Books: Backwaters Epic

COIR
BY THAKAZHI SIVASANKAR PILLAI
TRANSLATED BY N SREEKANTAN NAIR
SAHITYA AKADEMI ; PRICE: RS. 275

All through his life as a writer, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai was engaged in a battle -- with himself. The socially conscious chronicler of history crossed swords with the despairing dreamer in him. Whenever the chronicler won -- and that was the case more often than not -- it was to the chagrin of the readers. But when the dreamer won, it was a moment to rejoice.

For over six decades, with 37 novels and 500 stories, Pillai has been capturing the social and political turmoils that have shaped the modern state of Kerala. He is gifted with a sharp observation and an awakened memory. His language is so starkly realistic that it is peeled to its bones.

The novel, set in Kuttanad, is built in nine parts, with 139 chapters and over a hundred characters spread over 736 pages. It is the collective story of a people. The main character of the first part, the classifier, resembles, in more than one aspect, the author himself. The classifier from Thiruvananthapuram arrived in Kuttanad to record the land and properties and other assets of the people. Painstakingly he accomplished the task. In the same manner, Pillai classified the events of two centuries with mathematical precision. Not only the collapse of the matrilineal system and the social-reform movement initiated by Sree Narayana Guru, but also the freedom struggle, Partition, the communist movement, the land reforms and even the distant thunder of World War II are captured in the vast spectrum of the novel.

If Pillai had come out of his shell for a while and blissfully strayed into the realm of dreams, Coir would have been what it claims to be -- a magnum opus. The late N. Sreekantan Nair may have been a revolutionary socialist but as a translator he hardly creates a stir. Even the semblance of imagery and lyricism found in the original version is missing in the translation.

AUTHORSPEAK:JEET THAYIL
Soulful Verse: An urban poet soldiers on with his desolate themes

Poetry is a difficult art. Few practise it. Even fewer read it. That could be why even in his second collection of verse, Apocalypso, released late last year by London-based publishers Aark Arts, Jeet Thayil comes through as an urban cynic, partly angst-ridden, partly a desolate man writing of "People dying in circles.../People die. That's what they do".

Born in Kerala, educated in Hong Kong, New York and Mumbai, Thayil, 37, worked as a journalist, a copywriter with an advertising agency and as a professional musician playing the Blues with rock bands in Mumbai clubs before finding hope in poetry. His first collection of verses, Gemini (1992) -- which also includes poems by Vijay Nambisan -- earned him a reputation as a budding poet and "a handsome royalty" of a few hundred rupees. "The market for poetry is so minuscule, it can be fitted on a pinhead," says Thayil with a cynical shrug of his shoulders.

So what urges him on? "Poetry resolves that chaos within myself," he says. Maybe it does. And of course, it could be the larger glory of being seen as a man who can rise above the mundane chores and pen a few couplets that will soothe the soul. But what soothes the soul does not really suit the publishers. Poetry does not sell and even the few publishers who were willing to put their money on verse now simply shrug their shoulders. Undeterred, Thayil soldiers on, perhaps because of the "ritual comfort of a daily habit" or the sheer pleasure of residing in ethereal realms. His third collection, the 10-poem Creation, has been sent out on a journey in search of a publisher. "Earlier people published poetry to gain respectability or to offset profits derived from the best-sellers on their list," he says. Before the release of Apocalypso, Thayil toured the United Kingdom, including Edinburgh and Cambridge. "Unfortunately, poetry does not attract readership," he says.

When he is not writing poetry, Thayil works as the literary editor for the monthly magazine Gentleman and writes a weekly column titled "India Today" for the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper. "I am in journalism only to pay the bills because there is no money in poetry. But poetry is the one thing that always stops me from being unhappy."

-- Nandita Chowdhury