Transverse

Of the short stories I’ve read by contemporary Tamil short story writers, it feels like many of them choose themes that lend themselves well to the compressed form. They construct situations of moral weight, place characters under pressure, and let plot and action carry the reader forward. The results are quite effective, sometimes even moving. But reading a batch of such stories in succession, I’m a bit disappointed that the sentences don’t sparkle. The dialogues feel functional rather than alive. It is the what of the story doing the work, not the how. Sharada and I had been talking about craftsmanship and aesthetics in propelling a story forward, when she asked me to read one of her favorites.

Jeyamohan’s (Je hereafter) பூனை is a story that works on many levels simultaneously, and it does so through the sheer beauty of dialogues. On the surface, it is a simple village episode: a young man named Nathaniel eats a temple meal, carries brass lamps to a decaying feudal mansion, discovers a leopard in the attic, and is told by everyone – the mansion’s inhabitants, and later in a poignant twist, the temple priest – that what he saw was a cat. By the end, he agrees. But the way this capitulation is achieved, line by spoken line, reveals craftsmanship. In this story, dialogue is not merely a vehicle for advancing the plot. It is, at once, characterization, social hierarchy, world-building, and the very mechanism by which the story’s central theme – the subordination of truth to power and pragmatism – is accomplished.

Before examining individual exchanges, it is worth pausing on the dialect itself. The language of பூனை resembles a Kanyakumari Tamil laced with Malayalam, but not a faithful one. Je has constructed a dialect rooted in real speech, but shaping it for literary effect. This distinction matters: a transcribed dialect aims for documentary fidelity, but an invented one aims for music. He writes in the preface for the ஆனையில்லா collection:

என் கதைமாந்தர் பேசும் மொழி கூட மிகச்சரியான குமரி மாவட்ட மொழி அல்ல, அது நானே உருவாக்கிக்கொண்டது. இங்குள்ள வட்டாரவழக்கின் நுட்பமான, ஒலியினிமைகொண்ட, வேடிக்கையான துளிகளைக்கோர்து அதை அமைத்தேன்.

Consider the rhythmic density of a line like வாச்சர் சிவன்பிள்ளை’s remark to Nathaniel after he finishes his lunch: “ஏலே, வயித்தியே பேனை வச்ச கொல்லையாம் மாதிரில்லா இருக்கு.” Yes, the surface of his stomach is so taut after a big meal that you can squish a lice. This is metaphorically inventive, and I’m not sure if Je made it up, or if this is casually thrown around in Kumari. But the sentence has the compressed, musical quality of a proverb, even though it’s a casual joke. This line didn’t lose its charm even on my third reading. When Kunjathi teases Nathaniel he looks pregnant, he responds “போடி கரிக்கட்டி…”, but just before that Je adds ‘அவனுக்கு நாணமாகிவிட்டது.’ This attribution of நாணம் changes the way the reader envisions how போடி கரிக்கட்டி sounds. The dialect is more than aesthetics, it is this world.

In a recent UnifiedWisdom video, Je remembered his teachers Atroor Ravivarma and Ashokamitran who urged him to live in Tamil Nadu and listen to Tamil on a daily basis. He recalls Ashokamitran asking him to stop writing in English because Je has a unique sensibility in handling Tamil, which Ashokamitran himself doesn’t possess. While Ashokamitran’s plainness may be his aesthetic achievement – a deliberate stripping away and keeping the essential – Je’s dialect is an act of construction, a literary artifact that gives every line of dialogue a density and a music that functional prose cannot achieve. I’ve read the story out loud three times, and it felt like I was singing.

In பூனை, Je doesn’t step in as a narrator to tell us who his characters are. There are no passages explaining that Kesavan Thambi is proud and suspicious, or that Potri is warm but pragmatic, or that Nathaniel is vulnerable and earnest. Every character is built entirely from how they speak  –  their rhythms, their word choices, what they insist on and what they don’t do.

