உன்மத்தராயிருந்தோம்

Translated from the original Tamil short story uṉmattarāyiruntōm (உன்மத்தராயிருந்தோம்) 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.

“Oh Kachchi Ekampaa”

To whom else can one appeal so cheaply.

Ekampan my foot!

How dare you just utter this name with your dirty mouth — the holy name that deserves to be said with goosebumps all over, and tears of devotion pouring down?

Chee, spit that word out.

Apparently he snivels! He grieves!

Isn’t there a desolate wasteland nearby, overgrown with cacti and babul trees? If there is, go lament there! Pour your tears in there!

Like all men, you conveniently philosophize after you have had your downfall; but did you, even for a moment, understand, nay try to understand, the heart of Sarasa?

You know how to lift your pen without shame and write. But if she — she, whose heart is as soft as her silky body — happens to see this?

Why would you worry about that prospect?

2

When Sarasa came to join my school, I was startled.

What a beauty! She was wearing an ordinary saree. It struggled to completely conceal the beauty of her body, her slender fair hips.

Her thick locks lay shyly on her chest with pride, twisting and turning.

Those eyes — those blue eyes — she evidently knew their worth. She never lifted them to gaze at anyone. Only mother earth had the ability to withstand that gaze.

Poor her, she didn’t really know how to wear a saree. She is barely a woman!

She struggled to walk, as her saree made a ‘sadak, sadak’ noise.

Do you know the irresistible urge one gets to scoop up a toddler learning to walk because one fears that they are going to trip and fall? One gets the same urge when one sees Sarasa walk in a saree.

When her delicate feet touch the ground, I marvel, wondering if there are a thousand hearts that are being trampled.

Jealousy never leaves anyone alone!

When the other students came to complain to me saying “Sarasa seems to be going somewhere at night,” I was shocked.

Sarasa? I could not believe my ears.

But that night, I had to do the deed.

3

The next morning she came to me with her eyes teary and downcast.

“Miss! Do I really have to go?”

“Sarasa… the news has spread throughout the entire hostel. Even the principal has ordered me to dismiss you. I am so sorry. But what can I do!”

“Miss! Do tell me Miss, what great crime have I committed?”

“He liked me; I liked him, too. Even after realizing that it was ‘wrong’, we were so mesmerized that we couldn’t control ourselves. If we had come to our senses, would we have behaved like this? We acted as though we were intoxicated.”

“Miss, is this an unforgivable sin? How easily do you kick me out of the school … …”

“But… … think about it Miss… … tomorrow the society will treat me worse than a worm that wriggles in the phlegm that someone spat out. Is that acceptable?”

“You are a woman too. Who else can understand my lapse?”

Her last question shook me!

“Isn’t a school meant to reform those who erred, rather than punish them by discarding them?”

How can I respond?

“Sarasa, tell me the truth. How did this happen?”

The floodgates opened. She poured her heart out.

I was overwhelmed.

“Miss, I don’t care about leaving the school… … but, just three more days… … couldn’t you have waited just three more days?”

She sobbed uncontrollably.

“You have asked me many times: ‘why are you knitting this sweater?’ I concealed the reason from you. It is his birthday in just three days. I poured my dreams into this lovingly knit sweater. Who will I give it to now? Who will it fit except his broad shoulders?”

“How will I see him again?” she sobbed. I couldn’t even console her.

4

Although she went on to train as a nurse, she did not forget me. She wrote often. Her first letter … …

“My future is dark; there is darkness in my heart; there is darkness along the way; how will I face my father!”

“I pushed open the gate, and it felt as though I was pushing the entire world with my hand.”

“My father — that sightless, bony old man — was eating on the porch. Next to him was my dear sister, barely twelve. She took into her tender hands the responsibility for cooking so that her elder sister could go off to study. She was making the rice into balls to feed him.

“Sarasa, how come you are so early?” he stretched his hands towards me, his voice dripping with concern.

