
The shade of the
trees,
The single hut,
A few flowers,
And a sky,
In the picture
That hangs on the
wall.
As my eyes rest on
the flowers,
My heart wanders
In search of
The solitude
Of the painted hut.
—Pada Veettin
Thanimai, Oru Maalaiyum, Innoru Maalaiyum (2000)
The most enduring
memory Salma’s friends in the Tamil literary circle have of her is arguably the
sight of her eating dosai. It was the first time most of them were
meeting Salma.
Kalachuvadu
Publications, which had only published seven books since it was revived in
1994, decided to launch four more to coincide with the World Tamil Conference,
Chennai, in 2000. Among them was a compilation of Salma’s poems, Oru
Maalaiyum Innoru Maalaiyum. Salma, who was as anonymous as Elena Ferrante
at the time, decided to attend the conference on an impulse.
“It was her first
exposure to a literary event. Her mother was a hesitant accomplice in this
escapade. To travel alone was unthinkable!” her publisher Kannan Sundaram
writes in his introduction to the German translation of her first novel, Irandaam
Jaamangalin Kathai.
Salma, who is now 48,
told me her mother would accompany her everywhere. “It was considered wrong for
a woman to go out alone. People in the village would say ugly things. Even
later, when people knew who I was, my family would not let me travel alone—it
was a question of the family’s honour. I would feel sorry for my mother. It was
a traumatic experience for her to be at these literary meetings. She would be
so bored, she would start nodding off within minutes of an event. People still
tease me about it—they’d say, ‘Just like the mothers of cinema actresses
accompany them everywhere, so does Salma’s mother.’” She smiled. “You know when
I started travelling alone? When I had to go abroad.”
The famous dosai incident
occurred years before that.
Kannan recounted the
story in his introduction: “A few of us invited her to walk with us to a nearby
restaurant. She glanced at her mother, and then receiving a silent message
which we could not interpret, came with us. As we walked, it was obvious she
had trouble negotiating the city’s crowded platforms and roads. In the
restaurant it was a sight to watch her eat a dosai! Again a first!
We teased her mercilessly but she enjoyed every bit of it—to this day she
retains that sense of humour.”
Salma began to laugh
when I asked her about it. She was not used to eating out. No one in her family
liked to eat at restaurants. Before she was published, she would only visit
cities when someone had to go to the hospital. They would leave after
breakfast, and do their best to return before lunch.
“At the hotel, when
they reeled off all these varieties of food, the only one I recognised
was dosai,” she said, “So I asked for it. Then it took me an hour
to finish eating. There were all these men around me, and I felt a sense
of koocham (shyness).”
She was particularly
averse to eating in public. Her parents had once taken her to Kodaikanal for
the day to cheer her up—it was during the period when Salma was resisting
marriage, threatening suicide every time they broached the subject. They
thought a trip would do her good, and left for the hill station by the 5 a.m.
bus. Salma remembers the smell of frying bajji on the street.
“My father bought a
plate of molaga bajji for me,” she said, “I refused, because
everyone else on the street seemed to be looking at me. I was so tempted to eat
it, this steaming hot bajji in the cold of Kodaikanal. But I
couldn’t.”
Now, she was
surrounded by strangers who were keen to talk to the poet they so admired. She
would not look at them. She stared at the leaf and picked at her dosai.
Salma is now described
as a “controversial” poet. The “bold” language she uses is seen as having
encouraged other young women writers to follow suit. However, when one
knows the story of her life, one understands that she is tackling taboo
subjects not to be sensationalist, but because she has lived them. Her language
is non-conformist in the sense that the dialogue is realistic, uncensored.
It is perhaps to tell
the story behind her work that Salma agreed to British filmmaker Kim
Longinotto’s proposal to document her life in 2011.
Speaking on the phone,
Kim told me she had first heard of Salma when she was at a film festival in
Delhi, showing her Pink Saris (2010), a documentary on Sampat
Pal. She had attended a women’s seminar during the festival.
“It was very, very
depressing,” she said, “Everyone was being so negative, saying ‘Oh, things
aren’t going to change.’ And then suddenly, Urvashi [Butalia] said, ‘Look,
girls, there are things happening; we just never hear about them’, and she
tells us about Salma, and I thought, ‘Ah! I’ve got to do it.’”
Butalia’s Zubaan had published the English translation of Irandaam
Jaamangalin Kathai (called The Hour After Midnight). Kim
left India with copies of every work of Salma’s that had been translated. “You
know, Nandini, I love this woman,” she told me, “She’s a
brave, brave woman. What she does is this brave thing—talking about very
personal things. It’s so easy to talk about politics in the abstract, which is
what people normally do, but to actually talk about your own self in that
incredibly unguarded, passionate way, it’s so rare. It’s rare enough in Europe,
but for this girl from a little tiny village in Tamil Nadu...even when I’m
talking to you about her, I’m in awe of her.”
The documentary told
the world a story which was known mainly to Salma’s friends, of how she had
been pulled out of school, and confined to the house until she agreed to
marriage; her husband and in-laws did not like the fact that she wrote, but
Salma did not give up. With a little help from her parents, and a lot from her
friends, she became a successful writer and politician. Salma’s books had
already been translated into several languages. But the documentary catapulted
her into a larger arena. She was being invited to film festivals across the
world, more translators came forward, and she became a role model, a woman who
had defied tradition and constraints.
This came at a price.
Voyeuristic details of her early life and her marriage worked their way into
every write-up on Salma. Back home, her international fame evoked jealousy in
those who believed that she was being judged on merit of her struggle and not
her talent.
I first interacted
with her at the World Writers’ Festival 2014 in Paris. The documentary was
screened, followed by a discussion of Salma’s work. The image of Salma as a
formidable woman began to dissolve when someone asked her about her niece
Fathima, of whom she is very fond. At the time, Fathima had just finished
school, and her parents were keen to marry her off.
“I just want my
Fathima...,” she said, in her careful English, and had to pause because her
voice was breaking, “...to finish her studies. I don’t want Fathima to suffer.”

Several members of the
audience stayed back for a tête-à-tête. Typically, they were more interested in
her life than her work. An Indian-origin woman asked me to translate an
intrusive personal question, which I refused to. Salma, who had heard the
exchange, later squeezed my hand and said, “Thanks. I don’t know how to say
‘no’. Even when I don’t want to answer questions, I do.”
Through the week we
spent at the festival, Salma and I spoke often. The organisers had asked her to
read her poetry in English rather than Tamil, and she asked me whether her
English was passable. She laughed, “At least they didn’t ask me to read in
French.”
By the end of the
festival, she had begun to address me in the singular, trading the formal neenga for
the informal nee. It told me I had been promoted from reader to
friend.
“What is interesting
about people like her,” Kim Longinotto said, “Is that she has incredible
strength, and she knows it, and she knows she’s amazing, and she knows she’s
done something unique. But at the same time, she has really dark nights and
moments of doubting herself and moments of guilt, and she’s very, very
conflicted. I think that’s why it’s so easy to be her friend, because she has
doubts like we do.”
Things have changed in
the years since the dark nights, and Salma has put it all behind her. But every
time her story is told, she is forced to relive those times.
Writer and historian
Prof. A. R. Venkatachalapathy, a long-time friend of Salma’s, told me, “She’s
become a prisoner of her biography.”
In the author’s note
to her latest novel, Manaamiyangal (2016), Salma writes, “I
have just one request for my readers. Please leave the creator behind when you
enter the creation. I wish to take leave of you here. Please don’t take me
inside with you.”