Take Kesavan Thambi. When a few men come to inform him that there is a leopard in his attic  –  having confirmed it with their own eyes, having found the paw prints – he responds: “புள்ளிப்புலிக்கு நான் பயத்தங்கஞ்சி குடுத்து வைக்குதேன்… டேய் போடே… வெளியே போ… போங்க முதல்ல…” His mocking, dismissive joke that tells us quite a bit about this man: his contempt for those trying to help, his compulsive need to assert dominance in every exchange, his refusal to accept aid from people he considers beneath him, his fear  –  never acknowledged  –  that letting anyone into the house means surrendering control over what remains of a once-great estate. A lesser writer would need a page of interior narration to convey all of this. In this story, Je does this in a few lines of dialogue.

Ammachi, one of the older women living with Kesavan, is equally vivid. When Nathaniel first encounters her in the attic, she snaps at him – “என்னடே எண்ணி எண்ணி நடக்குதே? கால எடுத்து வச்சு போடே” – an impatience that establishes her as someone who has been irritable for so long it has become her only mode of being. The first time Nathaniel tells Ammachi he saw a leopard, she dismisses with “பூனையைப் பாத்து பயருத பயலா இருக்கானே?” But the second time around when he comes with a few more villagers, she hurls a tumbler at him: “எரப்பாளி பொய்யா சொல்லுதே.” The violence is not only petty, but also reflexive. She does not deliberate. She throws. This is a woman who has spent decades in a crumbling mansion with no one to command (but only a cat?), and she has compressed all her frustration into these small eruptions.

Then there is Nathaniel himself, whose speech is the most stripped-down in the story. “புள்ளி… புள்ளிப்புலி!” he stammers, tears running down his face. “ய்யம்மோ புள்ளிப்புலி!” His language breaks down under fear. He has no rhetorical resources, no capacity for the elaborate verbal maneuvers that the higher-status characters deploy. When challenged, he can only repeat himself with increasing desperation: “மஞ்சநிறம்… இந்தா இந்த மஞ்சரளி பூவுக்க நிறம்” – pointing at the yellow flower nearby. The specificity of the comparison tells us he is sincere. He is reaching for the only language he has.

Beyond individual characterization, the exchanges between characters also map the social architecture of the village without any exposition. Let’s take this exchange, when Potri, Ayyappan and Karadi realize it’s an actual leopard:

அவன் சுட்டிய திசையைப் பார்த்த ஐயப்பன் “யம்மா! ஒரிஜினல் சாதனமலா!” என்றான்.

சிறுத்தை பலாக்கிளைக்கு தாவி மறைந்தது.

“வங்கெளடு” என்றார் தங்கையா நாடார். “வயறு தளந்து தொங்கிட்டிருக்கு”.

“இங்க இருந்து நாம பேசுறத கேட்டிருக்கு” என்றான் ஐயப்பன். “ஏளவு இங்க ஆனை மறைஞ்சு நின்னாலும் தெரியாதுல்லா?”

“என்னடே செய்யுது?”

“ஆளக் கொண்டுவந்து பிடிப்போம்” என்று ஐயப்பன் சொன்னான். “கண்ணி வச்சு பிடிக்கிறதுக்கு நல்ல ஆளுண்டு… பேச்சிப்பாறை வரை போகணும்”.

After Ayyappan confirms the leopard’s presence from the paw prints and it leaps onto the jackfruit branch, the men pause. But right after the heat of verifying that there’s an actual leopard, Karadi Nair (or Potri, I”m not sure) looks around the vast, decaying attic and is struck by what has become of the house:

“எப்படி இருந்த வீடு… டேய் ஐயப்பா அந்தக்காலத்திலே இந்த கேசவந்தம்பிக்க அப்பா பல்லக்கிலே போவாரு. நான் கண்டிட்டுண்டு… முற்றத்திலே எட்டு ஆனை நிக்கும்”.

