N.Vinoth Kumar
Short
stories are not mere short stories. It is a slice of life. It is a granular look
at our everyday life. Intricately weaved but yet extricate to observe what
makes one’s life meaningful or to make meaningful the life itself.
Tamil
literature has a very good tradition of short stories. While comparing world
literature with Tamil literature, it can be said that, the world literature has
achieved many wonders through novels. But no world literature will stand near
Tamil literature when it comes to short stories.
The
world literature has not even achieved a quarter what Tamil literature has
achieved in short stories. All the credit goes to Pudhumaippithan, who has been
considered as ‘Father of Tamil Short Story Tradition’.
Lalgudi
Saptarishi Ramanujam, popularly known as La.Sa.Ra., has earned his own place
after Pudhumaippithan, through his short stories. He had the power to control
the words, to play with the words and to turn the words into embers. He had a sleight
of hands in framing sentences and hence his stories are like a flowing river,
which makes a reader wholly engaged.
He
has written more than 200 short stories. Many of his stories were published as
collections under the titles such as ‘Janani’, ‘Ganga’
and ‘Dhwani’.
I
have read one of his short story collections ‘Janani’ which has 10 short
stories. The reason I chose this collection is because, somewhere someone has
said like this: when Jayakanthan in his initial days as a writer, went to meet
a literary icon of those days, (it may be Ka.Na.Su or T. Janakiraman)
and asked ‘How a literature should be?’
Without
a second thought, that literary icon, gave a book to Jayakanthan and said, ‘Literature
should be like this!’. The title of that book was ‘Janani’ by La.Sa.Ra.
Interestingly,
‘Janani’ was his first short story collection published in the year 1952. I
read all the stories in this collection. However I liked the story ‘Janani’
very much. It is close to my heart.
But
why Janani?
Before
getting into the reason, why I like this story very much, we should know what
the story about.
It
is a story about, Goddess Parvathi, (sometimes referred to as Ambaal), who
wants to born in the earth and to experience the mundane human life. She born
to an illicit couple, who left the baby near a pond and eloped.
A
temple priest finds the baby and took her to his house. Since, he doesn’t have
a child, he adopts the infant as his child and named her as Janani. As a woman,
Janani witnesses various kinds of tortures, challenges and confused with her
own life.
She
got married and what happens next makes the story, a thoughtful one.
So,
why I like this story? It simply because I am in love with a girl named Janani.
As like the story got attracted me at the very first read, the girl Janani too
attracted me at first sight. She then swept me off my feet!
She
is also like Goddess Ambaal and the love I have for her is unconditional love.
La.Sa.Ra., said in one of his interviews that ‘Love is a tremendous accident!’.
That phrase is exactly true, upto me.
Finally,
in the same interview he says, ‘Life is nothing but to show our kindness and
love to someone!’ I am contemplating these words everytime and I like to make
my life more meaningful by loving her… and hence, I love you Janani!