Among Salma’s earliest
readers was Kannan Sundaram. He is not particularly fond of poetry, he told me,
but her work was striking. She would send her poems to literary magazines. When
her early work was published under her own name, Rokkiah, it enraged her family.
Her husband would ferret out the poems she had hidden in various places and
tear them up. So she worked out an elaborate conspiracy. She would write in
bits of calendar paper in the middle of the night, standing in the common
toilet of the house. A pen was hidden inside a box of sanitary napkins on a
shelf in the toilet. She would stuff the paper into her blouse, and then slip
them between her sarees in a cupboard. When she got the chance, she would copy
them out neatly and give them to her mother, who would have her father post
them to magazines. Salma sent some of her poems to Kalachuvadu. She
told me Kannan made a phone call to her one day, asking for more poems. She
gave a secret notebook of her poetry to her cousin Hameed, who was already
making a mark for himself as a poet under the pen name “Manushyaputhiran”.
Manushyaputhiran was also an editor at Kalachuvadu.
Through him, Kannan
heard her story, and knew that she had not finished her schooling. It showed in
the spelling mistakes she made.
“Despite all those
shortcomings, her skill came through in her poetry, her fiction, everything
that she wrote,” he told me. “I particularly remember her book reviews. They’re
so sharp. Where did she get such inputs, what were the sources, where did she
find the tools for such insightful analysis, without stepping out of her home?
No one can forget them. And people don’t forgive her for them either,” he
added, with a laugh.
It was through these
reviews that Venkatachalapathy first encountered Salma. He had moved to
Tirunelveli, near Nagercoil where Kalachuvadu is based, and
would go to the office every week to look at the submissions.
“Once, Kannan produced
a review of Thoppil Mohammed Meeran’s novel, Saaivu Naarkaali (which
won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1997),” Venkatachalapathy said, “It was a
hard-hitting review. Kannan asked me what I thought, and I said it’s a
fantastic piece—it’s a new voice, a new perspective, it’s not something that
I’ve ever heard before. The writing had lots of grammatical slips. But as an
experienced editor, I can say there are two kinds of writing—writing which can
be edited, and writing which cannot be. The latter is impossible to salvage.
You change one sentence and then you have to keep changing the whole damn
thing. This person’s writing was so clear, and the most important thing is you
could also see it was a fresh voice. Obviously it was not an experienced
writer, but there was maturity.”
Kannan told him who
the writer was—Manushyaputhiran’s cousin, a young woman writing from Thuvarankurichi
without the knowledge of her family.
“Thoppil Mohammad
Meeran has never forgiven her for that review,” Venkatachalapathy said, with a
smile, “Generally, Thoppil has received velvet-cushioned, kid-gloved treatment,
as a new voice from the Muslim community. He couldn’t take the shock. That too
from a woman, which is worse, and a Muslim woman.”
He tried to get even
with her by reviewing her novel. But he didn’t simply condemn the novel. He
chose, instead, to quote provocative passages out of context, including a
reference to a lecherous father-in-law.
“He was basically
trying to provoke fellow-Muslims,” said Venkatachalapathy, “It is a
particularly perverse mind. First, this is what he could read in the 500-600
page novel; and the second perversity was that he should put these passages
alone out there.”
Salma reviewed books
early in her career, but the animosity she faced from fellow-writers made her
decide to stop.
“No one seems to want
honest feedback,” she told me, “If you don’t praise everything they’ve written,
they see you as an enemy. Now, when people call me to book release functions, I
know they want me to compliment their writing, not analyse it.”
What she does is this brave thing—talking about very personal things. It’s so easy to talk about politics in the abstract, which is what people normally do, but to actually talk about your own self in that incredibly unguarded, passionate way, it’s so rare.
Twenty-three years
after he read the review, Venkatachalapathy remembers a particular sentence
from it. “I had reviewed the novel too, and I remember I’d picked out a very
jarring metaphor. Salma, too, said it jars and grates—the writer was trying to
suggest that the sun is harsh and bright and scorching by saying, ‘The naxalite
sun rose’.”
Readers tried to guess
who “Salma” might be. The popular opinion, even among prominent writers, was
that this person must be a man writing under a woman’s name, because the
writing was too intelligent to belong to a woman.
Ironically, one of the
funniest bits in Salma’s Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai is among
the most poignant. A woman writes a letter to her husband, who is in Saudi
Arabia. On his next trip back home, he laughs and says, “What atrocious
spelling! Didn’t you go to school, makku?” He is so oblivious to
his own privilege that he doesn’t realise how crippling the lack of an
education is.
“My father, even my
mother, wanted me to study further,” Salma said, “But no one had ever gone to
school after coming of age. The village is like a large family. You can’t defy
traditions easily.”
But because she was
such a keen reader, she had educated herself in ways that other women from her
village hadn’t.
“The spelling mistakes
in the letter that Sherifa writes to her husband are not exaggerated,” Salma
said, “Girls in the neighbouring houses would write letters to their husbands
in the Middle East. They’d sometimes bring them to me to see if they’ve written
correctly. These are the kind of basic errors they would make. Some of them had
even forgotten to read. They would bring letters their husbands wrote them,
hidden in magazines or newspapers, and ask me to read them out. So, many of
them preferred to speak and sing into cassettes—their husbands would have
bought them tape recorders from abroad—and then they would send those through
someone else who was going there.”
“You’re so
fair, akka,” Rabiya
said, “I wish I were fair like you.”
Waheeda laughed.
“What do you expect, running around in the sun all the time? When you come of
age, you’ll be inside the house like me, and you’ll lose your tan.”
Rabiya imagined
herself becoming as fair as Waheeda. She could not wait to get her period.
—Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai (2004)
Salma was telling me
how she had nearly lost a ring that was loose, demonstrating how it had fallen
off. I noticed how long and slender her fingers were.
“No wonder you keep
describing your characters’ beautiful fingers,” I said.
Salma laughed. “We
don’t do anything through our teenage years, right? They do so much to make
sure we’re beautiful. We don’t go out in the sun. We don’t do any housework. We
just sit in our rooms like so many dolls. On the one hand, they want us to be
lovely. On the other, no one can see that beauty. Once we’re married, we go out
wearing burqa. But until then, we can’t step out of home.”
“What happens to your
friendships? You can’t visit each other, right?”
Salma began to tell me
about her childhood friends—four girls who used to go to the cinema. They were
inseparable. “We were all really tall too. Naalum maadu maathiri
varadhunga nu pasanga ellaarum engalai kindal pannuvaanga (Literally,
“Other kids used to say look at the four of them, coming along like a cow”).
Our houses were very close. But once we all came of age, we might as well have
lived on different continents.”
She decided they would
keep their friendship alive through letters. She would write in detail about
her day, and beg her mother to play courier. But the other three were too lazy
to write, she says. They were happy to sleep, cook, and eat. They told her
mother they had nothing to say, every day was like every other day. None of
them could meet until all of them were married. The bonds had broken.
“I was just
thinking about my brother. It seems I have to wear a dhavani from tomorrow. And I can never
get rid of it. Amma told me. My brother will scold me. And he won’t even let me
go to the movies from now on,” said Madina.
The recollections
of her brother that had been imprinted on her memory reinforced her image of
him as an imposing, even terrifying, man. She did not look forward to his
arrival. She believed his visit would be thoroughly annoying.
“If you’re sure
you’re going to wear a dhavani from
tomorrow, I will too!” said Rabiya, cheerfully. “Both of us will give each
other company, all right?” she said again, trying to get Madina to lighten up.
As soon as she had
said it, Madina’s face glowed with happiness.
“Really?” she said,
“I was feeling awkward about having to start wearing dhavani. The women will tease me, and say
gross things. I’m so relieved, di!” She tightened her grip on
Rabiya’s fingers. In the grip was the confidence that Rabiya would do anything
for her, that she belonged to her.
—Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai (2004)
Putting a face to the
name was not an easy task. Salma’s early work is dedicated to her friend Lalli,
a labour inspector in Tirunelveli who came to her house to meet her after
reading her poems in a magazine called Suttum Vizhi Sudar. It was
Lalli who helped her plan a family tour with a secret agenda. It was an
all-woman group, comprising Salma, her mother, her cousins, and their children.
They took a train from Madurai, and then got on to a van Lalli had arranged.
They did some sightseeing in Kerala, taking the children to the zoo. On their
way back, they made a slight detour.
“On a summer morning
in 1994, I was working in my newly set-up office of Kalachuvadu, in
the front yard of my house,” Kannan writes in a foreword, “A large vehicle
pulled up in front of our gate. Several heads were visible, mostly women with
their saree dupattas pulled over their heads. They waited
outside the gate for others to get out and join them so they could come in as a
group. We were expecting them. I knew one of them was Salma. She was
coming to visit my father Sundara Ramaswamy. My father ran an open house, so we
were quite used to visitors, a few announced but mostly unannounced coming in,
at all times of the day. Food was prepared in excess, anticipating
guests. There were guest rooms upstairs. A literary magazine once ran a box
item saying, ‘Don’t waste your money booking a hotel room when you go to
Nagercoil. Just go to Suraa’s home!’
“The gate opened and
they all walked in, a little hesitant. This was probably their first visit to a
non-Muslim household. I could immediately pick out Salma—I had seen a
photograph of hers earlier. She wore her saree slightly above her ankles, the
way village women wear them, and seemed uncertain in her movements, hinting
perhaps of her relatively secluded life. But in my mind, probably my
family shared this feeling too, she was a wonder we were waiting to meet.”
She was equally keen
to meet Sundara Ramaswamy. She had read his J. J. : Sila Kurippukkal,
and was struck by the language.
“It was the first book
of his that I’d read, even before Oru Puliyamarathin Kathai. We
speak about post-modernism, but even what we think of as post-modern writing
reads like regular stories. His writing was so different. It would surprise you
at every turn. I thought he must be very young, maybe 30 at the most.” She
laughed—he was 47 when it was published, and nearly 60 when she read him for
the first time. After having read his work, and then read about him, she wrote
a letter to him. “He replied immediately,” she said, “That was even more
surprising. For that great a writer to sit and write a reply by hand and then
post it...if I see I’ve got 10 emails now, I postpone replying to them. And
he...imagine!”
He would send her
recommended reading material. Later, he even visited her house with his wife,
and his imposing presence and dignified bearing, along with his formidable
literary reputation, would lend respectability to the career she had chosen.
It was at his instance
that Salma attended the World Tamil Conference, Tamil-ini 2000, put together by
Kalachuvadu in Chennai. The conference had parallel sessions, with more than
250 delegates and attended by a couple of thousand people, said
Venkatachalapathy. It was where he first met the writer whose reviews he had so
admired six years earlier.
Salad days. Photo: Courtesy Salma
It is hard to imagine
Salma, who now addresses political rallies and travels the word reading from
her work, in that avatar. Kannan described how she was once invited to Madurai
to address a book club. The event was recorded on audio tapes. Salma’s voice is
not on the tapes. She mounted a stage for the first time in her life, and was
so paralysed by anxiety that she could not speak a single word in the several
minutes she stood in front of the microphone before walking back in defeat.
“I hadn’t begun to
think of myself as a writer,” Salma said, with a smile, “When you’ve got some
books published, it gives you this confidence, this idea that you’re someone.
I remember when my first poetry collection came out. I couldn’t believe it had
happened. After all the fuss over my writing for magazines, I didn’t know
whether I could continue to write, whether [my family] would let me write,
whether I would ever be published. And for me to have written all these poems,
and for them to have been released as a book...it felt like a dream when I held
it. It was such joy.”
However, at the book
release, Salma refused to go on stage. She was worried her photograph would
appear in the Tamil press, and her family would learn of the subterfuge.
Venkatachalapathy told
me he did not speak much to her at the conference, assuming she would be
uncomfortable speaking to men. Ten days later, he received a letter from her.
“It was two sheets of
paper torn from a spiral-bound book, I remember,” he said, “And it was a
beautiful letter.”
It was the beginning
of another of Salma’s lasting friendships. They would not meet for a couple of
years. But Kannan kept him in the loop about a big project that was under
way—Salma’s novel.
Nooramma realised
there was no point in pleading with them. She felt an inexplicable sense of
liberation. The decision to set her aside from the village would not be
reversed. There was nothing she could do against it. But an impulse to protest
in some manner raged inside her. Her newfound sense of independence surged
through her body and broke through her qualms. “So you dignitaries won’t let me
be part of the village anymore? Let it be so. You say it’s a sin for my
daughter to have run away with a kafir. Is there a single man in this village who hasn’t slept with a
Hindu girl? Let me see. Let a single man in this crowd stand up and say he
hasn’t fucked a Hindu hooker, and I’ll admit that what my daughter did is
wrong.” She stuck out an arm and looked at each man in the crowd in turn,
pointing her index finger at them as she swung round. As they stood, stunned
into silence by her words, she raised her voice again. “Can any of you say
honestly that you haven’t? Allah will question all of you when the time comes.
My Rahman-e! My rab-e! What have you allowed these
bastards to do to an old woman? This cruelty will not let you live in peace.
Oh, God, oh, God, my heart’s on fire!” With a cry, she bent down and threw
fistfuls of sand into the air.
—Irandaam Jaamangalin
Kathai (2004)
Salma had begun to
write Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai in 2000, on manuscript
notebooks a friend had gifted her. She finished it within a year, but was
apprehensive about the repercussions its publication could have.
But something she
could never have envisioned was coming her way. Panchayat elections were due in
October 2001, and her husband Malik, an aspiring politician, had planned to
contest. But Thuvarankurichi Panchayat was reserved for women that year, and
Malik decided to make Salma his proxy. All of a sudden, the woman whose face
was hidden from the world had to go out and ask for votes. Malik was happy for
her to address public meetings.
The campaign had given
her immense confidence. People would ask Malik where his wife learned to speak
so well. Realising that her writer image could come in handy, he had encouraged
her to reveal her identity. On October 25, 2001, the day she won the election,
her first press photograph was taken.
Salma commanded
respect everywhere she went. She would meet district collectors and government
officials to voice her grievances, and they would grant her an audience
immediately, while other panchayat chiefs waited their turns. She once told a
collector that there wasn’t enough water in the 15 wards in Thuvarankurichi,
and wrote an application for water tanks in each ward. The collector said there
was no provision to grant water tanks for town panchayats—they could only be
installed in village panchayats. She argued that Thuvarankurichi was more
village than town. The collector acceded to her request. Later, Rajya Sabha MP
Cho. Ramaswamy, transferred funds to her for the installation of solar-powered
lights even without meeting her. Her writing had convinced him of her
intelligence and reliability. Malik, who would accompany her on these missions,
saw that she was being given special treatment. He also realised she would not
be his proxy.
Salma’s newfound
confidence emboldened her to agree to the publication of her novel.
“First I’d hesitated
to publish it because I had written things no one else had. It was around the
time Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen were being persecuted for their work.
People now knew who Salma was. Things could turn dangerous.”
Kannan convinced her
that he would have trusted editors look at it, and she could rework the novel
if she wanted. But there was a catch. She had no copy, and was convinced the
courier service could not be trusted.
