Of hope in despair

A review of the Tamil translation by Sundara Ramaswamy of the Malayalam novel thottiyude magan by Thagazhi Sivasankara Pillai

There is a telling line in the Wikipedia entry for Thottiyude magan — When it first appeared in India in 1947, the novel caused great controversy in its portrayal of the untouchables as people with real feelings. Less than a century ago, it was a controversy to portray a class of people who were forced to undignified labour as living and breathing human beings. While it is no longer a controversy to do that as movies like Sillu Karupatti, Kakka muttai, and the works of Neelam Cultural center have shown, we still haven’t come very far in terms of ensuring an equitable life for our fellow human beings.

It is against this backdrop of hopelessness arising from the sluggish pace of change that the message of Thottiyin magan shines. It narrates the story of three generations of Thottis, the scavenger class in the town of Alapuzha in Kerala, and how hope sets people on their path to freedom.

I have read two of Thagazhi’s works so far — Chemmeen and a collection of his short stories. While the short stories threatened to make me cry, Chemmeen fulfilled that promise. That same strong sense of tragedy is present in this novel as well. Starting from the death of Isakkimuthu and the ignoble burial he receives, the novel offers very little respite from sorrow. Isakkimuthu is the first generation of Thottis in the novel, one who would be considered an ideal Thotti by his oppressive masters. He believes in the magnanimity of the rich and privileged whose feces he cleans. He has hopes for his son, no matter how small they are, hopes that he too will become a Thotti like his father and earn his keep. This hope is fulfilled all too soon when he falls ill and dies.

This introduces us to Sudalaimuthu, one of the most complex characters I have encountered in fiction recently. He has been forced into being a Thotti in a manner that he was not prepared for. The ignominy he suffers despite being an honest hard-working man, more honest and hard-working than any of the privileged whose shit he cleans sets ablaze a fire of ambition in him. This ambition is noble and visionary because he dreams not for himself but for the next generation. He doesn’t want his son to be a scavenger’s son.

But the means he adopts to achieve this end, refusing to help his fellow-men, hoarding money with the avarice of a Shylock, and betraying his own best friend adds another layer to his character. With subtle touches, Thagazhi shows us how the oppression of the privileged creates perverted layers of oppression in the oppressed turning the innocent into evil.

In contrast to the grey character of Sudalai, is his wife Valli, who he courts and marries. She is a woman with a conscience, a mirror that shows the ugliness creeping into Sudalai’s soul. While her ambition is not as grand as Sudalai’s (all she wants is for her son to lead a healthy, happy, and dignified life), they are still noble as are the means she adopts to achieve them.

And it is the result of these two ambitions that Mohan is born. With a name that the Thottis and the non-Thottis feel is un-Thotti-like he grows up in a manner that is also very un-Thotti-like. The sequences of his childhood are the brief moments of joy that one can find in this book. But even that is short-lived and he too wakes up to the harsh reality of being Thottiyin magan.

One of the striking aspects of the novel is how Thagazhi uses disease first smallpox, and then cholera as both effective plot devices and also a backdrop to illustrate how misfortunes come down harder on those that we have oppressed. The travails of the Thottis and the callousness with which their masters deal with them are a chilling reminder of what we have ourselves done with the recent pandemic.

So, in a novel full of death, despair, and dreams crushed before they can take root, crushed so utterly even at the end of the novel, how does one find hope? The hope lies in the fact that every generation of hopelessness keeps the flame of hope alive and moves the needle forward just a little bit. The hope lies in the fact that what was just dumb desire in Isakkimuthu’s generation has burst into total revolution in Mohan’s. The hope lies in the fact that while we do not see it in our own time, our actions, good or evil have their repercussions across generations.

Sundara Ramaswamy’s translation brings to light the pathos and strength that Thagazhi wanted to project. His effective use of colloquial Tamil makes the novel read like an original.

If you are someone who can read Tamil, I’d strongly urge you to read this translation. The first step towards a revolution of equality is the awareness of our privileges and the struggles of those that we oppress. It is our responsibility to awaken ourselves to this bitter truth so that it may fruit into the sweetness of hope beyond our generation.