

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks to ‘Kaavya’ Shanmugasundaram, Peace Trust Paul Bhaskar. I also convey my hearty thanks to ‘Save’ Alloysiys and Dr. P. Raja.

This book is brought out with the financial assistance of PEACE TRUST (Dindigul, Tamil Nadu) an environment NGO working for Sustainable Development through Watershed Management, Dindigul District and Anti Water Pollution Campaigns in Karur, Erode and Coimbatore districts in Tamil Nadu. PEACE TRUST is also an advocacy organisation having consultative member status with United Nation’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

-- Subrabharathimanian

Review from ‘India Today’

In this age of advertisement, we are carried away by the illusion the colours create. Behind the rainbow of colours lies nothing but grief. Man who has created colours at the inspiration of nature suffers like a cat that saw a tiger and branded itself so as to be striped like the ferocious beast. Subrabharathimanian succeeded in moulding such sufferings to shape in his unforgettable, rather not to be forgotten novel. A thousand years ago the Buddhist monks who dyed their garments with the fallen pavazha malli flowers never destroyed nature. But today the craze for colours is destroying man, the noblest of creations and thereby eroding nature. Chayathirai brings to light such pathos.

Chayathirai is quite a significant novel in Modern Tamil Literature on the grounds that it is told artistically and that the treatment of its subject matter is quite new. In post-modernism, if the story progresses without giving the impression to the reader that it progresses, then that technique is known as ‘Spatial form’. Anecdotal in nature, they don’t seem to be inter-related. But as the curves and the lines join together to make a picture, the experiences of several characters put together make the reader read the mind of the writer. Since Subrabharathimanian has deftly handled such a technique, the novel touches us personally too and awakens our responsibilities.

Chayathirai is filled with sadness. As shreds of cotton fibre or smudges of dye are seen invariably on the physical frame of workers in the dye industries of Tirupur, distress too has a hold on them. The capitalists who exploit their sorrow are not brought to the scene at all. That’s well done. Had the author depicted that sort of controversy, many readers’ hearts would have broken. The only well-off characters in this novel are Chettiyar and Samiappan. Yet their life is not a bed of roses.

The lives of Bhaktavatchalam, Jothimani, Nagan, Chellamini and Periyannan remind us of a lovely short story Rappaccini’s Daughter by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Dr. Rappaccini has a garden of strange poisonous plants and shrubs for his experiments. His daughter Beatrice, who helps him in that garden, by nature, becomes the deadliest poison in existence. Now who will marry her? Only Giovanni, a student who was stung by the Eden of poisonous flowers can. That was the upshot of the Scientist’s experiment.

Tirupur, a part of India though, stands estranged like Rappaccini’s garden of deadly plants. And Subrabharathimanian’s novel is about Tirupur with the game of chess and the sick dog symbolic of life led there. Caste war, dowry menace, River Noeyal turning into a gutter, and a deep well converted into a mammoth garbage dump come out with a realistic portrayal. No wonder the drinking water has disappeared. In fact, nothing escapes the vigilant eyes of this Tirupur based writer. He sighs heavily as he looks at the plight of the poor children of the workers.

Rachel Carson’s explosive bestseller, Silent Spring, published in 1962 stunned the world with its terrifying revelations about our contaminated planet. She awakened the Western nations about the rapid changes in their environment and created awareness among the people. Subrabharathimanian has given us one such authentic and chilling portrait of the unseen destroyers. We hope the novel brings dawn in the life of the people of Tirupur.

Dr. Prema Nanda Kumar

(Critic)

Foreword

The very word Tirupur reminds us of the historically renowned perennial River Noeyal and the betel leaves, screw-pine flowers, a plethora of greens and vegetables that are cultivated on its banks that make this town famous, business wise. It resurrects the memory of Tirupur Kumaran, the freedom fighter who sacrificed his precious life just for the sake of safeguarding the national flag. The variety of woven fabrics that lure people and the newly sprung multi-coloured constructions too come to mind.

