Zachariyayute Penkathakal.
Paul Zachariah. Kottayam: DC Books, 2001.
pp. 88, Rs. 38/-
A hen and a woman, are they of the same genre? “The Reflections of A Hen in Her Last Hour”, the second short story in this collection seems to say that they do belong to the same genre. This story happens to be the title story of Zachariah’s collection of short stories published by Penguin India Publishers.
Paul Zachariah likes to take away the halo and demystify all the things that people cherish as sacrosanct. He has chosen to mostly confine himself to Malayalam, which according to him is one of the rich and vibrant languages of India. His nonconformist and unorthodox ideas set him apart from other creative writersand political commentators in Kerala. The readers find numerous references to religious thought and philosophy in his works. The abstract concepts are secularised through tongue-in-cheek humour, the self-reflexive irony, and the sharp satire that is a trademark of his writing.
His scathing charges irrespective of political or religious affiliations have left people uncomfortable in their seats. What Khuswant Singh has done for/with English, Zachariah does for/with Malayalam.
Zachariah published his first collection of short stories in his final year at college. His popular collectionsand novelettes are “America I Salute You,” “A Christian Woman and Astrology,” “Village Headman Bhaskaran and Me,” “Once upon a Time,” “Praise the Lord,” “Till Looking into the Mirror,” “The Brick and the Mason” and “Kanyakumari.”
Paul Zachariah like Arundhati Roy hails from Meenachil. After completing his Masters Degree MA in English Language and Literature, he started his career as an English Lecturer. After his formative in Kottayam, he shifted to New Delhi where he tasted the pot pourri of personalities and cultures and experiences. His career as a journalist spreads across Affiliated East-West Press, Press Trust of India and India Today.
If feminist criticism arises as a response of women readers to women writings and as a questioning of everything that claims to be objective, Zachariah is contradiction personified. The first clause does not fit him at all. The second cannot capture him totally. He strikes at everything including the language. He complains bitterly that writers in Malayalam even the post modernists like O.V.Vijayan have tended towards an extreme romantic mode of writing, taking the language back to poetry, instead of moving into a more matter-of-fact masculine prose, which is how fiction is written all over the world. And he knows that it is a gender-laden usage. So then, how cana writer who wants to write pure masculine prose have a collection of female stories?
The politics of power and the psychological relationship between the ruler and the ruled has been one of his pet themes. “Village Headman Bhaskaran and Me” explores such a relationship. The servant has degenerated into a slave who feels he is obligated to his master both physically and mentally. With almost a child like pleasure he enjoys and prides in the fact that his wife smells of the perfume his master wears. The psyche of the marginalised has always interested him.
Zachariah seems to have adapted his language for the female perspective for he believes that language has to adapt and be flexible for the need of the time. The 11 stories in the collection written at varied periods of his three and a half decade long literary career fluctuates through all the three phases of feminist writing -- feminine, feminist and female -- identified by Elaine Showalter. The compiler of the short stories, A.J.Thomas says that the yardstick he used to collect and nomenclature the stories as Female Stories was empathy for women and their plight. The fluctuation is natural. A male writer can only empathise with the women of his world and cannot be a woman ever. All the stories have a regional flavour.
But the first story -- “TheKidnapping of a Woman Writer” is a regional story that has a universal significance. In a very picturesque language, Zachariah tells the story of a writer who has been jilted by two lovers. A repeated motif in the story is the body that loves to narrate stories, the body itself as a source for creation. Subtle shades of narcissism and the ideas of sisterhood are present in the story. The act of writing is compared to the spider’s making of a web and trapping its preys. ”The end of a story trembled on her finger tips, treaded the corners of her lips. Doors opened and closed in her ears. She spread her webs of unknown words and waited to trap the end.” The writer is kidnapped by a hoard of spiders who want to hear her story. The story ends as a search for identity on the thin weightless webs of words and fantasy, an act of acrobatic dexterity.
Malayalam has accepted into its fold a different mode of writing -- “pennezhuthu”, writings by women. A formal way of accepting the other as “other”. In this context Zachariah and his character, the female writer has great significance.
