சங்கல்ப நிராகரணம்

Translated from the original Tamil short story saṅkalpa nirākaraṇam (சங்கல்ப நிராகரணம்) from the 1964 collection of short stories titled akkā (அக்கா) by A. Muttulingam. The original collection is available at noolaham.org. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact ez.iniyavan@gmail.com.

This Facebook post provides some context behind these translations.

Nadesan is one of those Colombo dwellers who eagerly yearn for: “when will the next long weekend come around, so that I can make a quick trip to Jaffna.” He was standing on the border line of the horrendous grief called separation. Never before had he experienced such pain.

He did write letters. But were they mere letters? They were repositories of his tears; throbbings of his heart.

But for how long can declarations of love in letters keep his wife content?

‘She is just a naive child; What did she gain by getting married? Our half-baked interactions were like a puppet show of shadows; when did we have a chance for a heart-to-heart conversation?’

How did she, who would stand shyly in front of him, biting into her plaits, learn to write this way?

‘I have never seen your face fully; I have heard that dimples form on your cheeks when you laugh, I have never got to experience even that; Still …’

‘I am your wife, publicly betrothed to you as your own. Shyness overcomes me when I think of it …’

Every word was like a red hot spear piercing his heart.

So what, it is just his luck!

Luck manifests to different people in many different forms. But his luck!

The day after the wedding, he left on what they so eloquently call in English, “the honeymoon.”

But the day they set foot in Colombo, it wasn’t the usual city of Colombo. There were riots everywhere; hatred; ethnic hatred.

People were beating and killing other people. The streets of the great city of Colombo were drenched in blood, as though Mother Earth, unable to tolerate this outrage, shed tears herself.

The rough ground lay below. The broad canopy of the sky rose above. A heavy police cordon prevented any unauthorized entry.

It was teeming with humanity. He and she spent that fabled “first night” amidst this sea of humanity. A mind-piercing look emerged from the depths of his heart.

The single tear droplet that struggled to emerge ended up dissolving all her heart’s dreams.

For ten days, they suffered as refugees amidst the sea of refugees.

When they finally left for Jaffna by a refugee ship, he with a stubble, and she with her hair in a mess, love was the last thing in their minds.

When they set foot in their village, overcome with embarrassment, an emergency telegram arrived, summoning him back to work.

Back to the city of Colombo!

2

Kamali didn’t even notice that it got dark. Nadesan’s letter lay sprawled on her chest.

Everything she saw, everything she sees, seem to her like reflections and reverberations of grief.

Her heart pained as though it had lost everything. Through it she felt the anguish of having lost some nameless bliss.

‘Is everything Vimala said true?!’

‘Chee …. Perhaps this is how everyone says it out aloud!’

“Kamali! Tell me the truth. Can’t you really tell your husband apart just by the sound of his footsteps?”

‘Vimala isn’t a fool like me; I am ‘married’ only in name.’

‘Look at her! How old is she? When I started wearing a sari, she hadn’t even graduated to wearing a long skirt.’

‘It seems his big toe is enough for her to identify him. Apparently she knows the warmth of his breath… is it not just the breath? … Che… if she was still asleep, he apparently doesn’t wake her up by touching her, but … bends over … on the lips, …. ch-chee… …’

‘What would she have thought of me — what else — she would have pitied me.’

***

One could still hear the sound of Palan’s sobbing. It was already dark. Kamali lit a lamp and placed it on the table.

“Lift your head Palan; enough crying; it is a kerosene lamp, if you knock it over, that’s it.”

“No, I won’t. I will stay like this!” His parents had not taken him along to the wedding, but left him behind to keep Kamali company. His anger has not entirely subsided.

Kamali lifted the kudam to her hip and started towards the well. Like the soft blanketing of dusk, a darkness was filling her heart. The crack from a nameless sorrow was slowly pervading the depths of her heart.

She heard the sound of someone taking a bath.

Kamali was startled.

“Who is there?”

“It is just me.”

“Is it you Rasan?” she called out, in a voice palpable with relief.

“Why akkā, were you scared?” He guffawed.

“No, I thought it was some stranger …”

“Give me a couple of buckets of water, thambi … … …”

‘I was scared of Rasan! He was just wee high before … …’

‘Perhaps boys grow up fast!’

“Why Rasan, did your ammā and everyone else go to the wedding?”

“They? They went already earlier.”

“So no one else is at home!”

“No akkā, it is just me!”

When she bent down to lift the kudam up, her thavani slipped.

She hurriedly gathered it up and draped it back over her shoulder. In the dull moonlight, her instincts told her that he was looking at her intently. She was pleased.

When she lifted her head, she was taken aback. His stunned look with hair dripping with water, his forelocks covering the forehead — reminded her of something.

‘He … he is like this, too…’

The second time she came to the well, her heart was pounding, thinking ‘would Rasan have left by now?’

‘How old is Rasan now? Sixteen?’

‘He sat for his S.S.C examinations already last year!’

Rasan was lathering soap on.

“Why Rasan! So are you the one guarding the house?”

“Yes akkā, exams are approaching; I have to stay home to study… …”

For some reason, a little smile crossed his lips.

The dimple on his cheek. His cute dimple.

‘Those cheeks — those hairless silky cheeks’ — she wanted to regard them till eternity.

The moon rays that reflected off those dimples reached out and shyly touched her breasts that were heaving with no reason.

She jolted herself out of her reverie and grabbed the rope tied to the well sweep.

“You want water! I will draw it for you akkā.”

“No thambi, you dry yourself first.”