Brushing aside such attractive curtains, we peep in to see an altogether different world. River Noeyal is reduced to a gorgeously coloured gutter. The streets are polluted with waste let loose from dye industries. The banian mills that make human life pale into a game of chess in which kings, queens, knights, bishops and pawns are cut every second only to be thrown into their graves. Subrabharathimanian in the pages of his novel Chayathirai (Coloured Curtain) depicts such situations in turns.

This novel can’t boast of any story. There is not even a basic thread running through this novel. There is no singsong intonation. Nor does it show its characters in different moods. And all that one can see is the dead leaves dancing on wasteland to the tune of wind.

Considering Baktavatchalam who is not fortunate enough to get a suitable job for his qualification and so leads a life in death and a death in life existence with the city, as the central character in the novel, the unity of action resembles a thread half-eaten by moths. Though all the characters in the novel are associated with that character in one way or the other one feels that there is neither life in, nor hold on any such relationships. And these characters look like patches of dry grass on a dried-up land. This is the case with not only the characters but also with the dialogues, descriptions and imagery. They, in fact, resemble withered flowers lying on mounds of dry grass. Like the dead flowers on dry grass a sense of agony runs sparsely throughout the novel.

Like a polythene cup floating on the gutter of dye waste, Bhaktavatchalam exists with no hold on life. The novel begins with the entry of a foreign visitor, Maria Rosa by name, who takes keen interest in the degeneration of River Noeyal and ends with the child giggling at the illusion the hero, unable to make any progress in life, had created for himself by marrying a widow with a child, constructing a house with her money, and decorating the walls with pictures of thick forests. In short, the novel is a splendid polemic against our greed for wealth by polluting the natural sources of our country but finding delight in surrounding ourselves with the pictures of the lost beauty of Nature.

Jothimani is a wondrous woman of sort with a very good taste. She lives with Bhaktavatchalam without going into any agreement, leading a clandestine life stomaching all oppressions and suppressions.

Nagan is yet another character in this novel that struggles in vain all through his life to remove the stain his low birth had daubed on him. Since he takes a lot of interest in ‘kootthu’ (a form of street drama) he loses his job oft and on. The chair in which he is seated-guess what? It is highly symbolic of his life.

A Chettiyar is found moving in several pages of the novel. His legs being immobile, he moves his way on his buttocks and is one of those losers in Tirupur’s gambling way of life. Dirt and stink seem to be his eternal Companions. His children and grandchildren keep him at a distance. And all those who help him, do so purely for the sake of money he throws at them. Fed up with everything he hangs himself.

Sundari too dies by hanging. Young and beautiful, she is blessed with an excellent husband, Veluchani. Yet she commits suicide because she is disgusted with her husband infested with sores all over his body due to his nature of work in the dye industry.

This rubbish from the dye industry that made veluchami rot with sores dominates Tirupur. And this deadly poisonous waste that contaminated Tirupur, killed River Noeyal and got dammed up across the river has not spared even sugarcanes and tender coconuts. Unaware of the nature of this poison, children play by daubing it on their body to look clownish and be the butt of laughter. A cur that tastes the waste dies a pitiable death.

More is the pity when the parents send their children to the highly polluted industries knowing full well that they bring death to them. Kumar, is the representative of the younger generation that suffers from hair loss, loses the charm and colour of hands and thereby pushed to the verge of deterioration and destruction.

Saundi Amman, the angry goddess, pervades the contaminated township of Tirupur. Her wrath shows up in the ruins she brings on the society.

Clothing his novel with such tidbits, images and eyewitness reports, Subrabharathimanian portrays the reality of life in Tirupur pleasantly covered with a coloured curtain. He excels in the depiction of sorrow page after page by throwing light on illusion and reality, life and death, beauty and rubbish by tearing open the colourful curtain.

The past glory of River Noeyal and its present deterioration are splendidly written and it is quite differently done. It is remarkable that a uniform tone of depiction is maintained throughout the novel. Be it the portrayal of hunger or gluttony, love or disappointment, rise or fall the voice and the feeling too are one and the same. It bears testimony to the fact that the author’s vibrations to art are quite sound and mature.