“அப்பம் ஆனைப்பிண்டம் நாறி அங்க இருக்கமுடியாதே”.

“அதொரு ஐசரியம்டே… அது மனசிலாகணுமானா நீ நாயரா இருக்கணும்”.

What a lovely transition. In five lines, Je builds Karadi Nair’s nostalgic reverence, triggered by the dilapidated state that a leopard is now inhabiting this once magnificent house where Kesavan Thambi’s father traveled by palanquin. All that remains of that grandeur are the rarely used குத்துவிளக்கு and bat droppings. Literary brilliance continues when Nathaniel punctures Karadi Nair’s nostalgic trip with a practical question: with eight elephants, how bad must the dung have smelled? It is the kind of earthy deflation that only someone like Nathaniel who lives outside the social structure can offer. And then Karadi Nair’s rebuke brings caste deftly into the conversation: That’s a blessing – and to understand that, one has to be a Nair.

The grandeur of elephants and their filth are not a contradiction if you occupy the right rung of the social order. The sentence is simultaneously a boast, a put-down, and – without Karadi Nair intending it – a damning self-portrait of the worldview that produced the Araikkall mansion and its current ruin.

Notice how Nathaniel is addressed throughout the story – usually “டேய்,” always commanded, always the last to be believed and the first to be sent on errands. He is a fixture of the village economy, doing odd jobs for food and a few rupees, addressed with casual affection by some and casual contempt by others. When he reports the leopard, his testimony is immediately suspect not because of what he says but because of who he is. Potri asks him gently; Kesavan Thambi dismisses him as a frightened child; ammachi throws things at him. His position at the bottom of every hierarchy in the story – age, caste, economic standing  –  prepares us structurally for the ending, where his truth is the one that must yield.

The most remarkable aspect of this story is that its central argument – truth is not what you see but what the social order permits you to say – is never stated by the narrator. It is performed, entirely, through dialogue. The leopard is real. Everyone who investigates either sees it or sees its evidence. Ayyappan, a man who hunts in the forest, declares it beyond doubt: “சிறுத்தைதான்… சந்தேகமே இல்லை.” And yet, through a sequence of conversational exchanges, reality is collectively revised.

The philosophical crux of the story arrives not as authorial commentary but as one pragmatic man talking to another. After Kesavan Thambi has thrown them out, Potri turns to Karadi Nair:

“டேய் கரடி, நமக்கு என்னத்துக்ககுலே இதெல்லாம்? தேவையில்லாம நாம எதுக்கு ஒரு இதிலே தலையிடணும்?”

“அதிப்பம்…” என்றார் கரடி.

“உனக்கு அது புலி, அவங்களுக்கு அது பூனை. நாம என்னத்துக்கு இன்னொருத்தருக்க பூனைய புலியாக்கணும்? இல்ல கேக்கேன்?”

“இல்ல, கடிச்சுப்போட்டுதுன்னா?”

“ஏன் பூனை கடிக்காதோ.”

“அது செரிதான்.”

This exchange is a masterpiece of village pragmatism disguised as philosophy. Potri is not denying reality. He is making a cost-benefit analysis: the leopard is old, its belly sagging; it has lived in the attic for some time without killing anyone; and Kesavan Thambi will never allow outsiders into his house regardless. To insist on the truth is to gain nothing and lose the goodwill of a man the village still depends on.

Karadi Nair’s one objection – “what if it actually bites them?” – is met with Potri’s pivot: “Why, doesn’t a cat bite too?” The line is funny, wise, and quietly terrible all at once. It concedes the danger while linguistically folding it back into the agreed-upon fiction. If a cat can also bite, then the distinction between cat and leopard – between truth and a convenient lie – becomes, for practical purposes, irrelevant. My personal favorite line in the story is Karadi Nair’s “அது செரிதான்.” It’s an obviously crazy hypothesis, but Karadi is forced into a corner to accept it.

