By: Aarvalan
At 91, Indira Parthasarathy is writing and bagging accolades and awards. Recently, Ee Paa, as he is fondly called, was honoured with the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Fellowship.
His contribution to the world of literature is legion, having authored 40 books including 16 novels, 10 play collections and half a dozen short story anthologies in an oeuvre ranges from the Freudian-Oedipal as its motif, as seen in the play ‘Mazhai’, to socio-political commentaries such as ‘Porvai Porthiya Udalgal’, ‘Kala Iyandhirangal’ and ‘Dharmam’.
Ee Paa’s novels ‘Kuruthipunal’ (River of Blood) and ‘Sathiya Sodhanai’ (Testing of Truth) are hard-hitting accounts that delve into caste and the workings of the political class. The former is based on the incident of 44 dalit agricultural workers who were burned to death by a landlord in Keezhvenmani village, Nagapattinam, in 1968. Seven years later, Ee Paa came out with the literary document of the massacre. Beginning by portraying the idyllic village, the novel proceeds to delineate how there are inner contradictions and the iniquitous equations in existence.
As Ee Paa had imagined the perpetrator of this bloody act as impotent, the leftists of CPI(M) felt that the novel “digressed from the original issue and betrayed the cause”. Comrades went to the extent of burning copies of the novel, but Ee Paa stated that it was only a work of fiction and the author can take liberties. ‘Sathiya Sodhnai’, sketched out the story of a cut-throat politician, Maruthanayagam, who plots to kill, and comes up with schemes, all to hide his clandestine dealings and win the election.
At the other end of the spectrum, Ee Paa’s awardwinning play ‘Ramanujar’ reveals his vast knowledge. After his postgraduate studies at Annamalai University, he did his doctoral work at the University of Delhi and obtained his doctorate on ‘Vaishnavism in Tamil Between Seventh and Ninth Centuries’. His involvement in Vaishnavism must have prompted him to write the play on the Vaishnavaite Saint who belonged to the previous century.
From 1955 to 1958, Ee Paa worked as a Tamil teacher at the Madrasi Higher Secondary School in New Delhi. In his classroom sessions, one could have a feel of world literature. Everywhere he led by way of example. As a teacher he wanted the students to gain an experience, both cultural and intellectual, that could last for a lifetime. He was Delhiite from 1955 to 1986 and that perhaps created an ideal milieu for his evolution and growth. But he was always in touch with his Tamil roots. He is the only Tamil writer to have been conferred with the Sahitya Akademi award (1999) and the Sangeet Natak Akademi award (2004), besides the Saraswati Samman in 1999 and Padma Shri in 2010.
It was the world of theatre that lured Ee Paa to play with words. Remembering his childhood, he had once recounted how his parents took him to watch Nawab Rajamanickam Pillai’s ‘Dasavatharam’. “As the curtains rose, it was a tense and electrifying moment for me. Lord Vishnu then appeared on the stage and everyone was awestruck. For most it was ‘bhakti’. Later, as the years passed, I realised, as I encountered the genuine theatre versus technology syndrome, how well the Nawab could create a make-believe spectacle with mere gas lights. It was indeed marvelous.
He is himself his strongest critic. In a preface to one of his short-story collections Ee Paa once wrote. “Many short stories here are of a different time and were born out of different circumstances that forced me to write these. When I read them now in one sitting, I have a feeling of a strange intrinsic logic that appeals to me. Could I have viewed and written these differently? This then appears to be my strength and weakness.”
Even today, he doesn’t mince his words that are marked by probity and are refreshingly forthright, whether it is on Twitter or in his literature.
(The writer is a literary enthusiast)