This novel without a plot or a story or even a hero can be classified as post-modern fiction for it talks about marginal men. What actually takes the cake is Subra Bharathimanian’s way of putting things. He makes the reader feel with all his senses and this technique of clarity is laudable. No borrowings, no translations--a real work of art indeed. Spun with the yarn, an offspring of Modernism and Realism, this novel has nothing to hide or puzzle or make the reader exclaim.

Several layers make up a soceity. Writers can peel it as if it is an onion but with care, of course and show it to the world by making them come to life in their pages. They can patch it either lengthwise or breadthwise. Some would like to show it slope wise... upside down or downside up, according to one’s whim. Subra Bharathimanian has successfully peeled off a layer rotten at the core, given a different shape, painted it and displayed it for the public to see. A remarkable fete indeed.

Ponneelan

(Sahitya Akademi Award Winner)

Prelude

Subrabharathimanian’s novel Chayathirai is an expert cameraman’s view of the life that goes on under his very nose. The characters come alive in all their passions, appetites, delusions and deceptions. The novelist has a deft touch with dialogue. His prose is clear, spare and lucid. A solid work of art that will certainly stand the test of time. An unputdownable book that brings to mind the great French classics like Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and Germinal by Emile Zola. This novel’s devastating attack on human carelessness, greed and irresponsibility will linger with the reader long after he has completed reading it.

P. Raja

(Professor and Freelancer)

1

Bakthavatchalam somehow had a feeling that the plane instead of landing was purposely circling in the veritably pale sky. It was not flying very far from him to visualise its shape. And that gave him a sense of satisfaction.

He stretched himself on the lawn and closed his eyes. Sleep hugged him... for a few seconds at least. When he opened his eyes, a doubt crept into his mind. Was it the same plane? If ‘same’, then something was wrong somewhere. And that was what he felt.

As he rolled to his left, he saw a couple of fellows sitting close by him and playing dice. The one clad in khaki extinguished the embers of his bidi end on the grass. His hand’s span long hair that reached his shoulders glistened. Sahib Bombay flight arrived? The man who extinguished the embers looked up for a second at the blue turned sky. Not yet. The plane was out of sight now. With the flooding of heaven’s light, the sky turned pale. What flight is that, Sir, that arrived now? The one who rolled the dice looked at Bakthavatchalam. Oh! That’s NEPC. It’s taking off.

Bombay Flight?

Yet to come.

He laid himself on his back looking up at the sky once again. The shade under the small neem tree was just enough to accommodate him and the dice players. A little anthill that stood close by the tree looked covered with turmeric paste. Kumkum powder lay scattered on the grass and the mixture of turmeric and kumkum made him pull back his left leg. Just two rolls away from him lay a dried up ball of shit which he wanted to kick away from sight even before he laid himself on the lawn. It was really sickening to see it there. The fact that nobody took note of it really sprang a surprise in him.

As he sat up someone gave a sharp kick to a dog that passed by and sent it howling all the way. Half of the taxis had disappeared. He thought that the landed passengers should have engaged them. Empty trolleys parked in rows stood braving the heat of the sun. And the doors fitted with sun glasses stood like huge barriers.

The thought of his plastic bag flashed across his mind and that gave him a jolt. He moved his left hand to his back and fished for it. He found it and it made a crinkling sound. He pulled out a towel from it and mopped his face. Streaks of dirt settled on the towel. He hurriedly searched for the placard inside the bag. WELCOME MISS MARIA ROSA. Written in blue ink the letters sparkled. Oh! In somebody else’s hand, the placard would have become a plaything. Some clever guy could have used it as a bait to kidnap her. As his imagination ran riot, his heart throbbed.

He collected himself up and dusted off the back of his shirt in a hurry. A cyclist lifted a big box off his bicycle with great difficulty and placed it along with the other boxes. Another cyclist too had one such box on his bicycle. Sweating profusely, he was waiting for his turn to unload his vehicle. It was really surprising