If Ernest Hemingway introduced to his readers the human-animal conflict in bull-fighting with its blood-spilling details, the same can be said about late Tamil writer C.S. Chellappa, whose masterpiece Vaadi Vasal, captured every aspect of the ancient game of jallikattu .
Chellappa who took inspiration from Hemingway’s The Undefeated , also translated and serialised it in his literary magazine Ezhuthu . A native of Madurai, he took hundreds of pictures of jallikattu .
“He had an Agfa camera that could be folded like a notebook. The novel Vaadi Vasal , with his photograph on the cover, was given free to subscribers of his magazine Ezhuthu ,” said Tamil writer Ashokamitran.
The first edition of the novel came out in 1959. Later, Kalachuvadu published it under the title of classic novel series.
The novel is not just about taming of the fearsome bull Kaari owned by a local Zamin. By taming Kaari, Picchi, the hero of the novel also avenges the death of his father Ambulithevan, who was gored to death by the bull. Unable to reconcile himself to the reality, the Zamindar shoots the bull dead.
“Chellappa’s description of the arena and the events that take place in it has a charming halo of authenticity. His is not a narrative written from a state of fantasy. He must have watched scores of such events before attempting to write about one of them,” said Mr. Krishnan, who wrote the foreword to the novel’s English translation.