“I had written it when
my husband was not supportive of my writing,” she said, “So it was in three big
books, and some loose sheets, and some smaller books, all hidden in a cupboard.
This was entirely handwritten. How could I send it? I was terrified it would
get lost. I couldn’t even courier it directly, because there was no such
facility back home. I’d have to get someone to courier it from Trichy or
Madurai. Whom could I trust? Finally, I decided to send it myself, when I had
work in Madurai. I went to the courier office, with a family friend. But I got
cold feet. The family friend said she would have it photocopied and then
courier it. I refused, and took it back home. Finally, Kannan said he would
send someone trustworthy from his office to personally deliver it. I had to
agree. I could barely breathe until I knew it had safely reached their office.
Comedy-aa irundhudhu.”
Venkatachalapathy was
among the readers Kannan consulted. They marked out passages that might cause
trouble, and Salma removed some sections. The novel was published in December
2004. It was released in the Landmark Book Store at Spencer Plaza, and received
unprecedented media attention.
All hell broke loose.
Islamic organisations were enraged.
Back in her village,
someone told the Jama’at chief that he had been described as a womaniser.
“I had not meant him
specifically,” Salma told me, “I was making the point that religious leaders
have stringent rules for their followers, but they don’t practise what they
preach. But he thought he recognised himself in a particular character. He is
still not on talking terms with me. He even worked against me in the
elections.”
First, i’d hesitated to publish it because i had written things no one else had. It was around the time salman rushdie and taslima nasreen were being persecuted for their work. People now knew who salma was. Things could turn dangerous.
Kannan had sent a
photographer to Thuvarankurichi while designing the cover of the novel. Among
the pictures he took was one of two women sitting in a doorway. Kannan asked
Salma if it was all right to use the photograph.
“They had covered
their heads, so I thought it was fine,” Salma said, “It was my fault. I should
not have done it without asking their permission. I was naïve. I didn’t know
all these things. When Kim [Longinotto] made the documentary, I saw her getting
signatures from everyone who was interviewed. That’s when I realised this is
the protocol.”
When the book was
released, the women were identified by the house in the picture. They were
furious.
“They came and asked
me why I had used their photographs in a heretic work,” Salma said, “They said
why not use your photo, or the photo of someone in your family? I apologised. I
had the cover changed in the next edition. Finally, I gave them a
recommendation and helped them get into the quota for Hajj. Now they’re
friendly again.”
But the novel did make
Salma vulnerable to attacks from conservatives and political opponents. Years
after its release, in October 2010, an aspiring politician and writer Aloor
Shanawas essentially trolled Salma through a cover story in the Islamic
magazine Samanilai Samudhayam.
He took objection to
Salma having identified herself as “atheist” on Facebook. In a 10-page article
punctuated by images she had put up on Facebook, used without her permission,
he bemoans her faithlessness and fame in equal measure.
The piece was
purportedly about television programmes during Ramzan that year.
After a long analysis
of everything that he believes is wrong with them, Shanawas writes, “Another
thing which shocked viewers during the seher special
programmes at Ramzan were the clothes and speech of Salma. It was a pleasant
shock to see our sister, who appears at literary gatherings in new-fangled
clothes, with elaborate hairstyles, makeup and jewellery, covering her head and
speaking about religion on television.”
He went on to quote
bits from various interviews she had given earlier, out of context. In one, she
had spoken of the religious indoctrination of children, recalling an instance
of her sons being horrified when they saw her wear a friend’s pottu on
her forehead.
“Going by her
statements, it appears her sons are better qualified than she to advise Muslims
on religion during seher,” he writes.
His magnanimity and
open-mindedness had prompted him to attend a discussion on her book in Chennai,
he said. He had, at first, been happy for his “beloved sister”, when he saw how
well-attended the event was. As it unfolded, though, he was troubled by
“certain questions”. His mind raced. He believed he had uncovered a sinister
plot by the media and “certain high-caste publishing houses” to defame Muslims
by hailing Salma’s atheism as progressive.
“They idolise and
encourage her for having renounced her religion, for having defamed Islam in
her work, for making public appearances without a veil or other identifiers of
her Muslim culture,” he said, and added, “Will India Today set
aside pages to speak about writers who are working for the awareness and
reawakening of Muslims? Will Kalachuvadu write essays on them?
Will The Hindu and Vikatan write about them
with photographs? Will websites give them space? Will they be invited to
conferences abroad? Without any publicity or laurels, there are Muslim writers
fighting against all odds to pursue their work.”
The reason for his
resentment is clear soon enough. “For her Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai,
Salma has been getting invitations from America, which is on the other side of
the world. But [my] Kaithiyin Kathai has not brought [me]
invitations even from Andipatti.
The reason for this is that Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai speaks
about the liberation of Muslim women by running away with Hindu men,
whereas Kaithiyin Kathai speaks about [Abdul Nasser] Madani
(accused in the Bangalore serial blasts case of 2008), an exemplary Muslim, and
other innocent Muslim prisoners.”
Other detractors would
speak about the wantonness of Salma’s women characters, of the obsession with
sex in her work.
“In all these
discussions on sexuality in the novel, no reference is ever made to the fact
that a Muslim man in the novel has an open long standing relationship with a
Hindu-Dalit woman,” Kannan said, “It’s not sexuality itself, but the politics
of that sexuality that infuriate her critics. Her scathing criticism of the
male domination and religious oppression of women in her novel adds fuel to the
fire. She was branded as the Tamil Taslima Nasreen.”
Najima, as if she
had just remembered something, suddenly said, “Hey, Mumtaj, who stitches your
blouses? I’ve wanted to ask you for the longest time. He makes them
really well!” In a swift move, she pulled the veil off Mumtaj’s head, swung her
around, moved her pallu to take in the cut of the back and neck of the blouse,
and then lifted the saree off to stare hungrily at the front portion of the
blouse.
“Adiyei!” cried
Mumtaj, pulling the saree back over her chest, “Are you out of your mind?” She
giggled, as the blood rushed to her face. But Raima understood that she was
beet red from coyness, not anger.
“Like you’ve got
something no one else has! And is it going to shrink if I look at it?” Najima
smirked, “You haven’t told me yet, who stitches your blouses for you?”
“That Battaani
Bhai,” Nafisa answered for Mumtaj, “Who stitches yours, isn’t he good?”
“I gave it to some
idiot and wasted the cloth. Look at how he’s messed up the front,” Najima said,
dropping her pallu so that they could look at the cut, “Hm...what difference
does it make whether we get clothes stitched or not? Does any husband appreciate
his wife’s beauty? They fall on us like so many animals, fumble around in the
dark, do their jobs, and then get up and walk off.” After that frustrated
speech, she giggled suddenly and said, “They won’t look at you if you wear a
saree, and they won’t notice you if you’re naked, eh?”
Raima felt
unbearably discomfited. What would Ayishama’s daughter, who had been weeping by
her mother’s corpse and was now listening to all this, think?
—Irandaam
Jaamangalin Kathai (2004)
One of the characters
in the novel, Waheeda, is horrified at how public her biological functions have
become after marriage. Her mother-in-law begins to wail when she doesn’t miss
her period the first month; the neighbours reassure her that Waheeda will
certainly miss her period the next time. As the date approaches, everyone asks
her if she has got it yet. When her husband complains that he has married a
greenhorn who makes sex an ordeal, her neighbours bring pornographic tapes and
adult magazines to impart lessons, with her mother’s blessing. Waheeda
remembers how annoyed her mother would be when she went to the cinema.
“We have this
unnatural approach to sex,” Salma said, “It is either seen as something pure
and procreative, or as something that must be hidden, as dirty and wrong. Sex
is a bodily function, like eating. It’s something you need when you cross 18.
