Male Gaze and Memory
A. Mangai
APEETHA by La. Sa. Ramamirtham Oxford Novellas, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2015, 176 pp., 375
August 2015, volume 39, No 8

My first thoughts on reading Apeetha in English is to wonder how a text considered difficult in terms of language in the original Tamil, reads with such an easy flow in English! The reverse is also usually true. Bharathiyar, who sounds poetically rich in Tamil becomes bland in English, most often. Padma Narayanan, who had already translated two stories of La. Sa. Raa (1916–2007) earlier, even while he was still alive, has translated this novella. She treasures the earlier translations with his edits in handwriting. The joy that she felt has certainly permeated to the readers. The title with its elongated vowel however sounds odd and unconvincing. Despite its Sanskrit reference, it is always called ‘Abidha’.

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