Cold Enough for Snow

 

"I had one vague, exhausted thought that perhaps it was all right not to understand all things, but simply to see and hold them".

When an author writes what you have been thinking about, you get a little friendlier with the author, and the book begins to feel extra nice. 

Possibly as a loose extension of that quote, I have begun to appreciate books without a plot, books where I care less about the names of characters or where they hail from and like to engross myself in observing what they do. The comfort to volitionally pick such books got real with Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts. The writing, I feel, in such books is delicate, clearly rejuvenating, as if the words here have an additional job of calming the reader who's annoyed at the lack of a plot. 

The New York Times reviews Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au with the following headline - A Mother and Daughter go sightseeing. They see each other. Now this's a crude one line approximation of this deceptively simple and beautiful novella.

A daughter (the unnamed narrator) and her mother travel to Tokyo and as they see different sites, a swirl of memories - memories they remember clearly, others safely forgotten and many they pretend are hazy, envelopes them gently. 

"Earlier in the year, I had asked her to come with me on a trip to Japan. We did not live in the same city anymore, and had never really been away together as adults, but I was beginning to feel that it was important, for reasons I could not yet name".

Walking through the cemetery at Aoyama, visiting a large outdoor museum in Koganei Park, a church in Osaka, over admiring artwork, having food and reading horoscopes, over little conversations, often punctuated by deep silences, the mother and daughter share many things between them and convey quite a lot (though not explicitly) to us readers. The daughter reflects on her university days, her first job as a waitress in the restaurant, her relationship with her boyfriend, her thoughts on having children. 

She mulls over the frugality she feels she has inherited from her mother, the need to be desired even when she isn't sure if she really likes the person who desires her, the urge to be diligent and perfect even when no one's steadfast about it. 

However, not all is self introspection as the love story of her maternal uncle, the tantrums her elder sister threw as a kid at their maternal grandfather's funeral, a visit to her boyfriend's father's house and kayaking across a crater lake add layers. 

The writing is highly evocative creating a montage of images. The attention to detail is immaculate - the description of a nature trail, a convenience store highly elaborate. However, this doesn't make the read cumbersome for it is of the 'right' length. There is a mild philosophical touch to the words, for instance -

 "Nowadays, she said, people were hungry to know everything, thinking that they could understand it all, as if enlightenment were just around the corner. But, she said, in fact there was no control, and understanding would not lessen any pain. The best we could do in this life was to pass through it, like smoke through the branches, suffering, until we either reached a state of nothingness, or else suffered elsewhere".

"By looking indirectly at the thing they wanted to focus on, they were sometimes able to see it even more clearly than with their own eyes." 

Cold Enough for Snow through the ruminations of a daughter-mother duo makes us see/recall some of our own memories clearly, making them 'warm enough' for us to embrace.

On a River's Bank

On a River’s Bank by A Madhavan, translated from Tamil by M Vijayalakshmi, explores environmental degradation as a result of over exploitation of nature. Published in 1974 as Punalum Manalum, it’s an early, notable instance of what is now termed as ‘eco-fiction’. 

The novella is set in Vallamedu (a place near Trivandrum as hinted by the mention of Marudan Kuzhi dam), the site of confluence of two rivers - Kottaiyaru and Perumanaiyaru. Sand harvesting is the most important commercial activity for the inhabitants on the riverfront. 

Angusami, a well respected 50 yr old man who knows the river like the back of his hand, a star employee of the sand contractor for several years; Damodaran, a diligent and well-mannered young man who’s like a son to Angusami; Panki, a young woman & Angusami’s step daughter who’s an object of revulsion for her ugly looks are the three principal characters. 

Panki labours hard at the riverfront and at home yet elicits nothing but extreme hatred from Angusami. Damodaran, her only friend, serves as a bridge between her and Angusami. Over time, sand dredging alters the river's course and its banks shrink. Swelling menacingly under torrential rain, the river threatens to take away the life it nurtures.

The river, a primary force in steering the narrative forward, described in vivid detail is a character too. It is interesting to note how its vagaries match Angusami’s moods - its bountiful flow mirroring the content and blissful life he spent with his beloved wife Tangammai until she died of smallpox, its eddies reflect the emotional abyss he falls into when incapacitated by a shoulder dislocation injury. The Madan Sami (the river God) festival, flora and fauna terms enhance the local flavor. That the women characters here only embody a man’s love and hatred, the excessive stress on women's looks, a whole village fretting about ugly-faced Panki’s marriage may feel annoying and dated.

For the way nature’s vagaries, its wrath are explored dwelling on human relationships, On a River’s Bank by A Madhavan reminded me strongly of Dweepa by Na D’Souza, translated from Kannada by Susheela Punitha. The setting (the river) is just as important (maybe even more) as the principal human characters and for this reason, the book reminded me of Neela Padmanabhan’s Where the Lord Sleeps. Interestingly, both A Madhavan and Neela Padmanabhan are from the same region, the former born in Trivandrum, his parents hailed from Kanyakumari and the latter was born in Nagercoil, both the authors were known for their literary prowess in Malayalam and Tamil.

