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J.J.: Some Jottings
by Sundara Ramaswamy
translated by A.R.Venkatachalapathy
Novel as critique - A.R.Venkatachalapathy
This article draws from the introduction to J.J.: Some Jottings
by Sundara Ramaswamy
It was in my 15th year, in the
summer holidays after my 11th standard examination (1983), I
first read J.J.: Some Jottings. J.J.'s mocking query, "Has
Sivakami Ammal yet fulfilled her vow?" still rings in my ears.
(An allusion to the immensely popular historical romance of
Kalki, Sivakami's Vow; this 1000-plus-page novel, originally
serialised for many years in the weekly Kalki, revolves around
the vow made by Sivakami, the danseuse and lady love of the
Pallava king Narasimhavarman, when she is captured by the
Chalukya king.) Like many readers of my, and subsequent,
generations, I have read J.J. in full many times over, and
dipped into it at random in moments of gloom and emptiness.
Being a curious amalgam of Cherthalai Krishna Iyer,
Thamaraikkani, Mullaikkal Madhavan Nair and much else, I never
quite agreed with much of what Sundara Ramaswamy said. But a
running inner dialogue with him has continued. One of the few
writers I wished to meet in person, since my first meeting with
him in 1986, the dialogue has proceeded enriching me. In a
sense, this translation has been a rite of passage, a coming to
terms with my own intellectual development.
The Tamils have not the stomach for ideas dressed
up as literature. J.J.: Some Jottings is a single sparrow in the
Tamil literary-intellectual summer.
Despite its literary brilliance, it is very much a
novel of ideas. Structured as a posthumous fictional biography of a
Malayalam writer authored by a Tamil writer, its publication in 1981
created a literary sensation with its overt intellectualism.
Bilingualism (or even trilingualism) is widespread in Indian culture
maintains The Anthropological Survey of India's Peoples of India.
But a non-English bilingualism is hard to come by in the Indian
world of letters. In this state of affairs, J.J.: Some Jottings
calls for some explanation for which we need to turn to Sundara
Ramaswamy's life.
Sundara Ramaswamy was born in 1931 in Nagercoil, then part of the
princely state of Travancore. (Travancore was reorganised as part of
the modern Kerala state with Tamil speaking regions joining the then
Madras State, now Tamil Nadu, in 1956. Some of these events find
echo in his first novel, Puliyamarathin Kathai.) He grew up in
Kottayam, then in central Travancore, until he was eight or nine,
when his family moved to Nagercoil in 1939 just as the news of the
World War was breaking out. (His third novel, Kuzhandhaigal Pengal
Aangal is set in this world.) Since then, Sundara Ramaswamy has
lived in the town of Nagercoil, described once as "the last outpost
of Indian literature".
Nagercoil, the headquarters of Kanyakumari district, is at the
cultural intersection of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Sundara Ramaswamy
grew up "half-knowing" Malayalam, Sanskrit and English. An attack of
juvenile arthritis and subsequent indifferent health saw him barely
reach school final. Tamil, which he uses with such mastery and
nuance, he did not learn until he was about 18. As a young Malayalam
critic has observed, Sundara Ramaswamy was introduced to most
Malayalam writers "at the first signs of the dawn of modernism in
Malayalam literature". In fact, his first literary endeavour was to
translate Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai's Thottiyude Magan (Thottiyin
Magan — The Scavenger's Son) into Tamil.
Sundara Ramaswamy's literary debut, in late 1951, was made with the
publication of an edited volume in memory of Pudumaippithan
(1906-1948), who has been an undying influence on his work. Readers
can notice more than one reference to Pudumaippithan in J.J.: Some
Jottings. Further, many readers and critics have sought to uncover
traces of Pudumaippithan in the figure of J.J.
In the early 1950s, Sundara Ramaswamy was drawn to the undivided
Communist Party of India, and maintained a close association with P.
Jeevanandam, its leader and litterateur. He made his earliest mark
with short stories in the progressive monthly, Shanthi (1955-57),
edited by T.M.C. Raghunathan, friend and biographer of
Pudumaippithan and a stalwart of the left-progressive literary
movement in Tamil Nadu. After the demise of Shanthi, he continued to
write acclaimed short stories in another progressive literary
journal Saraswathi (1955-1962). But in the years following
Khrushchev's address to CPSU's XX Congress and the crushing of the
Hungarian uprising (1956), Sundara Ramaswamy distanced himself from
the left movement, increasingly identifying himself with an
avant-garde modernism which functioned through the little magazines.
This moment also coincided with the growing chasm between popular
literature appearing in mass magazines and self-conscious art in the
little magazines, and a widening rift between progressive literature
and the little magazines. The little magazines were also a reaction
to a dominant strand of Tamil identity politics. Never prolific,
however, Sundara Ramaswamy kept a steady stream (except for an
interregnum of silence between 1966-73) of some free verse (he is
considered one of the most prominent poets of the literary monthly,
Ezhuthu, edited by Ci.Su.Chellappa) and critical and polemical
essays. (A representative reader of Sundara Ramaswamy's works has
been edited in English translation by Lakshmi Holmstrom: Waves.)
Ever a stylist, employing a language consciously crafted, shorn of
traditional rhetorical devices, but brimming with satire, parody,
humour and metaphor, his enquiring perspective marks him out
distinctly. By the 1970s, he was the figure that the progressive
literature camp loved to hate. Further, Sundara Ramaswamy developed
an increasing dissatisfaction with the state of Tamil literature and
culture.