But we treat it as a sin. We don’t talk about it. Maybe that’s why women are
harassed all the time in our society. There is so much restraint, and people
don’t know how to break out of it except in the most perverse ways.”
“Landmark had just
started selling Tamil books in 2004,” Venkatachalapathy told me, and laughed,
“I remember, there was some controversy. A popular writer said, ‘I went to
Landmark and asked where the Tamil books were, and a security guard came and
took me by the collar and escorted me outside.’ Landmark responded saying they
would never do that. But the point was there were no Tamil books. Now, they
started selling them, and they wanted to do an event to showcase that. That
event was Salma’s book launch. Sundara Ramaswamy spoke on the occasion, and
Susie Tharu was also there. It was a big event. Four books by Tamil women
writers were released.”
Sundara Ramaswamy was
a crucial figure in Salma’s career. He did mentor several writers, but was
particularly fond of Salma.
“I would refer to him
as appa,” Salma said, “I don’t know what to describe him as—he was
father, friend, mentor, adviser, all-in-one. It’s a special relationship.”
When she was not sure
whether to enter politics, she turned to him for counsel.
“He said go for it,
and the rest as they say is history,” said Venkatachalapathy, “It completely
transformed her life.”
Kannan told me how his father used to tease her, especially after she became panchayat president. “He was very playful with her. He once called her up and gave her a task—he said within five years, you have to destroy all the mosquitoes in your panchayat. Then every six months, he’d call her and ask if she’s destroyed the mosquitoes. That’s the kind of relationship they had,” Kannan said, laughing.
When Salma went to
their home, Sundara Ramaswamy would take her to Thiruvananthapuram and show her
around. As long as he was around, her family was happy for her to travel
without her posse.
Salma broke off into
peals of laughter when I asked her about the mosquito elimination project.
“He was so funny,” she
said, “He would joke all the time.” She remembers a particular incident. One of
her short stories had won the Katha award, and she travelled to India
International Centre in Delhi to receive the prize. Sundara Ramaswamy was there
too, to receive a lifetime achievement award. Salma was escorted by her sister Najima,
who in turn was escorted by her son. Najima and Salma spent three days at the
IIC—it was their first real lit fest, Salma said—and would sit with Sundara
Ramaswamy after the day’s sessions.
“One day, I remember,
he suddenly said, with an absolutely straight face, ‘Salma, un akkave
mattum padikka vachirundhaa, oorai enna, ulagathaye vithiruppaa. Needhaan
appaaviya irukke, avo periya aala irukka. (If only your sister had
studied, she’d have sold the world. You’re an innocent; she’s something else).”
Salma was almost incoherent with laughter as she recounted it. “Just the way he
spoke would crack you up.”
Always,
All the things that
concern me
Occur in my
absence.
Every time,
Before I can touch
and feel
These things,
They are over.
I do try
To touch something
On someday
Before it has
passed me by.
Yet,
Defeating my
attempts,
These things that
happen to me,
Happen without me.
This world
With its flowers,
people
Is much larger than
I.
Must I give
permission
For my body to
breathe
In my absence?
—Swaasam, Oru
Maalaiyum, Innoru Malaiyum (2000)
In Kim’s documentary,
there is footage of the two sisters standing at a beach. Salma is in salwar
kameez, her hair flying in the breeze; Najima is in a burqa. A lively-eyed
woman with a ready smile and a way with words, Najima says, in the film, “When
I see her, I think I wasted my life. Why didn’t I write poems and get them
published? Why didn’t I seek the opportunities she did?”
Najima was married off
at 14, and had a child within a year.
Also seen in the
documentary is Salma’s friend Kamila. We can only see her eyes. She is shrouded
in black from head to toe, complete with niqab.
“I tell people even
now that a girl called Salma from Thuvarankurichi is a big star in the literary
world,” she says, as Salma laughs, “I remember all the books you used to give me
to read. Sundara Ramaswamy’s short stories, Jayakantan...I still read out to my
children from those.”
To hear them talk is
to think of all the Rokkiahs who did not become Salma. Salma told me about the
women in her own family who are brilliant at things that are seen as male
bastions. Some of her cousins are so good at figuring out finances that they
could have run their own companies, she said. Her mother-in-law is among the
brightest women she knows.
“But their misfortune
was they were born in a particular time, in a particular community, where they
were shut up and denied opportunities,” she said, “It happens even now.”
In 2006, Salma
resigned her panchayat post and stood for the legislative assembly elections.
She had joined the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) by then. Karunanidhi was
immensely fond of her writing. He would address her in the singular. It
appeared certain that she would be given a ministerial berth if she won the
seat. She lost by a small margin, and there were whispers about sabotage by
resentful rivals. But she was given a prestigious post, the chairpersonship of
the Social Welfare Board. She had three official cars at her disposal, was
allocated a large flat by the state government, and had the power to bring
about the social change she had envisioned since childhood.
Her biggest
achievement in this capacity was to stop child marriages, she said. Even after
the DMK government lost the election in 2011 and she had to resign from her
post, she was appointed head of women’s welfare within the party, and had the
ear of the powers that be.
“Just last month, I
told the collector about a child marriage and stopped it,” she said, “The
girl’s teachers had told me. She was in Plus 1 or Plus 2. We keep trying to
spread awareness. But I find that they’re getting girls married off younger and
younger.”
Some families send
their daughters to madrasas instead of school. Most don’t send them to college.
There is no college in the village. And those who can afford the bus journey
worry that their daughters will commit that most heinous crime—falling in love.
Kim Longinotto’s
documentary tells the story of two girls in Salma’s village. One is a
20-year-old who consistently topped her school and college exams. Salma tried
to convince her family to let her finish her studies, at least by
correspondence. “Malik tells me that this girl could become a collector one
day,” she says, as they give her the wedding invitation, “Let her not stop
studying.” Everyone smiles awkwardly. The other is an 11-year-old girl who was
sent to a madrasa by her mother, who didn’t want to stop her education when she
came of age. The child was miserable, and kept asking her mother to bring her
home. On the day she was scheduled to return, the girl said she was going to
change her clothes, and came out bathed in kerosene. As her mother screamed,
she lit a match and set herself on fire. After three days battling for her life
in hospital, she died.
“I don’t know what to
do,” her mother says, trying to smile for the camera as tears course down her
cheeks, “My younger daughter is 11 now. I wanted them to study, to achieve
something.”
“Whatever happens
from here on, that is your life,” there was a note of determination in Amma’s
voice.
In the vain hope of
hearing a word of encouragement, she pleaded, “I will die.”
“There is no shame
in dying.”
Neither of them had
anything to say after that. In that one pronouncement, she realised she was an
orphan who had nowhere to go.
—Yudhdham, from
Saabam (2012)
“I worry for
Rabiya,” I told her, “She’s 12 when the book ends. But you know she’s going to
get married someday. You know she won’t be happy for long.”
“Everything will end
someday. That’s how it is for all women,” Salma said, “Childhood is a different
ball game. And then there’s marriage. You go live with a stranger. It’s crazy,
isn’t it? You get into it, deciding you will make adjustments. Okay, I like Ilayaraja
songs; it will be great if he likes them too; then we can listen to the radio
together. That’s how you think. And once the children come, no woman wants to
break her home. Even with love marriages, I don’t know how much love there is,
really. People appear different until you move in with them. That’s why I like
the idea of people living together, as they do in the West. It takes a couple
of years of living with someone before you understand whether you really get
along. It’s because we see it as an affront to our culture that we have all
these queues at the family court today.”
Several of Salma’s
women characters walk out on their husbands. In Manaamiyangal, one
even divorces her husband for marrying a second time.
