The Short Story in Tamil Literature

The short story is of great antiquity, and it was at first oral. From the time there were children to coax, maidens to court, kingdoms to win, monsters to slay, foemen to fight, pupils to learn, wares to sell, huntsmen to shoot, or anglers to fish–there have been short stories.

What makes a ‘short story? Of course, it should be ‘short’, and it should be a story’. But both these terms are not to be taken in the ordinary, dictionary sense. The two together form a technical term, or ‘a term of art’, as it is sometimes called. It should be just as short, or just as long, as the story it sits out to tell needs it–no shorter, and no longer. If it is too short, one might miss the story, if it is too long, the reader’s patience might wear out. But mere length alone does not decide it.

Just consider this:

A SHORT STORY

(Condensed Novel)

A winning wile,
A sunny smile,
A feather:
A tiny talk,
A pleasant walk
Together.

A little doubt,
A playful pout,
Capricious;
A merry miss,
A stolen kiss,
Delicious.

Youask pappa,
Consult mamma,
With pleasure!
And both repent
The rash event,
At leisure.
–Looker On; 1921.

What are the essentials of a short story, and the qualities of a short story writer? First, I shall just pick out a few qualities of some famous writers. Here is a list.

Irony; condensed style; skill in the art of suggestion; slickness; humour; now arch, now bold; constructive skill; quickness in getting off the mark; surprise ending (O’ Henry;) cynicism; sanity; satiric wit; genius for names (apply significant without knowing shy); way of putting things; packing a world of meaning in a small compass; malicious relish in the phrasing; welter of emotions; getting inside the skin of the characters; reproducing deepest feeling with sympathy; and understanding, which would disturb even a hardened cynic; style, scholarly, allusive, or even highbrow; easeful, effortlessness, art; and so on and on. It may be a parable, fable, apologue, tract, with a message, if you care to find it, and enjoyable, even if you do not.

What are the essentials of a modern short story? Plot characterisation, and setting, says one authority: ‘The principle of unity is all important; the plot, whether single thread, or complicated web, must be well and skillfully spun. The characterisation must be life-like; that is, the actors must have appropriate roles, and must behave in consistency with their characters, and in keeping with their surroundings–however, improbable or fantastic they may be. And the setting–the world in which the author makes his actors move, must have the atmosphere and local colour that will make the story carry conviction, and have an air of truth.’

These three essentials are common to the short story and the novel. Some modern novels run into three books more, these days. The scope of the short story is much narrow. ‘The plot is simple, and often centred round a trivial incident: the movement is swift and direct towards the climax.’ There are no preliminaries at all, or they are set out in a sentence or two, or else just suggested. The characters are few. There is further a unity of tone or mood. ‘In this respect, as in others, the short story has much in common with the lyric. Both are confined within narrow bounds; in both a simple fact, or situation causes an emotion reflected in a mood that permeates the whole composition.’

All these are ‘of no avail unless that elusive quality, style, is there to add harmony, proportion, and beauty to the whole, and to stamp it with the author’s personality.’

Now with these ideas in our mind, let us find out what place the short story occupies in Tamil literature.

Tamil literature is fairly ancient, and has preserved a continuity for nearly two thousand years, or so. The Sangham classics, which are anthologies in verse, are mostly lyrics; and they contain a few specimens of lovely short stories. They are just of the same kind as the story of The Prodigal Son, and The Good Samaritan, and Greek stories of the past. With just a little difference.

I shall give just one example of such a short story, contained in one poem–poem number 51 of Kali-t-tokai, one of the ancient Sangham anthologies. It is told in just sixteen lines. There are four characters–the reciter, who is a girl, her friend who just listens, the mother of the girl, and a young man, who is the subject of the poem There is incident, dialogue, humour, and love–all within these few lines of exquisite, but somewhat antique verse.

LOVE’S TRICKERY

How bright do your bangles sparkle!
My friend, listen to this
It chanced that one day,
When my mother and I
Were all alone in our house
Some one came to our door,
And cried,
‘O good people in the house,
May I have some water to drink?’

He it was, that scapegrace imp,
Who used to tease us oft,
Trampling with his feet
The little toy houses of sand
Which we built so often
In the streets where we played:
Or else, pulling off
The chaplets of flowers
Which we wore in our hair;
Or else, running off with our ball,
Painted with bright stripes.

He it was, indeed;
But then, we knew it not.
And so,
My mother called to me,
‘O my lovely darling,
Take him some water to drink
In a goblet of beaten gold.’
And I, all unsuspectingly,
Took it there to him.
When, suddenly,
He caught hold of my bangled wrist,
In a grip that hurt.

Surprised, I cried out,
‘Mother, mother,
Look at what he has done!’
And then,
My mother let out a shriek,
And came running up.

