Palm Lines

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PALM LINES

Author:

SUBRABHARATHI MANINAN

Translated from Tamil by

P. RAMGOPAL

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Table Of Contents

Foreword

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

Dedicated to

Pu.AA. Ravindran Ayya

Foreword

The writing written by TIME

R. Murugavel.

Writer and Advocate, Coimbatore.

Realistic writing is of two types. One reflects the life as it is! In this kind of writing, the trials and tribulations of the individual, the problems of various relationships, and incidents alone are portrayed. Such writings describe only particular incidents. That’s why writers of this type of concentrate on improving their skills and the nuances of their writing. Such writings play an important role in moving the language to the next stage.

The other type of realistic writing analyses the incidents in the background of political and economic developments. Here, the writer travels beyond portraying the real incidents and searches for the reasons. He delves deep into the period he has taken for his portrayal, its geography, the mindset of the characters etc., and then puts his remarks as literature. Here the incidents are not considered as isolated. They are rather considered as part of the social development and its aftereffects. Even human sentiments are considered as the results of particular environments. The emotions we get in a situation of riots and rebellions, we cannot get in an agitation or fasting that is conducted after getting permission. Therefore, the emotions are the children of the environment. In this type of writing, the environment is given more importance than the individual! Such writings are the treasure of social history!

Subrabharathi Manian is one among those who introduced this a type of writing to Tamil. One section of the society worships the modern factories as temples. Yet another section, considers them as situations ripe for an agitation or rebellion for rights.

Subrabharathi Manian is the first to see beyond these and to discover its effects on this soil with a keen sense. Today, literature that portrays with an eye on environment has an undeniable place!

But before the dawn of this realisation, his novel Coloured Curtain came out!

That novel gave a foresight of the devastation the river Noyyal was about face and the Orathupalayam dam that was soon to become an acid dam!

After that, Subrabharathi Manian continuously writes about Tirupur, its environment and social background.

The Tirupur city was built by roguish capitalists! Anybody, with some money, can go there and start some factory. He can take back lorry loads of money. or he may lose all his money and become insolvent and then may join some banian factory! From all parts of India, different types of people- jobless fishermen, farmers, yadhavas come here. They return in bunches! Tirupur belongs to everybody and at the same time, it belongs nobody! The established rules of society, towns and villages, the relationship between man and woman all go astray here! Mmm… Dollar City!

This style of living is now spreading everywhere in Tamil Nadu! Rekai

¹ is the story of a village in the banks of the Muruga (now Shanmuga) river at the feet of the Palani hill! It’s filled with astrologers who have their own rules and regulations; they are the dominant community there! Many people from far off places come here and stay overnight to have their horoscopes interpreted!

Time turns the villages upside down! Globalization makes life go astray! Agriculture has changed; nobody cares to learn through his mother tongue now! The Muruga River has become a ditch. Its children migrate to Tirupur, Coimbatore and Chennai! At the same time, people from Bihar and Odisha come here to work in cane-fields. Computer astrology has landed. Caste, religion, police, sex worker Parameswari, all have become inseparable parts of the village!

Subbaiah, who conducts plays on the evils of society, is a strange but unavoidable character. This character which evokes pity in our hearts, has been drawn beautifully. He is a man of exceptional talent who has to live away from his wife and children for political reasons. He suffers in poverty. He would not compromise with the N.G.O. Yet, he uses his skills. It’s a compromise he does without knowing that it’s a compromise! This is what happens to most intellectuals. It’s a life that could find no way to move forward, a life that was languishing in projects without any support from the parties- what a sort of progressive life! The compromise did not give him anything!

His days pass on with his dream of taking a short film. Somu wants to clean the river.

He is a good ‘antidote’ to Subbaiah! It shows that the next generation wants to take up social responsibilities voluntarily.

Gopal stands in direct contrast to Subbaiah! Fake currency making or counterfeiting, a shop in Tirupur and another in Chennai-he seizes whatever opportunities he gets! His compromises know no bounds.

We can meet in this novel everybody whom we meet every day in Kongu Towns: Amalam is a hard worker; the Christian missionary; the church that conducts special prayers for those who go for Haj…the women labourers in the camps etc!

We can’t say that this novel is a realistic one in toto! As it passes over time and in its explanations of relationships, it takes a non-linear direction. That suits well with the mystical colour of the village which sits at the foothills of Palani and with the characters who take up horoscope-reading for their livelihood! The films that are released from time to time, have been mentioned by the author, as a technique to make the reader understand in what time he travels.

In short, the novel is a cross-section of our times. The way in which the real characters are blended in the novel, makes one feel that it travels between fiction and reality! At the same time, the writer has skilfully handled the ‘real’ characters like Samiappan who wears no shirt and Kousalya!

In Tamil Nadu it is very difficult to draw a fiction with social consciousness. If research records on camp-labourers, casteism and North Indian labourers here, are available, then the writer can draw the material from them for his work. But when such things are not available, the writer has to do the research himself including field work. Such work requires somebody with multiple talents, an insatiable hunger for hard work and a penetrating insight! Only such a writer can produce something that reflects the true nature of society!

Subrabharathi Manian has done it again and has done it well!

***

1. The title of the original Tamil version.

1

The ash had painted the walls of that room in grey, anew. The remains of the burnt objects looked like the three sacred lines of the holy ash on the forehead of a deeply religious man. The burnt books and magazines had made the ash thicker. The right corner of the house hosted some burnt, blackened sticks. They protruded through the dense smoke. All most all the furniture had been burnt and looked like pieces of charcoal. The sticky remains of a melted plastic chair stuck strongly on the floor.

The police officer touched the remains of the melted plastic chair with a thick stick. Like the chewing gum that was spit from the mouth, a bit of plastic stuck onto the tip of the stick. When he lifted the stick, the bit of the plastic paste extended downwards like the thin line of saliva from a child’s mouth.

What’s this? Did they burn with petrol? Otherwise, there will not be this much damage! the officer asked his assistants.

May be sir! Everything must have been pre-planned. Once they have decided to burn, they would have come with petrol, one of them replied.

You may be correct! Now a days, from where one could get kerosene. But petrol is easily available… They would have bought it, brought it with them and burnt. With petrol, everything burns slowly and becomes ash completely!

Everything is melted in the fire! Whether it’s the GREAT LIGHT or the fire that is seen on a small hill, that’s the question!

He took a hand kerchief from his pant-pocket and covered the lower portion of his face. As he stirred the ‘vestiges’ of fire, ash powder and bits of paper spread out.

"All get melted in the fire of casteism -that’s the big problem! As long as one’s identification marks of caste are unknown, he remains a human being! Once they are visible, people become beasts. They start behaving beastly and are thirsty for