“I’ve written so many
poems that have been lost. I try not to think about them. Some were torn up by
my husband. And some by me, in my idiocy. I’d written one on talaq. Loose-u
thanama kizhichi pottutten. I was worried I would regret writing it if it
was published. Back then, we didn’t have computers, right? Otherwise I could
have saved them.”
It is disturbing how
much of Salma’s work is rooted in reality. We were discussing the forced
suicide of a character in her work.
“It was a story I
heard when I’d gone to stay with my grandmother during the school holidays,”
she said, “One day, the daughter of a family we knew in the next village had
died. They said it was an electric shock. My grandmother and others went to
their house. When they came back, they were gossiping about how she had had an
affair with a bank employee who was renting the house, and they made her drink
poison and kill herself so their honour would not be tarnished.”
Your visions of me
As a woman who
haunts
The dens of
prostitutes
Assault me as I sit
here listening
When you point at a
friend of mine
And say, “He is
your father”,
To our children,
When you claim I
resemble
The woman who
killed her offspring,
Before our
children,
It strikes me
That the reach
Of your show of
dominance
Does not end with
me
—Ellai, Pachai Devathai (2003)
I interviewed
Salma over several days. On the first day I spoke to her for this piece, she
was in the middle of several television appearances. It was March 8.
“You know how it is,”
she said, “Everyone has a special programme for Women’s Day. I’m on my way to
the Sun TV office now. Shall we talk after?”
Her schedule for the
month was dizzying. The party had organised a month-long celebration for M. K.
Stalin’s birthday. Salma was to give away the prizes at a rangoli competition
for women on March 16. Two days later, she had to give a talk at a women’s
college in Pondicherry in the morning, and then return for a special function
at a school in Chennai.
“The house is falling
to pieces around me,” she sighed, “There’s so much work to do, so many things
that are not working.”
When I accompanied her
to meetings, I saw several people line up to introduce their protégés to her.
Not sure who I was, some of them swore they had seen me earlier at political
events, and offered me coffee, food, chairs, and “cool drinks” in no particular
order.
Salma’s rise in party politics had necessitated a move to Chennai, in 2006. She brought her sons and her sister Najima along.
Living in the state
capital, she got to meet writers and intellectuals far more often than earlier.
The same year, she was selected as part of the Indian delegation to attend the
Frankfurt Book Fair.
“I tell you, no visa
officer in his senses would give her a visa,” Venkatachalapathy laughed, “She
is called Rajathi at home. Her official name is Rokkiah Begum Shamsuddin. She
is not educated, and she uses the pen name of Salma. She also had a Pakistan
visa stamp. So they thought this was some kind of joke.”
When Salma was refused
a visa, she was so furious she announced in the consulate that she would return
in two days, and leave with a visa.
“She told me she swore
to herself if they don’t give me a visa, the Indian delegation will not go. So
she called the National Book Trust, which is the nodal agency, and said this is
what happened, don’t blame me later if I do something really dramatic.”
She went to Frankfurt.
Among those whom she met was U. R. Ananthamurthy.
“It is not easy not to
like Salma,” Venkatachalapathy smiled, “A lot of the big names became fond of
her, protective of her, encouraging of her.”
Salma does have a way
of endearing herself to those around her. Her childish energy is contagious.
Kim laughed while speaking of how excited Salma is on her travels. She said,
“You know, when we showed the film at Sundance, we took her to this club where
they had music and you should have seen her—she was like a little girl, her
face lit up, we couldn’t get her out of there, she was in there all day. She
didn’t want to move, she just wanted to listen to the music and she said, ‘You
go and dance, you go and dance’.”
Towards the end of
2006, Venkatachalapathy received an email from the University of Chicago. They
were keen to organise a conference of South Asian literature, named after the
Tamil scholar Norman Cutler, who had passed away four years earlier. The
conference was to have a featured writer, and they asked Venkatachalapathy for
suggestions.
He said he had two
names, both writers who had started their careers fairly recently, and who had
never been abroad. That would make for a transformative experience.
“I hope I have these
mails somewhere,” he told me, “So you don’t think I’m making this up. The names
I gave were Salma and Perumal Murugan. But my gut instinct was that there’s no
way a Tamil Muslim woman writer, the very first of her kind, would not
immediately be picked.”
Salma spoke no English
at the time, but the organisers didn’t care. They told Venkatachalapathy they
would like to have him along too, and he could translate. At the time, a
translation of Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai by Lakshmi
Holmström was under way. The University of Chicago invited Holmström too, so an
extract from the translation-in-progress and the poems she had already
translated would be available.
Venkatachalapathy and
his wife Anitha filled out the visa forms. Salma wrote an autobiographical
essay, which was also translated.
“We put together a
small booklet, and printed about 200 copies to distribute at the conference,”
he told me, “Let me see if I can find it here.” He typed ‘Salma’ into the
search box of his computer. In my enthusiasm, I was leaning into the screen and
saw several folders and files pop up. We began to laugh.
“All these statements
of purpose and documents and things I’ve translated,” he said, “Now I’ve told
her I won’t do any of this anymore. She’s been to more countries than I have.
From Pakistan to Albania to Galicia, I don’t think she’s left anything out. I
can’t tell you what a hit she was in Chicago. At that moment, she could have
had anything for the asking.”
The university wanted
her to be a writer-in-residence. Other attendees extended invitations to
conferences. Salma had too many commitments back home to be able to accept, but
it was the transformative experience everyone had hoped it would be. Literature
had given Salma what traditions had stolen from her.
Raima Periamma had
been comforting Waheeda. She was inconsolable. She didn’t want to get married.
Rabiya found it hilarious. ‘Which idiot will not want to get married?’ she
thought, ‘How beautifully you can dress up, in silk sarees, with lots of
jewellery, and flowers, and garlands. When I get married, I’m going to be
happy!’
“Can you smell the
perfume, akka?” she
asked, “It’s what the groom is wearing. It’s super, isn’t it? And he looks
really good too. You’ll like him very much, I swear. Even his feet are
gorgeous, white and clean. It seems he travels by plane! There will be a lot of
scent bottles in his home abroad, don’t you think? Maybe he’ll take you there
someday!”
—condensed from
Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai (2004)
Even before Salma had
begun to travel the world, she brought it home through literature.
Kim Longinotto, while
telling me what made her want to film Salma, said, “Her story is repeated so
many times all over the world, it is a really, really common story in a way,
but we never hear about it, because the people that it happened to, they disappear
and you never hear from them again. And most girls accept it, and you got the
sense very much from Salma that all her school friends had sort of reconciled
themselves to it in a way that she hadn’t. She told me that her friends, in the
rooms that they were kept in, would have cricket stars or film stars and those
sorts of people on the walls. And Salma had Nelson Mandela and Che
Guevara...I love this idea of her seeing herself as a Nelson
Mandela supporter, because when Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, there were
millions of us all over the world, we were demonstrating and there were
protests and it was a very public thing. But this was Salma locked away, nobody
would have heard about it, and she’s standing up to everybody and everything
from this room. All she had were her dreams, and it was a very lonely protest,
like Nelson Mandela’s own.”
Salma would get her
uncle’s grandson, who had been her classmate in school, to bring her books from
the library. That was how she accessed literary magazines, and jotted down the
addresses to which her poems were sent.
Her father saw how
desperately she wanted to read, and decided to do his bit.