That continuous sand dredging alters a river’s course and degrades it beyond repair is something I have witnessed in the case of Bharathapuzha river that flows through my maternal grandmother’s town in Kerala. That the book written back in 1974 focused on this important environmental issue is pretty impressive. Lovers of Amitav Ghosh’s fiction on climate change/ecological issues now have a work to turn attention to from the arena of Indian translated literature in On a River’s Bank by A Madhavan, thanks to Ratna Books. 

With an end that leaves room for contemplation, On a River’s Bank clearly indicates that when man begins to plunder, nature can get ruthless.

Slices of the Moon Swept by the Wind

‘They say nobody can understand what I say .. So, my teacher told me that I must write whatever I think of in a book. As and when I remember’. So, our unnamed protagonist, a special child referred to by different names by his family members, writes everything down. 

He writes about Amma whose lap is his safe haven when he gets splitting headaches. He writes about Appa who dotes on him, is miffed with God and wakes up at the slightest sound from the deepest sleep. 

He writes about his Doddakka (elder sister) who pampers him and draws the most beautiful rangolis; about Sanakka (another sister) who never spares anyone who bullies him, tells him stories in the backyard in moonlight; about Tangi (younger sister), a 1  ½ yr old baby who looks like a sugar doll. 

There’s Anna (elder brother) who calls him a ‘pain’, pinches & beats him when alone, another ‘dead’ sister who reappears at their doorstep one day, Appa’s friend who teaches him at home, Dr. Shetty who’s always kind, a maternal uncle who regales him with the frog prince story, a man from Muharram procession who smiles and waves at him, he writes about them all. Though some of his notes feel disjointed to start with, it’s brilliant how everything (including the title) makes complete sense as we read. 

‘I will not tell you how I look. Whatever your imagination is, I look worse than that.’ And as you turn the pages, you care the least about his looks for you know he has the most beautiful mind.  Wise and mature beyond his years, he isn’t angry with God for his illness, with the school principal who refuses him admission or with the world that greets him with shock before half-pretending everything’s okay; he’s ‘special’ indeed! 

Slices of the Moon Swept by the Wind by Surendranath S, translated from Kannada by Prathibha Nandakumar, is a heart rending glimpse of a special child’s little world from his POV, of his family beset by many serious problems. In the introduction to the book, the author writes about his paternal aunt who he is extremely fond of. He claims that the book is loosely based on her and her family. He also states that it is Raghavendra Khasaneesa's Kannada short story 'Tabbaligalu' that inspired him to write the book. The family. neck deep in tragedy, in this story bore an uncanny resemblance to his aunt's family and this motivated him to write this book. Simple drawings by Apara adorn the pages. Translations from Kannada are few and far between, so heartfelt thanks to Prathibha Nandakumar for the translation , one that allows intimate connect with the text. 

Every page will leave you misty eyed, still you will gladly give into the pull of the words. An immensely moving novella, beautiful and heartbreaking in equal measure. 

The Art of Wearing a Trench Coat

The Art of Wearing a Trench Coat by Sergi Pàmies, translated from the Catalan by Adrian Nathan West, is a collection of a baker dozen stories on relationships between strangers, spouses, parents and children. Loosely interconnected, these stories are meditative vignettes, more like essays. The first story 'Eclipse' exerts a mysterious pull and offers a good start and the second story is an intelligent discourse on marriages that are crumbling from within. 

On early signs of divorce, the author writes - "It’s not true that the erosion is imperceptible. Long before the point of festering, it makes itself known through details couples notice but refuse to acknowledge, because inertia has hobbled their capacity for decision-making or because they try to believe better days are on the way". (from the story - Outline of a Lecture for a Hypothetical Conference of Divorcees).

It is only as I read the third story, I realised that the collection is more or less autobiographical, one can actually equate it to a deconstructed memoir. In 'Mother-Son Christmas Carol', the author writes about his nonagenarian 'writer' mother who puts up a tough fight against delusional dementia in a geriatric residence before losing it and shifting to the care of her elder son and daughter-in-law who tend to her well unto her death. The author (the younger son) ensures his mother writes and edits till her final day.  He writes - "My mother liked to repeat that the advantage of being a writer was that everything that happened to you could be turned into literature, sooner or later. It wasn’t an original thought, and she tended to repeat it to encourage me to write when I was going through hard times". 

Most stories here have an unnamed narrator but there's a strong sense of intimacy in the text indicating that mostly everything written here is from the author's personal experiences - his tumultuous adolescence, little insecurities as his parents age, his failed marriage and divorce, his bouts of anxiety and his raising kids/trying to be a good father.

Little history unfolds in the backdrop, especially in the longest story in the collection - I'm No One to be Giving you Advice where we learn of the Catalan independence, the Francisco Franco's regime, about Rudolf Hess and his death in the Spandau prison and the French resistance to German occupation. Also, the title of the collection  is derived from this story where the author obsesses over the right way of wearing a trench coat, something he says he would never perfect like many men he knew did - his father and the men his mother liked, including his parents' friend, (the renowned author and a Buchenwald concentration camp survivor) Jorge Semprùn, whom he even fancied as his father during his adolescent days. 

The writing is mostly beautiful dealing with everything from serious to trivial with a certain levity. But it is also far from lucid, if not ornate, with really long sentences tying up the reader in knots at many places. 

The author says nostalgia is archaeology: it looks for vestiges and interprets them but as we dig into this collection, we feel a little overworked with these vestiges as there is nothing pathbreaking.

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.