“It is ok. You shouldn’t be drawing water when it is this dark.”

A strange feeling came over Kamali. She wanted to fondly call out “Rasan!” to her heart’s content.

He grabbed the bucket from her. In doing so, his soapy hands gently touched her slender arms.

Kamali’s heart bubbled over its rims. A new feeling.

When Rasan drew water, his hands trembled for some reason.

3

When she started towards the well, carrying a kudam, for the third time it did not look like she was doing it of her own free will. It was as though she was possessed by a demon that was urging her forward.

‘Why, why?’

‘I want to see him smile, just one more time’. The desire grew large and enveloped her entire mindscape. Afraid of a change of heart, she hurried towards the well.

Rasan stood there toweling his hair.

“Do you need more water?” — his voice was hoarse for some reason.

“Just one more kudam” — the response came from somewhere deep within.

“A… k… kā” — he blurted out, unsteady on his feet.

Kamali was silent. She stood staring at him.

“You… you … … will not tell ammā will you”

What came over her?

She stood transfixed like a statue.

A displaced star in the sky was falling.

When she lifted the empty kudam to her hips and walked away, it weighed a tonne.

Inside the house, Palan’s sobbing could still be heard.

4

Her life inched forward in a “dream state” so to speak. Sometimes it looked like Kamali understood her situation, sometimes it didn’t. Whenever she was alone she steeled her heart. But …

There was a pulsation, an eagerness, again and again kept pushing her into the abyss of sin.

Kamali was just a walking corpse.

Sometimes the letter from her husband melted her heart. She felt like running to his feet to bawl her heart out; on those days, she was resolute.

But when the sun set and it was time to light the evening lamp, the crystal clear sound of Rasan’s bicycle bell as he turned the corner at the junction would completely shatter all her resolve within a second.

5

Kamali was holding a kokkaththadi in her hand. The moringa tree had exceptionally borne a fruit. She jumped up aiming for the lone fruit.

She knew that her husband loved it. She will cook it for him today.

Nadesan stood relishing this scene. He cannot see such a scene tomorrow since his time off from work was ending that day.

He felt a discomfort in the depths of his heart. ‘Kamali — my darling Kamali — should I be separated from her again?’

Her tired face, laced with beads of sweat, was exquisite.

“Kamali” he called out with great fondness as he turned her warm cheek towards him.

“Ich. People are looking” she said shyly.

The two people who sat on top of the passing cadjan bullock cart enjoyed the privilege of their vantage point a little too excessively.

6

He prepared to leave.

She was left with the feeling that the entire world had come to a standstill.

She understood every strand of his breath, every reverberation of his heart. It is only now that she understood the full meaning of separation.

Nadesan took her left hand. She felt a burning sensation.

It was the same hand that Rasan’s unsteady soapy hands touched.

“Chee” — she cast away those impure thoughts. But they rose up again, in a gigantic form, to torture her.

Kamali cried her heart out, thinking of something.

Tears flowed out of Nadesan’s eyes, too.

“Why are you crying?” She sobbed, wiping his tears with her tiny fingers.

“Because you are crying!”

“When will you return, aththaan”

Silence was the response.

Kamali’s two warm streams of grief mingled with his quivering lips.

Unconsciously a resolution was forming in her heart.

7

It was a Sunday. There were no other friends in the boarding house. Everyone had gone off to see a movie. Nadesan sat down with relief to write a letter for Kamali.

“Kamali! If I could grow wings this instant, would I not fly to you right away? Will I not admire every little detail of your walk, the way you decorate yourself, your voice, that little mischievous smile that curls in the corners of your lips?

“My darling, as I write this letter, you will be standing beneath the familiar jasmine bush; your thoughts wander. All those thoughts …

On the same day, at the same time as Nadesan was writing this letter, many miles away —

Kamali’s father was coaxing the ‘white lagoon’ chickens he had just brought from Colombo to climb up the tree.

Inside, his wife was cleaning the soot covered hurricane lamp.

Palan held his book wide open and was alternating between reciting the Vipulanandar poem in a voice with a loudness that was uncalled for, and lifting his head to watch his sister:

“uḷḷak kamalamaṯi kiḷiyē [It is the flower of your heart, parrot]

uttamaṉār vēṇṯuvatu” [ that the lord asks for]

Kamali was chopping green plantains for dinner.

She wasn’t paying attention to anything, not even to chopping green plantains.

A darkness engulfed her heart, weighing heavily!

At a distance, Rasan’s bicycle bell needlessly rang twice, as he turned around the bend by the tamarind tree.

It echoed on Kamali’s bleeding fingers!

The transliteration uses the ISO15919 notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15919.

Glossary

ammā Mother.
aththaan (attān) A Tamil woman’s way of addressing her husband. Literally ‘older male cousin.’
akkā A way to address an older female. Literally, ‘elder sister.’
chee (cī) An expression of disagreement, disapproval, or disgust.
che (cē) An expression of negation or denial.
kokkaththadi (kokkattaṭi) A garden implement where a metal sickle is tightly attached to a long pole; “pole sickle”.
Kudam (kutam) A circular earthen or brass vessel for carrying and storing water.
thambi (tampi) A way to address a younger male. Literally “younger brother.”
thavani (tāvaṇi) Upper part of a sari that is draped over the right shoulder.

Transliteration guide for proper names

People and Things

Nadesan natēcan
Kamali kamali
Vimala vimalā 
Palan pālaṉ
Rasan rācaṉ
Vipulanandar vipulāṉantar