“When I was a
teenager, there were gaps between my teeth,” Salma said, “So I had to go to
Madurai to get braces put. But the village should not know about this. If a
girl who’s come of age goes to a hospital in Madurai, people might begin to
gossip. So my mother and I would wake up before dawn and go to the bus stand in
burqas and wait. My father would go to pray, and come to the bus stand
directly. We must have made that journey 3-4 times. First, I had to get the
measurements done, and then the clip put, and then tightened every six months.
So we’d go to the dentist, and then have lunch, and then my father would take
us to the movies. He didn’t like the cinema himself, but he would indulge me. I
remember watching Amman Kovil Kizhakkaale (1986). We could not
return to the village until after 10 p.m.,, because that’s when everyone’s
asleep. So we had some time in the evening.”
Salma’s favourite
haunts were New Century Book House and Bharathi Puthaga Aalayam in Madurai. She
would devour Russian literature. Sitting in her room, and immersing herself in
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekov, Salma would envision a world where poverty was
annihilated and everyone was equal.
“Whether it’s
Dostoevsky’s work or War and Peace or Resurrection, even
among these great ideas—about what causes war and how a country is run—are
these insights into the lives of ordinary people, into human emotions, into what
happens to relationships in wartime, for example.”
Her favourite Tamil
writers were Pudumaipiththan, Jayakantan, T. Janakiraman, Aatmanaam, Aadhavan,
Mouni, and Ashokamitran. When she got in touch with Sundara Ramaswamy, she
would read the books he recommended.
On the walls of her
room, Che Guevara and Nelson Mandela shared space with Fidel Castro, Karl Marx,
and Lenin.
At the conference in
Chicago, the delegates were put up at the hostel of the College of Theology.
“These were big
apartments, not rooms,” Venkatachalapathy told me, “And the south side is not a
great neighbourhood. It’s completely quiet. After dark, there’s no one on the
streets. The day after we reached, Salma came and told me she could barely
sleep, because she was reminded of all these Victorian novels.”
***
Salma’s works have
been translated into English, French, German, Catalan, and Galician.
María Reimóndez, her
Galician translator and an author in her own right, recalls meeting her in
2006, through her friends N. Manimekalai and I. Ambalavanan in Trichy. Salma
seemed rather shy, she told me.
María said the book
was remarkably well received in Galician. While critics admired the
storytelling in the novel, and María’s adherence to its nuances and language
was appreciated, readers could relate to “emotions, situations, and violences
that women often endure in all societies.”
In her introduction to
the translated version, she warns readers of the dangers of objectifying the
text as “Muslim women’s experiences” or “Indian women’s experiences”.
“I explained how this
was a story about a very particular community, and how this door had to be
opened from our side, making the effort to go through it without the blindfold
that colonial expectations and the current state of Islamophobia promoted in the
West/North. Maybe this, and the fact that Salma was in Galicia to launch the
novel, helped get readers a different look at the novel and see more
similarities than differences. In fact, many expectations, relationships,
restrictions and emotions that the novel conveys were close to Galician
readers, women in particular. The tongue-in-cheek conversations about
sexuality, for example, are very frequent here too. The novel also helped move
away from the ridiculous discussions that we witness here often about ‘Islam’
and ‘women’, usually more concerned with specific clothing items than with what
the women themselves have to say, with a deeper analysis of politics and
place.”
In her introduction,
María points out one of the most striking aspects of Salma’s work—the
detailing. Calling her a craftswoman, she writes that the ideas Salma explores
are trapped with “the small stitches of daily life—the most tiny details, the
movements, the preparation of meals, the inclination of a hand, the lives of
objects. It goes into the longing for childhood, homesickness, determination.
Because, if something is utterly relevant in Salma’s work, is her love for
detail and complexity, her attempt to show the roots of how patriarchy makes
women its first accomplices, how it closes doors to those who try to rebel due
to the danger, so clearly expressed in the text, of being a role model for
others and therefore the key to destroy domination.”
“What shall we
play? There are just two of us,” Rabiya said.
“The Amma-Aththa
game, what else?” Ahmed said eagerly.
He ran to the store
room and got the play set. The two of them had bought identical ones at an
exhibition in Madurai. He opened the box and gave its contents to her. Inside
were miniature plates, ladles, tumblers, pots, dosai pan, and other vessels,
carved in wood. He had not lost a single thing. She had lost more than half her
set. She was jealous of him, and annoyed at herself. A boy is so responsible,
and here I am, a girl with no sense of responsibility, she scolded herself.
Ahmed ran to the
store room and brought some rice and murukku. She had arranged all the vessels in the corner of a hall,
and improvised a kitchen. She made a show of cooking the rice he had brought.
“Listen up, get me
my food quickly. I have to go to the shop!” he said, impatiently.
“It’s ready, come
this way,” she said in a timorous voice, as she filled a tumbler with water and
put out a plate for him. Then, she used the ladle to scoop out some rice and a
few broken bits of murukku on
to the plate.
He finished eating
in silence.
“All right now, I’m
off to the shop,” he said, got up, moved a little further away and then
returned, “Phew, there was brisk business at the shop today. Quickly, get me my
food. Let’s eat together.” He then ran to the cupboard, dived under it, and
returned with a marappaachi doll
coated with dust. He wiped it against his shirt, and then handed it to her.
“Here, this is our child. Give him some milk too.”
—Irandaam
Jaamangalin Kathai (2004)
In most of her works,
across genres, Salma explores certain themes over and over again—extramarital
affairs, honour killings, infertility, religious attitudes to family-planning
surgery, inter-religious love matches, spousal abuse, illness, and mental retardation.
Death is visited several times in her poetry, short stories, and novels. In the
forewords to each of her works, she asks the reader to forgive the repetition,
but highlights the metaphysical nature of this device. In visiting these issues
over and over again, we find ourselves obsessing over dissimilarities within a
sameness—and this is the lot of most of her characters, who are unhappy in
their own ways under the same circumstances.
She looks at how women
turn to each other for support, but usually let each other down. They are not
stereotypes, and they are not role models, and they have their foibles and
pettiness and generosities and jealousies. Her writing is not sexually explicit
so much as it is emotionally honest. In her work, sex is both a terrifying
experience and a carnal need, and rarely titillating.
This is why her work
is hard to label. To call her writing “bold” or “feminist” or “modernist” is to
run into problems, particularly in translation.
“The sensitive reader
is moved by the milieu in which these things are written,” said
Venkatachalapathy, “But often what happens is that in translation, some things
come across as a pathetic attempt to shock the reader. The reader of English is
rarely shocked by anything.”
But analyses of
Salma’s work have fed into the myth of her “shocking language”, to its
detriment. And those who cannot access her work in the original could be put
off by what is emphasised in both the translation, and the personal story that
accompanies it.
“Salma doesn’t need
any concession as a woman writer,” Venkatachalapathy told me, “I know I’m
saying something politically incorrect, but a lot of drivel is published
because this is the first time women are coming up. Very interestingly, in 100
years of modern Tamil writing, there have been very few real women writers.
There have been writers who have come from privileged backgrounds and who have
not really extended the frontiers of Tamil literature, who didn’t explore new
areas, who didn’t have a new language. Salma’s writing is very sensitive to the
power of language.”
Every time,
What my mother says
subtly
My sister says
angrily:
That the blame
For the discord in
the bedroom
Lies with me.
Every day
In the bedroom,
Your first question
is:
“What is the matter
today?”
It is likely to be
The last word too.
From the shimmer of
a million stars
Rises a finger, to
point at my hooker’s trade-off
As their counsel
floats
Through trembling
nights
The lament in
The childlike voice
of a cat
Helpless to feed
its kittens
Pierces my heart.
You too
May have complaints
My position
Has been determined
By time
And history.
