Echoes of the Veena and other Stories

 

"Each one’s experience is their truth. There are as many truths as there are people in this world. Can we deny this?” 

A world of difference exists between the minuscule truth we know and the larger, prevalent one. That the piece of land we stand on, as far as our eyes can see, is flat doesn’t mean the Earth is flat. The author, R Chudamani, points out this difference in her stories, waking us up from a deep slumber with her words that are a gentle but firm nudge. 

In her stories here, she focuses mainly on women - single, widowed at a very young age, abandoned by their husbands, ones who haven't given birth but brim with motherly love and ones forced to surrender their dreams at the sacrificial altar called ‘marriage’. She writes about men who treat women with empathy & men who choose to keep them under their firm diktat.

That children and the differently-abled get a vivid representation in this collection is noteworthy. The emotional turmoil & boredom of a 13 yr old girl who’s forced to quit school to take care of her infant brother, the loneliness that scars the life of a little girl who yearns for her parents, the relief of a maid’s young daughter on seeing a bathroom attached to her little quarters are palpable in stories here. 

The eponymous, visually-impaired character in 'My Name is Madhavan' clearly values his dignity more than feeling grateful for 'free' pity. Be it a 20-yr old young man whose disability confines him to bed or a 2-yr old child who hasn't fulfilled the normal growth and development milestones, the author elicits from us sincere empathy for these characters and not just shallow sympathy. 

Priests who serve the Lord but ruminate if he exists really, who bathe the Lord daily but realize it’s man who needs cleansing to remove the grime of caste-ist notions and social taboos, devout passion for language, literature and music make this collection wholesome.

The author's stories are set in simple times when plastic spoons strung together worked as a baby rattle and when neighbors in different 'portions' of a house set aside their differences to watch a Sunday movie together on the only TV available that belonged to their landlord. 

Could one attain fulfillment in life only as a wife, husband, mother or child? Could not one attain fulfillment as an Akka, elder sister? Is marriage the only reason for a woman to be happy? Why cant we say visually challenged, hearing disabled or speech disabled rather than deaf, blind and dumb?, these are some of the important questions the author raises in her stories. An article in The Hindu (titled Loss of a Crest Jewel published after the author's demise) penned by the author's close friend and eminent writer Ambai helps us understand more about her, why she chose to delve more on select themes in her stories.  

Simple pleasures, endless tragedies, ordinary lives of men, women and children are rendered with an extraordinary sensitivity in 18 stories in this collection. A keen eye for subtle differences between what the eyes express and the lips utter is evident in many stories. The pithy writing has grace and simplicity stamped all over it and Prabha Sridevan's brilliant translation enriches our reading experience. 

Each story here is of the 'right' length imparting a complete sense of satisfaction. Echoes of the Veena and other stories published by Ratna Books is a collection that's every bit beautiful, from a writer (true to her name) who's truly a bright jewel of Tamil literature.