There are some books that should be read not only for the story they tell as a chronicle of lives and relationships, but also as records that document domestic, social, and political changes. The novel under review is one such. As it takes the reader into the innermost recesses of an orthodox Tamil Iyengar household in rural Tamil Nadu, it also charts the thoughts and musings, the internal lanes and by lanes of the men and women who occupy those physical spaces. In doing so, it effectively renders a three-dimensional-map of place and character, bringing the whole milieu alive; one that can be starkly cruel, beautiful, weak and strong, sometimes all at the same time.
Ranganayaki, the eponymous protagonist in the Tamil original, is the figure around which the multi-generational novel revolves. Married off before she has attained puberty, the fact (among other things) that she slowly grows taller than her husband, is pretty much a cause for complaint for her mother-in-law. Her fondness and talent for music is not allowed to flourish, and the veena she brought from her maternal home upon marriage is relegated to the forgotten confines of a store-room, never to see daylight or come alive under her deft fingers ever again. It is a grim and bleak picture that unfolds—the absolute and uncompromising authority of the male figures in the family, the double standards, the sickening hypocrisy—of a family and society that sees nothing wrong with inflicting humiliation on fellow human beings in the name of custom and tradition. These customs take their toll on both men and women, and while the book looks at these in fairly great detail, it also points out how change comes in, sometimes dramatically, at other times quietly, but with an inexorableness that cannot be resisted.
If, there are young widows like Kanakavalli and Vaidehi who are condemned to a loveless, colourless life, there are men like Badrinarayanan who, on becoming a widower and being urged to remarry, questions these double standards and lives out his life locked in his wordless love for Vaidehi. He, as much as she, is a prisoner of ‘tradition’. But, as the country attains freedom, the children of the next generation get educated and question what they were expected to follow blindly, there seems to be a ray of hope that shines into the dim corners of the back quarters and kitchens of these houses to which the women had been confined so far. An uphill journey, no doubt, but one that has begun.
The Stone in the Backyard—also the title of the English translation—is both an onlooker and the central point of the axis of thought, debate, musings, and sadness that swirls through the household and through Ranganayaki’s life and mind. The title in the translation shifts the focus from ‘Ranganayaki’ (the title of the Tamil original) to the stone but in so doing, it perhaps emphasizes and reinforces the loss of agency and voice that the women face in a formidable and often toxic patriarchal set up. While the Tamil title seems to be very clear right at the beginning that the novel is about Ranganayaki, the translation, in making this shift to the stone, invests it with the importance that has been taken away from the woman who escapes the domestic confines and comes away to the backyard to sit on it now and then. It is also the venue for the lively debates and conversations that take place between various members of the family and is as such, a mute witness to the changes in mindscapes as well.
The translation is competent though sometimes prosaic, and not helped by some typos and inaccuracies. In attempting to adhere to English language structures, there is sometimes loss of the lyrical cadences of the original which could have been negotiated. The Tamil words scattered throughout anchor the narrative to its cultural and linguistic setting, helpfully explained in the Glossary. A reader unfamiliar with the language and the cultural ethos would find it greatly interesting especially as a slice of a time gone by, and muse on the changes that the latter part of the book describes. The dialogues and descriptions of the social and domestic landscape have been translated with a sure touch and flow smoothly. The Introduction by the author orients the reader and prepares the ground for a receptiveness that would ensure a better understanding of the characters, their actions and the consequences that follow, of that particular time.
Malati Mathur, former Professor of English, and Director, School of Humanities and Director, School of Foreign Languages, IGNOU, New Delhi, was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. A poet and award-winning translator, she translates from and between Tamil, Hindi and English.