In the hope of a
little affection
From you,
And to fulfil the
responsibilities
Of being the mother
of your children,
And because I need
Sanitary napkins
And contraceptives
And other little
favours
From the world
outside,
For me to, if
possible,
Exert some
authority over you
Perhaps even
command
A little respect,
Knowing there is a
price to pay,
My legs part.
—Oppantham, Oru
Maalaiyum Innoru Maalaiyum (2000)
***
As soon as the
journey was planned, Nanni had come up to her to speak in private.
“Look here,” she
hissed, “Don’t let that woman jabber on in the car. And you can’t make me sit
next to her. She doesn’t bathe, and I can’t take the reek. And you can’t switch
the AC on. That woman farts incessantly. If the windows are closed, I will
throw up.”
What monumental
worries, she thought to herself, for how long had Nanni been making this list?
—Vilimbu, from
Saabam (2012)
Because of the dark
themes in her work, Salma’s sense of humour and the wittiness of her dialogue
are often underestimated. She has characters with extreme quirks, many of whom
are based on people she knows. In that sense, parts of her novels are comedy of
manners. I asked her about the characters who are obsessed with cleanliness to
the point of pathological illness.
“When I was a child,”
Salma said, “I would find bad smells very disturbing. My mother and sister
would yell at me. I would not let people use my towel, or lie down on my
pillow. I would hide the pillow cover in my cupboard and lock it so that no one
could use my pillow. But, more seriously, there’s this myth that Muslims are
not clean. But Islam has given a lot of importance to cleanliness. My mother
would not carry my children before her prayers, because she was worried that
they would pass urine. She would finish her ablutions, pray, change the saree
she had prayed with, and only then allow the babies anywhere near her.”
My eyes fell on a
photograph in Salma’s living room. It was a photograph of her with DMK
patriarch Karunanidhi. She was wearing a burqa. It was politics that allowed
her to discard a garment she had always resented. When she stood for the MLA
elections in 2006, the working committee told her that popular opinion among
the voters, who were mostly non-Muslim, was that it was not a good idea to vote
for a Muslim woman—it may not be easy to meet her. Salma discussed this with
Malik, and he saw her point.
“I would wear a cotton
saree, pulling the pallu across my shoulder, but with my head
uncovered. People saw me as one among them. I felt a sense of freedom I hadn’t
since I was a child,” she said.
Her mother-in-law was
not happy with her decision. But her husband was on her side.
“Even when Kim asked
to interview her for the documentary,” Salma smiled, “My mother-in-law said,
‘How can a Muslim woman appear on television and talk?’ Immediately, Malik
snapped, ‘So you’re saying what [Salma] is doing is wrong? You think she’s disgracing
the family?’” She laughed.
Malik, who now heads
the gram panchayat back in Thuvarankurichi, visits Chennai every week. Salma
goes to her village when time permits. To one who observes them together,
discussing politics and family, they appear to be in an equal, respectful
partnership, a contrast to the scenes from her work, of a fearsome husband who
regularly humiliates his wife.
Venkatachalapathy
pointed out that politics helped her liberate herself. The victim was now the
decision-maker, more empowered than anyone else in the family. But he and other
friends worry about the effect politics has on her writing. “When you move in
those circles, meeting rogues and hypocrites and sycophants, you lose all
creativity,” he said, “But she’s caught the tiger by the tail. If she left it,
what would she do?”
In Aloor Shanawas’
attack on her, he claims Salma told him that her prominence in party politics
is not because of her writing, but “a dole given to her by Kalaignar
[Karunanidhi] for the backwardness of her community.” He went on to challenge
“Salma, who people say has so gutsily documented the hardships of women in the
community” to “write boldly about the corruption and nepotism and domination of
arts and business in her party.”
“I feel both her
writing and her speech are more restricted these days,” Kannan told me, “For
about 10 years, she didn’t write much.” In his foreword to the German
translation of Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai, he writes, “Though she
is able to help many downtrodden women and children and fight for the rights of
the transgender community, her career as a writer has suffered. She is now
unable to be outspoken on social issues as she has to take into account her
position and also the views of the party. One is apprehensive the party will
succeed where her family failed—in silencing her voice.”
Salma admitted that
politics has forced her to censor herself. But it doesn’t have to do with
politics alone, she said. “Look at what happened to Perumal Murugan. He’s not
in politics. Books are taken to court all the time, and they’re banned more
often than not.”
If she is forced to
make a choice between her two careers, she knows which will take precedence.
“As a politician, you can bring about change by passing an order or a law. But
as a writer, you change people’s mindset over time. Whether it’s Bharathi’s poems,
Puthumaipiththan’s stories or Periyar’s writings, they bring about a gradual
change in thought and perception, and therefore in society.”
“So, when are you
writing a political novel?” I asked her.
She laughed. “I need
more maturity to write that, I think. But here’s the novel I’m writing now.”
She showed me a file with loose, ruled sheets, filled with her hesitant
handwriting. As I tried to decipher it, she pressed a cup into my hands.
“Gulab jamun,” she
said, “I made it this afternoon.”
We had been at the
meeting for most of the day, and I wolfed it down. “It’s nice,” I said, with my
mouth full.
“It’s a ready-to-make
mix. I can’t cook.”
“Didn’t your mother
give you lessons before marriage?” I asked.
“Yen maamiaar
kaytadhaye nee kaykkare (You’re asking me the same question my
mother-in-law asked),” she grinned. As I laughed with her, she added, “My
father-in-law used to say ‘She’s very good at boiling water.’ That’s how bad it
is.” She sighed. “You know, when they marry you off early, you have this sense
that you’ve aged fast. That you haven’t really lived. There are so many things
I want to learn—to swim, to dance, to drive a car...but I feel I’m too old to
learn any of those things.”
“When you talk like
this, it makes me think what would have happened if you’d had those freedoms
early on. You’ve got this far with so little,” I said.
“Well, if I’d been
able to go out into the world and had that independence, I would not have felt
the pain of these difficulties, not experienced them. I don’t know if I could
have imagined the suffering of other people and written about it as well. Other
people’s experience does work its way into my novels, but I suppose you can
tell what has a personal stamp.”
On my way out of the
house, I noticed trophies piled almost on top of each other near the shoe
shelf.
“You’ve even got some
here?” I laughed.
“You should see my
home in the village,” she said, smiling, “My akka tells me I
should remove the silver and throw all of them away.”
I was reminded of
Sundara Ramaswamy’s quip about Najima.
After she was
married off at 14, and moved to her paternal aunt’s home, Shahul treated
Subaida with great affection. He would buy her something to eat every day on
his way back from work; he would bring her earrings, bangles, and various
trinkets from the market. She liked him very much. Their mothers would whisper
together every morning. Then, they would ask Subaida, “Did you bathe?”
Surprised, she would blink, “Yes.”
“Ada! Not that bath,
you fool,” they would mumble under their breaths.
That night, she was
woken by a rustling sound. She opened her eyes to see Shahul caressing the
saree she had hung out to dry on the clothesline.
‘What is he up to?’
she wondered, and observed him in silence. Shahul took the saree and her blouse
and disappeared into a room.
She was astonished.
Her confusion and apprehension gave her the courage to follow him. The door of
the room he had entered was locked. She pressed an eye to the keyhole.
Shahul was wearing
her saree and blouse. He was staring at his reflection in the mirror with
longing.
Terrified that he
had gone mad, she muttered, “Allah!” to herself. She felt dizzy. ‘Aiyo, Allah,
has my husband been possessed by an evil spirit?’ she wondered in horror.
—condensed from Manaamiyangal (2016)
(Translations by
the author, with permission from Salma and Kalachuvadu)
(Published in the April 2017 edition of Fountain Ink)