And then the ending. Potri turns to Nathaniel:

“மக்கா நத்து, நான் உனக்கு போனதும் தெரளியப்பம் தருவேன். நீ மச்சிலே என்னலே பாத்தே சொல்லு.”

நந்தாலியேல் “பூனையாக்கும்” என்றான்.

“ஆகா, பய படிச்சுப்போட்டானே…”

Potri’s question is framed as a test, and Nathaniel – who wept, who stammered, who compared the leopard’s color to yellow flowers, who was mocked and had a tumbler thrown at him for insisting on the truth – answers: பூனையாக்கும். Potri’s dry response that the boy is a fast learner, is the story’s final line, and it lands with the force of a wind gently closing a door.

What makes this ending touching rather than merely clever is the accumulation of everything that precedes it. Nathaniel has been taking in the entire sequence: Potri’s pragmatism, Kesavan Thambi’s threats, and ammachi’s violence. He has also been offered therali appam  –  and we know, from the opening scenes, that Nathaniel’s life is organized around meals and small payments for odd jobs. The bribe is gentle, almost affectionate, but it is a bribe nonetheless. The boy who saw a leopard with his own eyes now says he saw a cat, and in doing so, he has learned the foundational lesson of village life: that truth is what the powerful will tolerate and the practical will endorse.

Another writer might have given us a reflective paragraph here – Nathaniel walking home, thinking about what happened, perhaps a line from the narrator about innocence lost. Je gives us three lines of dialogue and a punchline.

Equally important to what Je’s characters speak is what the story withholds. We never learn Nathaniel’s full background  –  only that he is young, does odd jobs, and is treated with a mixture of casual warmth and casual dismissal. We never learn the exact history of the Araikkall family’s decline, only its symptoms: the overgrown courtyard, the empty cattle sheds, the dusty attic with its giant pots sitting like crouching demons, the three bitter old people rattling around in a fifty-room house. Ammachi mentions that a Maharaja once stayed in this house, that a Maharani’s visit is still in her memory – but these are fragments, shards of a past that the story refuses to reconstruct in full. 

Most crucially, the story never makes explicit the economic scaffolding beneath Potri’s pragmatism. The story opens at the Bhagavathi temple, where Kesavan Thambi has already been mentioned in connection with the brass lamps lent for a festival. The lamps have been sitting unreturned for two months. Kesavan Thambi arrives in a fury to reclaim them, suspicious that the temple folk have been planning to keep them. The village still needs this man  –  his donations, his lamps, the residual authority of his lineage. By not antagonizing him over the leopard, Potri and Karadi Nair preserve a relationship that sustains the village’s ritual life. This calculation is never articulated. Je is generous in giving us pieces of imagery here, a clue there and a memory somewhere, but doesn’t fully paint a detailed background of all these characters. This restraint is part of the craft.

I’m not arguing that every Tamil short story must work this way, that’s not only a tall order, but almost impossible. Different stories demand different methods, and there is a long and honorable tradition of fiction that achieves its effects through plainness. But ‘Poonai’ demonstrates, in exhilarating style, what becomes possible when a writer treats dialogue not as a necessary mechanism for moving characters through a plot, but as the primary literary medium  –  simultaneously musical, sociological, and philosophical.

The sentences in ‘Poonai’ sparkle not because they are ornate. There is no self-conscious lyricism. They sparkle because they are doing four things at once: advancing the action, revealing character, mapping social relations, and building toward the story’s deft conclusion all the while offering immense reading pleasure. Every line is load-bearing. Every exchange shifts the ground beneath the reader’s feet. And in the final three lines, when a boy who saw a leopard says he saw a cat, the full weight of the story’s craft comes to rest on that single, quiet capitulation  –  a word spoken not in ignorance but in the hard-won understanding that in the village, as in the world, acceptable truth is not what you see. It is what you are permitted to say.