“Aiyō! Why didn’t a drop dead of a heart attack in that instant ? Why didn’t my heart break into a hundred pieces and kill me? I did, without shame, tell everything to my blind father who had dreamed day and night ‘Sarasa will become a weaving teacher within three months; after that our troubles will melt away.’”

“If he had beat me up then, I would have had some solace.”

“I bore the grief of watching him eat the rice ball in his hand, mixed with teardrops.

“My sister — the little child — cried at my feet without understanding why. I bore those priceless tears, too.

“It is not that I didn’t know how to take my life. But… but …”

“When I remember those happy days when we sat by the temple pond, gazing into each other’s eyes till eternity, hope blossomed in some distant corner of my heart.”

“We will lean over the pond to look at the reflection of the full moon in the pond.”

“We threw pebbles into the pond, breaking that full moon into a thousand pieces, and laughed out loud for no reason.”

“Suddenly he would lie on my lap and count the stars in the sky without end.”

“How many promises we made on those stars, and on the full moon.

“urutikaḷ kōṭi ceytōm [We made a million commitments]
uṉmattarāyiruntōm.” [we were intoxicated]

“Yes, we were intoxicated.”

“Why are this full moon and the millions of stars still sticking to the sky?”

“Hey, twinkling star, do you still believe his promise?”

“Hey, full moon, what sin did I commit to make him forget me so quickly?”

“Did that Raju forget this innocent damsel! Has he, for whose sake I endured all the suffering in this world, and bore all the world’s insults, even forgotten that Sarasa is alive?”

“He never responded to all those letters I wrote with my tears.”

“Do you know the reason why?”

“Miss, my fingers tremble with shame even to write these words.”

“It seems he is afraid of all the insults thrown my way. It seems I have earned a bad reputation in the village.”

“Is an innocent woman’s love so cheap? So forgettable so quickly?”

5

As soon as her training was completed, she got a job at the Jaffna General Hospital. I expected her to forget him at least from then on, but I was disappointed. In fact, she was rather naive. She kept on yearning for a miracle. This is what she told me …

“It has been six months since I started working as a nurse, Miss. In all these days… in all these days, he didn’t come to see me even once. He didn’t even try. I am a woman. I have learned to bottle up my feelings. What else can I do?”

“But he is a man! Had he wanted, couldn’t he have set up a thousand opportunities? Tell me Miss!”

She sobbed uncontrollably.

She bared her heart to me as she would to a friend, without holding anything back.

“Has he, who had held my two fingers and declared ‘I will wait for an eternity for these fingers to touch me’, forgotten me in a mere two and a half years?”

Another day, she came to see me, sweating profusely. “Why at this time?” I asked.

“Do you know Dr. Chandrasekar? He is transferring out of here. We had a farewell for him, so I couldn’t come in the middle of it,” she heaved a huge sigh.

It was election season; there were at least nine or ten surgeries each day. Sarasa barely got a break. To add to the rush, the chief doctor had taken the day off.

At around 1:00 am, the eleventh surgery was in progress. Sarasa was holding out one surgical instrument after another. She could see beads of sweat in the doctor’s forehead. Feeling that it was her duty, she took a piece of lint and dabbed the sweat off the doctor’s brows.

For some reason, the doctor put the instrument down and gazed sharply into her eyes. Then using the same piece of cloth, dabbed her own sweat off her face. All that took just a moment. No one saw.

A tingling sensation ran down her entire body. That day, he popped the question under that dome lamp. He offered an opportunity that she had not even imagined. But she turned him down without a moment’s hesitation. She had no doubt whatsoever that she belonged to someone else. If she had wanted it… all it would have taken was for her lips to move… … but she did not want that.

Is not the fact that Dr. Chandresekar is leaving today after having requested a transfer, a testament for the depth of her love?

