 |
 |
 |
 |
V Sundaram
Indira Parthasarathy (his real name is Parthasarthy, the first name being
his wife's which he uses as his pseudonym) was born in 1930 and brought
up in Kumbakonam, Tamilnadu. After his graduate and post graduate
studies at the Annamalai University he did doctoral work in the University of
Delhi and obtained the Ph.D. degree on 'Vaishnavism In Tamizh Between
Seventh And Ninth Centuries'.
I had the rare privilege and good fortune of learning Tamil at the feet of
Indira Parthasarathy between 1955 and 1958 in the Madrasi Higher
Secondary School in New Delhi where he was working as a Tamil teacher. As
my teacher, he gave me a feel for world literature, which has lasted for a life-
time. He often taught by his example. His mastery over Tamil, English and
indeed world literature was very evident in the classroom. Later, when I
joined the Dyal Singh College in Delhi University as a lecturer in Economics
in 1963, Indira Parthasarathy became my colleague as lecturer in Tamil in
the same college. We parted company when I joined the Indian
Administrative Service (1965) and moved to Madras.
As an academician he had a distinguished career in Delhi and later
Pondicherry Universities. When Pondicherry University was started in 1985,
he organised the School Of Performing Arts and was the Director for Culture
in the same University until he retired. He was visiting professor of Tamil
Language and Literature from 1981 to 1986 in Warsaw University, Poland,
and devised specialised courses for teaching Tamil for the non-Tamils and
foreigners. He was also a visiting Fellow to various Canadian Universities
and gave lectures on Indian philosophy and culture during 1984. He was
also a visiting lecturer on Indian Literature at Institute Voortalen, Utrecht,
Holland.
As a creative writer, he has carved a niche for himself in Tamil fiction. He
has published 16 novels, 4 anthologies in novelettes, 6 anthologies of short
stories and eight modern Tamil plays. He won the Sahitya Academy Award
for his novel Kurudhi Punal (The River of Blood) in 1977. It focuses on the
savage burning of Dalit farm labourers. The novel is outstanding in its
realistic portrayal of the rural scenario with all its petty rivalries, casteism and
vested interests.
Indira Parthasarathy is one of the brilliant writers of modern fiction in
Tamil, unconventional in approach, Parthasarthy's works deal with different
aspects of social existence in the North as well as the South. I have met
people from different cultural backgrounds from different parts of India and
the world who have told me about Indira Parthasarathy's pervasive cultural
influence upon their psyche and consciousness. The value of great fiction is
not that it entertains us or distracts us from our troubles, not just that it
broadens our knowledge of people and places, but also that it helps us to
know what we believe, reinforces the qualities that are noblest in us, leads us
to feel uneasy about our failures and limitations.
What is significant is that Indira Parthasarathy is primarily a theatre-man.
He has published eight plays so far: Pasi (Hunger), Mazhai (Rain), Kala
Iyandirangal (Time Machines), Nandan Kathai (Story of Nandan), Koil
(Temple), Porvai Porthiya Udalgal (People with Hidden selves), Aurangazeb
and Ramanujar. Some of his earlier dramas were written under the influence
of the Absurd Theatre. He got Saraswathi Samman Award for his Ramanujar
in the year 2000.
Most of his plays have been translated into English and Hindi. His
novelette Ucchi Veyyil (The Noon Sunshine) has been filmed by director K
Sethumadavan as Marupakkam, which won the President of India Gold
Medal in 1991 as the best feature film. He was the honorary editor of the
monthly literary journal Kanaiyazhi and contributed a number of critical
essays on modern Tamil literature.
There are two distinct schools of the drama — the idealistic and the
realistic, the classic and the romantic. It is the object of the ideal and classic
school to ennoble and elevate reality upon the stage. It curbs the wilder
outbursts of passion; it eliminates the vulgar and the commonplace; it raises
life into a serene and lofty region, from which all low and unlovely elements
are carefully excluded. On the other hand, the natural and romantic school
'holds the mirror up to nature'. It is satisfied with things as they are. It does
not select the beautiful and eliminate the 'unbeautiful'; it does not fasten on
the noble and repudiate the base, but presents both as they are manifested
or seen in real life. The discerning student of the drama, at his best, may
indeed have a natural preference for one school over the other. I hold that
the cultured and appreciative mind will have adequate room for both, and
generally recognise the distinctive merits of both. As an avant-garde
playwright in Tamil literature, Indira Prathasarathi belongs to the second
category. In my view, he is a conscience-keeper and book-keeper of modern
Tamil dramatic art. No one can question his position as a pioneer in the
drama of social problems. His plays go straight to the basic questions of
human conscience. He has disturbed the accepted concepts of conduct,
proposed new moral values, and in his dramas of disaster and defeat,
suggested the imperative need as well as the inevitable triumph of truth.
Before I conclude, I cannot help striking a personal note. When I was
leaving the Madrasi School in February 1958, he gave a testimonial to me in
long hand, which is still in my treasured possession. My close personal
association with him has been steady and continuous from 1955 till today.
Chekhov said: 'Medicine is my lawful wife; literature is my mistress'. For
Indira Parthasarathy, Indira was his lawful wife and literature has been and is
still his mistress. His great books have added a new dimension to literature.
In an era of lost security they represent a search for certainties. Technically
he has explored limbos of language, which no prose writer before him had
ever envisioned. Indeed this writer of creative genius has demonstrated
through his creations the fundamental truth that in order to achieve a multi-
dimensional effect, you have to use a multi-dimensional language.
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)