By Shevlin Sebastian
The first sentence of ‘The
Solitude of a Shadow’ written by veteran Tamil writer Devibharathi, and nicely
translated by N. Kalyan Raman, creates a sense of foreboding: ‘Karunakaran had
turned up before us like an evil spirit after nearly thirty years.’
This is the
thought process of the nameless, first-person protagonist, who is a clerk in a
government school. Let us name him Rajasekaran, for ease of narration.
Karunakaran, the owner of a loan shop, had come to see the headmaster. It was
clear from the reaction of the headmaster and the staff that he was a man of
influence. Later, Rajasekaran came to know that Karunakaran was a successful
entrepreneur and the president of the school’s Parent-Teacher Association. It
was through his efforts new classrooms had been made.
The reason for
Rajasekaran’s shocked reaction was that Karunakaran had raped his sister Sharada
three decades ago. Their mother had told Sharada: “It’s nothing. You will be all
right.” Rajasekaran was only 12. And he remembered shouting at Karunakaran, “No
matter how long it takes, I won’t rest until I have chopped you into pieces.
I’ll avenge this, da.”
Karunakaran laughed. Then he told their mother, “The boy
watches a lot of movies, it seems. Such a small runt. You are no bigger than a
crab, but you stood there with a sickle in your hand and threatened to kill me.”
Unfortunately, the siblings could not inflict any revenge.
That evening, when
Rajasekaran mentioned the reemergence of Karunakaran to Sharada, Devibharathi
writes: ‘the smouldering embers of her vengeance had begun to shed the layers of
ash deposited by time.’ After calming down, Sharada asked her brother to wreak
vengeance on Karunakaran.
Rajasekaran wrote an anonymous letter describing the
rape of Sharada. He sent it by post to Karunakaran’s home.
‘I wanted him to feel
on his dead tongue the salt of the tears that had flowed from Sharada’s brown
eyes as she stood before him trembling like a wounded bird,’ writes
Devibharathi. ‘He would never have imagined that I would follow him like a
vengeful serpent and that he would struggle to protect himself from the panic
that would follow.’
Now begins the cat-and-mouse game between Rajasekaran and
Karunakaran, as they interact with one another all the time. It is intriguing,
suspenseful and mysterious. No rising heat wave or a falling water table can
distract the reader from enjoying this superb novel.
Devibharathi has been a
government employee, political activist, a managing editor of a literary
magazine and scriptwriter. He won the Sahitya Akademi award for 2023. ‘Nizhalin
Thanimai’ (‘The Solitude of a Shadow’), published in 2012, is his first novel.
In four decades, Devibharathi has published two short story collections, four
novellas, four novels, a play and two non-fiction anthologies which contain his
essays and memoirs. One hopes that more books of Devibharathi will be translated
into English.
(Published in the Sunday Magazine, The New Indian Express, South
India and Delhi)
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