Reading is, in a way, a treasure hunt. Most of the time, there is no one ultimate treasure to be found but the thrill of travelling through by lanes, and chancing upon surprises and promises, excites and prods the reader on.
Indiayile Ithihaasa Kathakal (Legends from India) tells the stories of three legendary women of India namely Sita, Savitri and Parvati – certainly familiar stories, only they are told in a not-so-familiar way. Many pages of this old book are missing, except the title page. The title page tells us that the book is ‘ Mrs. Satyanathan rachichatinte paribhasha ’ (the translation of the work of Mrs. Satyanathan). ‘Mrs. Satyanathan’ can be taken as one clue, ‘India’ another clue, and the whole title yet another clue.
‘Mrs. Satyanathan’ hints that the book might have been written in the early years of the twentieth century after the advent of English education and the dawn of colonial modernity.
That was the time when women who had the benefit of English education began taking pride in referring to themselves as ‘Mrs so and so’. Secondly, ‘India’ in the title prompts the inference that the original might have been written in English, for it is in English more than in the other regional languages that the name ‘India’ is commonly used to refer to the country. The title of the book as a whole functions as yet another clue which reaffirms the conjecture that the book might have been composed after the introduction of an English sensibility.
It is a translation but there’s no mention of the original book or the translator. India all along had the tradition of treating the translators and the re-tellers at par with the original authors – the reason why we hear of ‘Ezhuthachan Ramayanam , Kamba Ramayanam , Kuvempu Ramayanam and the like. The works of Ezhuthachan or Kamban or such others were never treated as ‘translations of the work of Valmiki’.
However, the Western translation tradition, which began with the translation of the Bible, always considered translation as secondary and derivative – the reason why they do not consider it necessary to mention the name of the translator.
As one proceeds further and plunges into the book, one can pick up clues about the author. She must have been a staunch supporter of women’s education. Her story of Sita begins thus, ‘Indian women are endowed with the virtues of beauty, honesty and humility. However, they have a shortcoming - they are not educated! …This was not the case in olden days. The women in those days were quite learned... Everyone loved and respected those erudite, eminent women. Sita Devi was one such illustrious woman.’ How often has Sita been celebrated for her erudition?
The author’s passion for women’s education comes up in the story of Savitri as well. When Savitri reached marriageable age, she told her father that she would find her husband and her father agreed. The writer then comments –‘Nowadays, Indian women are not allowed to marry the men of their choice…There are many reasons for this change, the most important being this –the parents are certain that their children do not have the wisdom to choose the right husband…The women therefore have to gain scholarship, shrewdness and strength of character and establish that they are capable of choosing the right husbands for them…the women should keep on demanding that they be given quality education.’ Such pleas for women’s education, unwarranted by necessities of plot or story, make the reader discover that the stories were being used to make a case for women’s education.
There is more to any story than the story it tells. What is told may be one story but what gets told may be many other stories as well. Even gaps and silences, knowingly or unknowingly left behind by authors, act as pointers. At times, the tracking of the clues may lead one astray but that is part of the game too. If good books are read again and again, it is because each time one embarks on them, one is able to make fresh journeys to uncharted lands, locating ever new clues.
(A fortnightly column on the many avatars of women in Malayalam literature. Sreedevi K. Nair is Associate Professor of English in NSS College for Women, Neeramankara, Thiruvananthapuram)