But, when she came,
I just told her,
‘This young man seemed to choke,
While ‘he was drinking’
And then,
While my mother
Stroked his ,
Up and down,
With tender solicitude,
Out of the corner
Of his roguish eye,
He shot killing glances at me,
Smiling all the time–
The young villain.

In Sangham literature, as these ancient classics are called, we find several types of stories, in separate frames, so to say. With a little imagination and with the aid of the colophons, (as the brief indication, put in later, at the end of Poem are called,) we can reconstruct the stories. They relate to love, and war, poets, and kings, tragedy and comedy, ironing, wit, satire, and lament. They deal with domestic life too.

It is true that old Tamil literature was in verse, and prose came into ordinary literary use much later. But we find that the most ancient, and most famous of all Tamil grammarians, Tholkappiar, refers to Tamil prose as an appropriate medium for the fable, and satire. No such prose fable, or satire, has, however, come down to us. We do not even know whether any such was ever written.

These old stories have very little characterisation, the actors being mostly types. The setting was often conventional. The stories have no organic coherence–not in such degree as in the modern short story. The beginning, the middle, and the end, of the stories, were held together by a slender thread. They were more natural, and less sophisticated.

We notice an evolution in the pattern of story telling as we come down through later Tamil literature. Several little stories are tucked inside bigger ones–without really forming a fundamental part of the whole. As examples may be mentioned the story of ‘Ahalya’s Fall’, of ‘Ganga’s Descent’, of ‘Viswamitra’s Rise’, etc., to be found in the story of Rama. You have similar ones in the story of the Great War–Mahabharata. (A splendid example is the story of ‘Nala and Damayanti’, and another is that of ‘Satyavan and Savitri.’)

Notwithstanding such ancient roots, the short story in Tamil is an exotic, or a graft at best. It came to us as a result of western impact. Even there the short story had a chequered career. After Poe, Melville, Crane, and Hawthorne came O’Henry with meretricious writing, and twisted endings. It became artificial for a time. It has now blossomed out as a fair flower.

In the Tamil country, the vogue of the short story began at the end of the last century, almost at the same time as the first novels did. But there had been short stories of an easy, and simple type, much earlier, almost as soon as Tamil prose acquired some flexibility as a literary medium, communicable to a larger audience than the poetic medium of the stories in verse of earlier days. Paramartha Guru Katha may be cited as an example. Stories of Vikram, Arabian Nights etc., appeared. The style was involved, descriptions were conventional and the technique was much in evidence. They have no high place in literature.

Then came men who were imbued with a love of our land and of our tongue and had also drunk at the fountains of the west, and of our own past. V. V. S. Aiyar, Subramania Bharati, and Madhavaiah, each in his way contributed to the development of the short story in Tamil. The first was semi-poetical and emotional, and still direct. Bharati was sometimes forthright, but ‘often tended to wander’ on excursions ‘not germane to the story.’ Madhavaiah, correct and precise, brought to it a ‘sense of social purpose’.

Afterwards came Kalki, Puthumaipithan, and a host of other men and women, with sufficient ground, talent and craftsmanship, and took to the short story. They brought it right out into the cottages and huts. They created live men, and women, and children. The language approximated to the street language of the people, and was neither stiff nor pedantic. Various literary groups, and magazines, fostered and encouraged such writing; and readership grew somewhat rapidly. Prizes were offered, and competitors grew in numbers. The first of such prizes was offered by the Ananda Vikatan, and won by M. J. Ramalingam (Rali) with his ‘Oomachiyin Kathal.’

Since then, the short story has developed very much, and covers all fields and all emotions. Some are sweet and healthy; some are morbid; some are psychological; some are warmly sympathetic. The short story has now become a firm part of modern literature. But it has still not achieved the pedestal that it deserves. Some lament that it is the Cindrella of literature; but now and then a short story writer (perhaps, for work in another field) does sing the prayer.

Shower, shower, little tree,
Gold and silver over me

and is promptly answered. We may hope that it will be more rewarding as readership increases more and more, and books and magazines sell better.

At first, as we saw, the Tamil short story began as an import, mostly from the west, and some times from the north too. You may remember that both V. V. S. Aiyar and Bharati translated some of Tagore’s stories into Tamil. The next stage was, perhaps not so good. Apart from some original stories, and some translations, there was much unacknowledged material, much plagiarism. But this phase soon passed. The Tamil short story really found its feet, became rooted in its native soil, and began to grow fast. Many of the stories were really good–so good that they began to be translated into other Indian languages, and into English too. I believe some have been translated into Russian. And today, we find that Germany, the land of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and of Baron Munchachauson, has also taken up a couple of them. So it has now become an export product. Our stories went abroad in the past, and why not today? I expect we have a great future, and I shall put my feeling in the words of the Negro song:

‘There is a good time coming, and it’s not far off–
Been long, long on the way.’