S ahitya Akademi award winner - La.Sa.Ra - short for L.Sa. Ramamrutham, is a difficult writer. His stories are not ones you can read indolently. With long winding complex sentences, you have to sort through the various sub-clauses, to find out what he is saying. Add to that a narrative that is just as complex as the style. But unravel the knotted skeins, and you come across philosophy, cogitations on the relationship between man and nature and the not so easy path of love in its many shades.
Take his collection of five short stories about the five elements of Nature, for example. Here Nature isn’t just a backdrop, but human lives are intertwined with vivid imageries of Nature, and if you look carefully, you cannot miss the symbolic correspondences between Nature and life. You see the author’s reverence for Nature, but it is not the gentle, simple worship of Nature a la Wordsworth. It shows us not just the benign beauty of Nature, but also its fury.
River as metaphor
The story Tarangini mirrors both the placidity and the tumultuous gushing of water. Tarangini, the titular heroine of the story, who was born on the banks of a river, sees facets of a flowing river in people she comes into contact with. The face of a friend, whose marriage is short-lived, doesn’t give away anything, and is as undisturbed as a river in the early morning hours. Her uncle’s eyes are red like the sediment of a river. She feels like a meandering river, when she is farmed out to various relatives. She edges closer to some, and keeps her distance from others, like the waters of a river, gently lapping the shore one minute, and then just as gently receding.
In Jamadagni, as you read of the bee that falls on the flame of the lamp and is singed to death, you can almost smell burnt flesh - so perfect is the choice of words. Behind the five stories is a search for the meaning of life, which lends them a philosophical flavour.
In the novel Prayaschitham, Dharmarajan drugs his employee, Manickchand Sircar, and steals the jewels pledged with Sircar by Gomathi, in whom he sees his long lost daughter. Sircar dies; when the police search the house of Nadar, whose tenant Dharmarajan had been, Nadar dies broken hearted, unable to bear the aspersions cast on him by neighbours. The title Prayaschitham means atonement. But by whom? When Dharmarajan meets his daughter after many years, he finds that she has entered the flesh trade. So is this Dharmarajan’s punishment for betraying the trust of Sircar? Or is Dharmarajan’s daughter being punished for her avarice? As always, when confronted with the question of retribution in life, one is left only with questions, and no answers. The beauty of Prayaschitham is that the author leaves it to you to ponder the ways of Providence.
Janani is an unusual short story, where Goddess Parvathi decides to take birth on the earth, not as an avatar, but as an ordinary human being. And what an experience she has! Abandoned at birth, she faces hostility from the wife of the man who adopts her. But the story ends with Janani’s Advaitic introspections.
There is a twinge of sadness in most of La.Sa.Ra’s stories. But then as he himself says in ‘Naan’ — his short autobiographical account, life is a string of missed opportunities. He says his mother was the biggest influence in his life, and says that there is a bestial fierceness to a mother’s love. A mother is a merciful Kali, he writes. The mothers in his stories leave an indelible impression.
His mentor
La.Sa.Ra’s mentor was Thi. Ja. Ranganathan (Thi.Ja.Ra), who gave him a letter of introduction to the editor of Manikkodi . La.Sa.Ra., in his reminiscences, recalls the literary discussions that Na. Pichamurthy, P.S. Ramaiah, Pudumai Pithan, Ku.Pa. Ra, Ka.Na.Su., C.S. Chellappa, Manjeri Easwaran, Chidambara Subaramaniam, Chitti and Thi.Ja. Ra had every evening on the sands of the Marina. La.Sa.Ra., says that these discussions were more like a literary workshop, that delved into world literature.
La.Sa.Ra wrote that an author had to distance himself from his subject, to keep the writing on an intellectual plane.
But paradoxically, he also had to be emotionally involved with the subject, for otherwise, the writing would be insipid. Good literature in any country, he said, did justice to local themes, values, the beauties of nature in that country, the nuances of the language spoken there. The purpose of literature, he wrote, was to take messages to people, without pontificating.
In his writings, La.Sa.Ra followed his prescriptions. He never sacrificed style for substance or vice versa. He always had a message for the reader, which may not yield itself upon first read, but which opens up gradually, as you revisit a story. He captured raw human passions, without losing the philosophical note and without compromising intellectual rigour.
