Sarah Joseph’s Malayalam story Nilaavu Ariyunnu (The Moonlight Knows) tells the tale of a woman who cannot save her husband driven mad by urban realities. She watches him seeking water that he believes will wash away the evil that has gripped him.
“The water in the sand-hole began to rise, wetting Unnikrishnan’s feet. He jumped around in the water, splashed about, wild with joy… The river’s breasts overflowed. There it was, bursting forth, a rivulet of ‘Amritham,’ divine ambrosia. The water reached Unnikrishnan’s knee…The hole was wider…Unnikrishnan splashed about blithely in water that has reached the chest. ‘Don’t come here,’ he shouted. He stretched his arms and embraced the water…The River, the Giver of Infinite Love. Her merciful gifts flowed towards him; they collected below his feet. The water climbed to his neck,” the author writes.
The story is the first in The Masculine of ‘Virgin ,’ a collection of 21 Malayalam stories by Ms. Joseph translated into English by J. Devika and published by the Oxford University Press (OUP). The book will be released in Thiruvananthapuram in October.
The collection includes the stories Conjugality , Asoka , Jatiguptan and Janakiguptan , Within Every Woman Writer , To the Sea , Dead Land , Broken Bridge , The Passion of Mary , The Rain , Coffee House , Scooter , Sweat-marks , Black Chinks and Cloves .
It also includes her famous story Papathara . A collection that contained the story had inspired critic and poet K. Satchidanandan to coin the word “Pennezhuthu,” an equivalent of “Écriture feminine” (writing seen as a feminist concept, in which the author uses female constructions of identity).
Ms. Devika points out the need for ‘deconsecrating’ Ms. Joseph. What does the translator mean by consecration? “The metaphor of consecration — the rite by which elemental forces are supposedly drawn into a stone idol and worshipped — makes sense of the ways in which Malayalam women writers who had striven to make independent aesthetic and political choices were ‘tamed.’ That is, the way in which those who raised the sharpest challenge to masculinist literary authorities were retained as adored and valued figures, but drained of political charge, and routinely invoked through acts of worship,” she says.
She notes that the decline of the term ‘Pennuzhuthu,’ which now echoes emptily in academic and popular literary writings, allows readers to read Ms. Joseph’s writing critically and historically.
“In other words, it allows us to ‘deconsecrate’ her — place her more cogently within the 20th century history of the resistance of women writers towards masculinist aesthetic prescriptions,” Ms. Devika says.
She contends that many stories in the collection Papathara contain clues hinting that bringing them under the umbrella of “Écriture feminine” may be a mistake. “The use of the metaphors of the veil and other forms of covering the body are strikingly diverse in Papathara stories and they do not always conform to the ways in which they are deployed by authors identified with Écriture feminine,” she says.
Ms. Joseph’s writings have earlier been translated into English by K. Ayyappa Panicker, K. Satchidanandan, Valson Thampu, V.C. Harris, A.J. Thomas, and Vasanthi Sankaranarayanan. Panicker’s and Krishnankutty’s translations won the Katha prize. Othappu , translated by Thampu, bagged the Crossword Award for 2009.
“I am happy that OUP has included The Masculine of ‘Virgin’ among its centenary volumes,” says Ms. Joseph. Her admirers too are.