The second story “The Reflections of A Hen in Her Last Hour” brings out the pains and ecstasy of anticipated sensual experience. The language is a vernacular language devoid of any cliché. The hen at least has the freedom to express the hitherto suppressed desires. The language is avernacular language devoid of any cliché. Malathi Mathur in another review says, “What grips one’s attention is the extraordinary power of language and the yoking together of diverse perceptions like darkness smeared with the fragrance of coffee blossoms”. The yearning with which the hen looks forward to the encounter with the fox makes the story almost metaphysical like one of John Donne’s love poems. Says the hen, “Why are you tormenting me like this? After all, you know I am a hen, and just a hen.” And at the hen at the end swoons and surrenders herself totally. The story is based on a regional belief that fowls faint when the fox stares at them. Hilarious, yet very provoking.
Zachariah has mastered the art of provocation. He is a renowned columnist who is able to blaze out a trail of controversy because he is a maverick and cannot be bound by any restrictions. His aim is to use the everyday language, the language of the average politician, because it has power to influence and provoke.
“A Letter to the Psychologist” portrays Asha Mathew, aged 26, MA in English Literature caught in the trap of awareness and desire to break free. She falls through the dark and discovers that her status is going to change to one of an émigré, ignorant of the country to which she is about to be exiled. She has read Ethan Kaan andRaymond Carver. “Even though I have read widely I am not an intellectual nor an extremist”, she confides to the psychologist. She wants to be a typical conventional Kerala woman, family centric and cannot dream of being a career woman. When the prospective bridegrooms comes to see her we see her personality unveiling. She rejects the first one out right, because he had been pompous enough to smoke a cigarette while talking to her. The third marriage proposal works out and there starts her dilemma as she wonders how much she knows about him and his family. “Joy, her fiancé, has seen my house. He’s seen my grandpa and his books. Seen our dog Tattoo and all the family pictures hanging on the walls? But what have I seen? Do they respect and honor their womenfolk? Do they treat their servants with kindness? Do they all wear clean underclothes? When do they retire to bed? When do they arise? Are the toilets in that house clean?” The immigrant has the right to know the rules and regulations of the would-be motherland!! Hence, she asks her father to allow her to stay in Joy’s house for two months before the marriage. The family collapses. Only her grandma, a double immigrant goes about like a robot. Woman at the cross roads!!! In an interview on the Internet Zachariah commented, “… Freedom is a highly relative term. It is actually freedom for some and not for all.” In the story “Time Table for theHome Nurse” Zachariah captures the plight of an old widowed mother left in the care of a couple of servants and maids. She has no other significance than being a name in the time-table given to the home nurse who is about to be interviewed. The essence of a mother and her expectations captured through a time-table is something amusing.
The fifth story “Who Knows” has a biblical theme in a very unbiblical setting. Infant Jesus and his parents find protection in a whorehouse to escape the death sentence passed by King Herod. The prostitutes there request the Mother to ask her Son to forgive and give solace to the prostitutes of the world. They are sure that he would listen to her, as she was his Mother. The story looks ominous as the beginning of the Son’s relationship with Prostitutes. Except in the excerpts from the Bible attached at the beginning of the story there is no mention of Christ by his name. Again a story with universal significance, For all prostitutes and soldiers need saviours. Zachariah has already been anointed as a black sheep by the church in Kerala. In fact, many of his short stories have Biblical overtones and keeps his readers wondering how this author still manages to be secular and cosmopolitan in his outlook. He hails from a Roman Catholic family, near Palai, regarded as the pivot of the mostconservative and aristocratic of Catholic families. His sins came to limelight with the publication of the story “Till Looking into The Mirror” in a popular literary magazine called Mathrubhoomi. The entire Catholic Church in Kerala catapulted into turmoil. The story sketches Christ as a man who has just returned home after wandering across lands. The wisdom of the Kingdom of God has not yet crystallised in his mind. He suffers from feelings of inadequacy. He is penniless, has no work and contributes nothing for the running of the household. The Barber’s mirror becomes instrumental for a shattering moment of self-realisation. Sobbing inconsolably, he tries to find solace in the lap of Mary Magdalene. “My story takes a moment from the film ‘Milky Way’ by the wellknown film director Louis Bunuel where Jesus contemplates the idea of shaving his beard,” says Zachariah. The story pricks the inflated pomposity of theology because it explores the human psyche of the Son of God wrestling with the temporal dilemma of whether or not to shave off his lice-infested beard. It takes immense imagination to subvert the image of the Son of God to that of an unwashed wanderer lacking in elementary hygiene, his beard and hair caked in dust and sweat and a repelling odour emanating from his armpits and loins. Whatever, thecontroversy has rekindled the classical conflict on freedom of the artist and the intolerance of religious orthodoxy.