But she didn’t know how to express that love. As if confirming the folk wisdom that womenfolk are naive, she counted days, holding on to the faint ray of hope.

6

As usual, the Point Pedro bus dropped her off at the Kalviyankadu junction. Her house was just a stone’s throw from there. If one takes the shortcut towards Senguntha College, it is just around the corner. But the cat-eyed twins’ shop was on the way and there was always a crowd there.

Whenever she passes it, whistles and lewd comments would ricochet off her ears. In that moment, Sarasa would cringe and her heart would wilt.

Just to avoid this embarrassment, she would take the long way by the southern end of Sangiliyan Thoppu.

That day was no different.

As she passed the pariyari’s house by the Jak tree, she spotted someone coming on a bicycle. Her heart skipped a beat.

It was him. Raju.

As he crossed the junction and rode towards her, her heart raced. A thousand thoughts rumbled and filled her mind. “How will he start? What will he talk about? What if someone sees us”. She slowed down expectantly, with latent desire.

She sensed that he was near and was staring at her. Expectations bubbled up in her heart.

But he didn’t stop. He kept on going!

But it would have been a mercy had he kept on going. She could sense him stop at the bicycle shop far behind her. He turned and bicycled towards her again, But not alone. A bīdi puffing gem of a friend was in the back seat.

It was as if he was boasting: “I recognized you! But see! I didn’t lose my resolve!”. How did so much deceit latch on to the half-smile that made his lips curl?

As the bicycle whizzed past her, the wonderful friend’s quip, “the nurse’s uniform is sexy!” grated in her ears. The guffaw that followed underscored the quip.

“Dear Raju! When did you succumb to this crowd?”

How could I not cry when she said “Miss, my Raju, my dear Raju is long dead”?

7

She didn’t come by for many days. I went to the hospital myself. That was the first time I saw her in a nurse’s uniform. The delicate lines of youth were still replete in every part of her body. She was running around, focussed on her duties as she chatted with me.

“Miss! Raju came here. It was just a regular fever. I am not sure what made him come. But… but… he has changed a lot.”

“The evil notion that a “nurse” is not a woman, not an object worthy of love, had somehow taken root in his mind.”

“Tell me Miss! Is a nurse someone to be looked down upon?”

“His gaze that used to be full of love, has now been tainted with desire. That kind gaze now reeked of lust. I am even ashamed to recount what happened. The only thing left in his gaze was the fire that wanted to taste every part of my body.”

“He couldn’t understand my heart. But he still wanted to stake his claim. He wanted me not to see or talk to other patients.”

“If he didn’t like me working as a nurse, he could have uttered just one word back then and I would have stopped. But now, every patient is like a child to me.”

Sarasa! Who, but I, can truly understand her innocent heart. What did she tell me? Only I know that. “Miss! I will stay like this. No one will melt me. I can imagine no one but him as my husband. But… … but … … I will never get my old Raju back.”

After that the streaming tears laid her heart bare.

I know that she will never get married. But no one else will understand that.

* * *

You know only to plead “Kachchi Ekampaa!”

Ekampan my foot!

You can philosophize after falling down.

Did you try even for a moment to understand Sarasa’s heart?

What is the point in lamenting now?

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

Glossary

aiyō An exclamation that can express several different emotions including exasperation, fear, or a scream for help.
bīdi A thin variety of cigar made by wrapping tobacco in a tendu leaf.
chee (cī) An expression indicating disagreement, disapproval, or disgust.
pariyari (pariyāri) A traditional medicine man.
kachchi ekampaa (kacci ēkampā) Addressing the deity in Kanchipuram temple, celebrated in the saiva hymn tiruvācakam.

Transliteration guide for proper names

Places

Kalviyankadu kalviyaṅkāṭu
Sangiliyan Thoppu caṅkiliyaṉtōppu
Senguntha ceṅkuntā

People and Things

Chandrasekar cantiracēkar
Raju rajū
Sarasa caracā