Avvaiyar, the Tamil saint, sits at a resting place near a Jamun tree. Murugan, the Tamil God, appears on the tree’s branches, disguised as a shepherd boy. He is there to make her realise her vanity. “I have spoken, sung, and with my Tamil, I have served the world greatly,” she tells him as they establish a conversation. Murugan reminds her, “What one has learned is a mere handful; what one hasn't is the size of the world.” Hearing these words, Avvaiyar is suspicious if she is indeed talking to a simple, shepherd boy. Then, Murugan says he can shake the tree so she can have some jamuns. He asks if she wants “ sutta pazham (ripened fruit) or sudaatha pazham (unripened fruit)?”. Now, sutta pazham in Tamil can also mean fruit that’s roasted. Avvaiyar asks him for sudaaatha pazham. So, a shower of jamuns hit the ground as Murugan shakes one of the branches. Avvaiyar picks one up and blows to remove the dirt. As she does, Murugan, with a chuckle, asks her, “ Enna paati, pazham sududha ? (Granny, did the fruit scorch you?)”
Avvaiyar is now sure that she is not talking to an ordinary boy. The great sage, who claims to be a master of Tamil, has been tricked with a little wordplay. Upon her request, Murugan reveals his true self to Avvaiyar.
This scene in AP Nagarajan’s 1967 Tamil film, Kandhan Karunai , shaped poet and author Kala Krishnan's perspective of Murugan.
“I see him as language,” says Kala, who teaches creative writing at a college in Bengaluru. “For me, language and Murugan are sorts of one and the same. The way language works — in trying to answer questions of who one is, what one is doing in the world, or how things work — is how people imagine their relationship with God. His interest and commitment to language are what fascinate me. In a lot of songs, movies and legends about him, there are lots of incidents where he is like talking to poets.”
The byproducts of this fascination are two compilations of poetry — He Is Honey, Salt and the Most Perfect Grammar and Offer Him All Things Charred, Burned and Cindered — and, now, a mythological fiction trilogy. The first book in the trilogy, Mahasena (published by Context, an imprint of Westland Publications Private Limited) was released last month.
The trilogy, Kala says, can be treated as fanfiction as she hasn’t extensively borrowed from the existing mythologies about the popular deity. “They are mostly made-up stories. And, they may not be the same as they are in mainstream myths of Murugan. Other than reading a condensed English-translated version of Kanda Purana, I hardly researched. The stories came from my poetry.”
Mythological fiction has been a popular genre in India over the last decade or so. Amish Tripathi’s Shiva trilogy and Ram Chandra series, for instance, were successful. Kala says her narrative will be slower compared to Amish. “Also, this is South India-based and dwells on the smaller things. It’s just a style that was comfortable for me,” she adds.
Having mainly written poems so far, a novel was challenging initially for Kala. “In a poem, you can just look at the individual units like the lines or the stanzas. It isn't like that with a novel. You have to keep in mind the book as a whole when you write. I didn’t, in the beginning. I would write in fits and bursts. My editors’ initial feedback was an eye-opener. So, I started reworking. After that, it was much easier.”
Writing during the pandemic, she adds, was also difficult. She took about two years to finish the first book, which “explores the difficult path that the boy-god must walk before he can grow from a pampered and much-loved child to the battle-ready warrior.”
The first book, Kala says, stops at a crucial point. “There's going to be a battle. The second one will pick up from this battle. It is named after his first wife, Thevanai, and the third book will be named after his second wife Valli. So, these two books will explore his relationship with his wives among other things.”