It is in this context that J.J.: Some Jottings appeared in 1981,
impressively produced by Crea-A publishers. Since then, despite
being, until recently, poorly distributed, the novel is in its sixth
edition — a considerable achievement by the standards of serious
Tamil literature. In its form and content, and the studied mastery
and lapidary precision of its language, and the sensitive and
provocative formulation of ideas, J.J.: Some Jottings was a major
watershed, a rupture in the narrative tradition of Tamil fiction.
Almost every reader remembers the shock and ecstasy the novel caused
on its first reading.
The clever way in which the novel is structured,
almost a Kunstlerroman, complete with notes and appendices of the
fictional Malayalam writer, left readers gasping. Of course, in this
entire make-believe, the author has probably strewn around banana
skins, chuckling as readers and critics step on them. The detailed
depiction of the Malayalam literary world, while being rather novel,
simultaneously triggered the search for Tamil parallels.
Unfortunately, many readers got lost in this wild-goose chase,
missing the import of the novel. This was often followed by
(mis)identifying themselves ideologically with one or the other
character; the progressives with Mullaikkal Madhavan Nair, Tamil
enthusiasts with Thamaraikkani, women writers with Chittukkuruvi and
so on. Sundara Ramaswamy's masterful parody and caricature only
added to this effect.
However, it is a loss to read the novel at this level alone. It is
nothing less than a thoroughgoing critique of Tamil culture and
society and by extension, much more. With the pretext of talking
about the Malayalam literary world, the novel delves into a deep
introspection of Tamil culture. Wrestling with the pressing
philosophical questions of its time, it provides insights into
ideas, institutions and individuals, and the souring of idealism.
Despite the generally adverse reaction to it from fellow writers and
critics, the novel has continued to capture the imagination of young
readers and writers. Sundara Ramaswamy stands unique among his
generation of writers, in being still taken seriously by new
readers.
Book Note by Uma Mahadevan Das Gupta, 25 April
2004 -
‘‘When a reader, engrossed in his
book, happens to look up from his reading, only greenery should
meet his eye… Libraries too have lungs. When a reader, in search
of a particular book, locates it with ease and settles down to
read in comfort,the lungs expand and shrink, which activity
alone is justification enough for the existence of the library
 Joseph
James died on 5 January, 1960, in his thirty ninth year, the day
after Albert Camus was killed in a car accident.’’ With these words
begins one of the most remarkable Indian novels I have read
recently. A novel, disguised as a memoir — because Joseph James
existed only within the pages of JJ: Some Jottings (JJ: Sila
Kurippugal). This is a novel of ideas disguised as fictional
biography, written by Tamil writer Sundara Ramaswamy and brought to
us by Katha in a fine translation by historian A R
Venkatachalapathy.
Ramaswamy, whose pen name is SuRaa, has recently
been honoured with the Katha Chudamani Award for Lifetime Literary
Achievement, and this translation of his 1981 novel, which is
already in its sixth edition in the original Tamil, comes to us as
part of Katha’s ongoing literary enterprise. Translation has been
important for Ramaswamy himself: His own first literary effort was a
translation of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pilla’s Thottiyude Magan. His
Oru Puliamarathin Kathai (The Tale of a Tamarind Tree), a pioneering
‘‘dialect-novel’’ that combines oral lore and social history, is
regarded as one of the great, frontier-extending novels of Tamil.
Since then, there have been two more novels, 60 short stories,
several translations, and dozens of essays on literature and
culture.
Associated with the avant-garde magazine Ezhuthu and his own little
magazine Kaala Chuvadu, SuRaa is known for his original and incisive
literary voice, and his continuous experiments with form and
technique.
The self-taught SuRaa, who had to drop out of school because of
juvenile arthritis, was to learn Malayalam before he learned Tamil.
He was born in Nagercoil, located in the midst of both the Tamil and
Malayalam cultures; and his love for Malayalam endured through his
literary career in the form of his translations from that language.
Indeed, we encounter the narrator of JJ: Some Jottings, a Tamil
writer, musing wryly about a project for the Indian languages:
‘‘Fifteen languages are listed in the Eighth Schedule of the
Constitution of India. When I asked some writers if they have ever
seen the script of all these languages at least once, they all
replied warily, ‘No’... One of my fellow writers asked, ‘Has any
Tamil reader said he’d die if he couldn’t get to read other
literatures?’”
If SuRaa has been associated with the Left, the avant-gardists, the
progressives, and the little magazine movement, JJ: Some Jottings
teems with all the isms, too. Here are such personalities as
Mullaikkal Madhavan Nair, Thamaraikkani, and the delightfully
sketched Jaipur-bag toting woman writer Chittukkuruvi: all
imaginary. JJ himself is the football-playing Malayalam writer to
whom the novel is addressed as a kind of tribute.
If the novel outlines the different figures, such as they are, who
dwell within the Tamil literary terrain, it pans across that terrain
as well. Beginning with the subterfuge of describing the Malayalam
literary landscape (JJ begins with a ‘‘scathing criticism of
Malayalam poets’’), the novel soon moves into the world of Tamil
writing and Tamil ideas: “Let no one imagine that the tree of
thought will strike root only in Central Travancore. It will grow
even on Tamil soil... Even wastelands have their own flora”.
And, in the fictional ‘‘extract’’ from JJ’s diary
for November 1950: ‘‘I don’t believe there is another country in
this world that has produced books in such a vulgar manner.’’ But
there is also this, in a ‘note’ prepared by JJ for the Library
Reforms Committee (alas, if only we had paid more attention to our
libraries):
‘‘When a reader, engrossed in his book, happens
to look up from his reading, only greenery should meet his eye…
Libraries too have lungs. When a reader, in search of a
particular book, locates it with ease and settles down to read
in comfort,the lungs expand and shrink, which activity alone is
justification enough for the existence of the library.’’
A thought-provoking and remarkable book about books, and the
ideas that shape them.
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