The Hindu Business Line : <I>For better or verse </I>

If anyone cares to tarry for a few minutes at the A.H. Wheeler bookstall at Churchgate station, he could catch up on the population mix of Mumbai. The Tamil from Chennai and the hybrid from Palghat will ask for Ananda Vikatan or Kumudam magazine; the Malayali from Kerala will pick up his Manorama, Mathrubhumi or Mangalam; the Bengali will want his Desh and so it goes. At home, my 82-year-old mother and my wife wait anxiously for the latest editions of Tamil and Malayalam magazines. It was the same in Kolkata where one grew up. A cousin would rush every Friday evening to Lake Market to grab a copy of Pesum Padam, the popular film magazine. Since the 1950s (if not earlier), Ananda Vikatan, Kalki and Kumudam have been constant features of Tamils outside Tamil Nadu; it looks as if Kalaimagal, a favourite of my parents, is no more while one is not sure of Pesum Padam.

More than the regular issues, readers waited for the special, bulky Deepavali numbers with their killer dose of gods, temples and religious texts. "Andha kalam, andha kalam than. Ippo verum velai than irrukku; quality illai (Those were the days. Now magazines have only a price badge; no quality)," is the refrain in Tamil of my mother even as she continues to read the wild stories and statements of Tamil filmstars in Ananda Vikatan and Kalki. "Kalaimagal of Ke Vaa Jagannathan has a literary flavour," my father used to contend. He built a library of bound volumes of old issues, which were never lent to anyone. For a Tamil based in faraway Delhi or Mumbai, every issue of Ananda Vikatan or any other magazine brings back the half-tones and colours of times spent in Triplicane or Mylapore in Chennai. My cousin Ganesh, brought up in Triplicane and now living in Malad, feels restless without them and the vintage Tamil films screened on Tamil TV channels.

One has been an off and on reader and learnt of writer Jayakanthan from reading Kumudam and that led one to read a few of his novels and short stories. Jayakanthan has a journalistic style (reminding one of Maugham) and is one of the first few Tamil writers who dumped gods and goddesses to write interesting memos on the Tamil middle class. In recent times, these magazines have little to offer and one has to search for books to get a view.

Recently, one came across a book by Bama, a Tamil Dalit writer. Sangati — Events, translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmstrom, is a raw book as unrefined, cruel and violent as the lives of poor Dalits (especially women). Bama has a dry, brutal style refusing the reader any ease. The book is of human beings presumed absent from Indian sensibility — political, economic and otherwise. They do not even have a folk presence.

Bama writes a wrenching piece on a little girl, Maikkanni. "There's a little girl called Maikkanni who lives in the house next to mine. A bright-eyed child, smart as anything. She is 11 years old, but is so small and shrunken, if you saw her you'd take her for seven or eight. She is the eldest child in their house; there are five younger children, three boys and two girls... The day Maikkanni learnt to walk, she started to work as well... From the time she woke up, she sprinkled the front yard with water and swept it, and then carried on with all the housework: swept the rest of the house, scrubbed the cooking pots, collected water, washed clothes, gathered firewood, went to the shops, cooked the kanji. She did it all, one after the other... It was Maikkanni who brought up all the five children who were born after her mother delivered them into the world and could do no more. Just as soon as one child began to walk, she was ready to deliver the next."

I wanted to shout out these stories. - BAMA

At one place Bama says: "I wanted to shout out these stories." Not that it will help; an India growing at 8 per cent GDP has no time to waste on Maikkanni and many like her. In her intro Lakshmi admits: "And the ideals Bama admires and applauds in Dalit women are not the traditional Tamil feminine ideals of accham (fear), naanam (shyness), madam (simplicity, innocence), payirppu (modesty), but rather courage, fearlessness, independence and self-esteem."

A second engrossing book which one read a couple of times is Tamil New Poetry (Twentieth century Tamil poets), translated by Dr K.S. Subramanian. The poems are crisp and contemporary, like a packet of `Kurkure'. Kanimozhi precisely states the theme of the collection: "I do not need/Heaven in my grasp/All I am used to/Is this earth." A few lines by N. Arivumathi in "Party Workers" could yet be the best comment on the ongoing assembly elections: "Converting one into/ten/hundred/thousand/lakh/crore/We perform the magic/We are the zeros."

I do not need
Heaven in my grasp
All I am used to
Is this earth. - KANIMOZHI

In "Sivakasi", Ira Murugan briefly tents the scene: "Meal-cans in a corner/Lines drawn under street lamps/Little girls at play/ An old rubber ball/Being bounced/Against poster-plastered wall/By a little boy... And the bus roared in." Only the empty road remains.

Poet Tapasi in "Revelation" has a fresh look at Buddha: "Like Siddhartha — /I cannot/Run away at midnight/Leaving behind my wife and child... Third problem/But,/The most important — /If I leave by night/Where do I find/ A toilet in the morning?