It is rare that a novel, a masterpiece of Perumal Murugan on childhood, rural economy and caste, published in 2001 and translated in 2004 comes up for a review more than 20 years later. This itself speaks a lot for its popularity and relevance. When you pick up such a novel, you anticipate questions about cultural context: has it changed in the decades that have flown by? Does the translation allow for this change? Do you have to reorient yourself into a different time zone to absorb it? Seasons of the Palm does not disappoint on any of these counts.
A brilliantly written original, Koolamadhari, in the Tamil, has been woven together for the English reader in a masterly and skilful translation, by V Geetha. Perumal Murugan is known for his ability to conjure up a whole world view in the microcosm he actually talks about in his novels.
The story foregrounds the childhood of Koolaiyan, Vavuri, Sevidi, Nedumban and others who have been sent to work as bonded labour, herding sheep mainly, in various neighbouring farms. Even apart from the fact that these are all full-time workers, just as their adult counterparts are, it is a very curious and mixed childhood—a mixture of innocent glee, budding cynicism, compelled resilience and untutored survival instinct. If the author had stuck to this, it would have been less of a novel. But Murugan draws in the world, its culture, on occasion cinema and the environment, painting a complex and unforgettable picture of Koolaiyan’s world. The friendship between Koolaiyan and his master’s son, Selvan, is one such complex relationship.
Geetha’s translation is one of the best. At no point are you left wondering what the writer actually intends. This clarity is what characterizes her own writings and speeches. The translation flows, and the novel reads like a river in spate—fluid and uninterrupted, loaded with meaning, swift.
The translator has chosen to translate the names by which the protagonists are addressed—Koolaiyan, Vavuri, Sevidi and Nedumban become Shorty, Belly, Stone-deaf and Tall Fellow, for example. Perhaps she chose to do this because these are not their given names, rather some derogatory nicknames. While translating them gives the reader unfamiliar with Tamil a sense of this, it also removes the linguistic tilt to the names. The first impression I had when reading this was a parallel to nicknames used by slave traders and white masters for their African American slaves. Using the original names would have retained the original flavour. There are many challenges a translator would face in translating Perumal Murugan, or indeed any author whose story lives in the soils of rural India and whose characters speak in unfamiliar dialects. This would involve a lot of interpreting, sometimes reading silences, sometimes the cadences of the original, to understand what is being said. Geetha was fortunate to have had the author to talk with and discuss as she translated the novel. In recent times, translators choose to retain some words of the original, to maintain the flavour of the dialect. Geetha has for the most part avoided this, and one wonders whether it is fine not to hear the echo of the Tamil, at least occasionally.
At times there are minor departures from the original: One night, leaving the sheep in the pen, Shorty, as Koolaiyan is called in the English, and Selvan, Shorty’s master’s son, go to watch a movie in the nearby talkies. When they return, Shorty is aghast, for one of the sheep is missing. In this scene, Geetha does manage to capture the frenzy of the original, but with a small difference: Shorty has left behind a dog named Poochi, to guard the pen. This dog is not named in the entire passage in the Tamil original. It is referred to as ‘dog’, and its food as ‘dog’s food’. For some reason the translator chooses to address by name the dog as Poochi in the passage. Perhaps this was done by the translator to maintain continuity.
In the very first chapter, Shorty recalls the harsh sound of his Mistress’s voice when she wakes him up in the morning. He compares her voice to the slim branch of the tamarind tree, used sometimes to whip and discipline. Geetha just translates this as, ‘Shorty dreads her call, a stinging whiplash that cruelly peels the sleep off his body.’ In going from ‘tamarind branch’ to whiplash, the translator gains smoothness and the meaning is conveyed, but may miss the cadence of the original text.
These are very small burrs in what is a brilliant translation and Geetha captures the soul of the original and conveys its message most efficiently into the English. The function of true literature is only to touch the reader emotionally, and it is successful if this power of the original is captured. This the translation does, as evinced by the fact that it was short-listed for the Kiriyama Prize soon after being published.
Shubashree Desikan is Associate Editor, IIT Madras Shaastra Magazine, Chennai.