“Independent thinking on issues is viciously put down, particularly in Kerala,” he pointed out in an interview available at rediffmail.com. “My job as a fiction writer is not to reproduce the biblical Christ. I have to find fresh ways of approaching this 2,000-year- old man who has been covered over by all kinds of fancy adjectives and overstatement. After all, Christ was a man like anyone else, with two hands, two feet, a nose and a mouth. A man who got dirty, who needed a bath and a shave…I have shown a Christ who is like you and me, who happens to sweat, wear dirty clothes and, unlike you and me, lacked the facility to have a daily bath or wash his closets because he lived in desert area. I wanted to show a Christ who was natural to his surroundings, who could not have transcended the limitation of water. For this, I have used language that is not poetic, lyrical or romantic… Jesus puts his head in Mariam’s lap and finds peace there. Why do you find a sexual connotation? As far as I know, Mariam, and Martha have been his friends from his childhood days…. There need not be sex every time a man and a woman meet. There can be communication, just plain happiness. In my story, here is a man who finds comfort in the company of a woman 244 Book Reviews after a terrible emotional and inner convulsion…What is the guarantee that the events mentioned in the Bible are historical? For all we know, someone could have dreamt up Jesus,” he says.
Another novelette “How do You do, Ponteous Pilot?” tells the tale of Crucifixion from Pilot’s viewpoint. His personal secretary, Ruth, a Jewess considers him a pretentious old man. Mary Magdalene, Ruth and Pilot’s wife Julia belong to a secret sisterhood who adores the man in Jesus. The male view of women as instances of enjoyment clashes with another alternate image of women who are daring to enough to reflect that the kingdom of God would have come had Jesus accepted some women disciples as well into his fold. That Zachariah is an iconoclast is beyond doubt. He is a strong votary of the electronic media and has taken advantage of the wide reach of the Internet. He has also experimented with erotic writing. His erotic story on tehelka.com is still figuring in lots of literary discussions. He believes that a writer has to explore and experiment all possibilities.
“One cannot ultimately draw a line. Creativity is a mosaic of everything. One cannot say this is good, this is bad or this is ideal. We have to live with a mixture,” he was quoted in another interview. And we witness this verbatim in this collection. His female characters are a mixture of self-esteem, self-doubt, creative urge, and complacence. Some are very sure of their existence. Some exist as sidepieces to the male protagonists.
In the sixth story “The Boat”, written almost thirty years back, an ogre watches a boat rowed by two lovers going across a river. It dreams of the would-have-been beautiful ending of the story while the lover strikes and kills his pregnant sweet heart.
“The Christmas Story” is powerful and could be called a female piece of writing. One would almost doubt whether it was a woman who had written this story. Ammini, a prostitute tells her clients on the Christmas night that she is more than what they think she is. She has her own demands. She is first a human being with basic needs -- food, sleep…. She will give pleasure only when her basic needs are satisfied. She is a woman, a mother, a lover. And the tragedy is she keeps wondering as what is she accepted and with which identity should she and her clients identify her self. She quarrels with the clients because they forget to kiss her. When they comply with her demand. When the clients realise that she is pregnant, they accuse her of cheating. She says in a very matter of fact tone -- You are doing business with me and not my son. One definitely wonders why she is expecting a son and not a daughter.
The eccentric naturopath in the story “The Garden” discovers that a young girl can excel his philosophical questions through eye-opening counter questions.
“Kanyakumari” is one of Zachariah’s very recent stories. A newly married couple arrives at Kanyakumari for their honeymoon. The wife has to teach the husband the ABCs of sex. Unlike the typical Indian woman, she takes the initiative to consummate the marriage. The wife is definitely not shy, but very perplexed to discover that the men can be so naïve. Maybe that is where the enlightened womanhood in India is right now.
The tenth story “Annamma Teacher: A Memoir” was written twenty years back. The story was republished in a women’s magazine recently. In a forward to the story, Zachariah describes the background in which it was written. During a discussion with his friend, John Abraham, film director, the topic drifted to men enjoying a peep show at the bathing ghats of women. He says that the restrictions of the traditional family ad the sexual fantasies would have made hundreds of young men regular “peepers”. And he thinks that Christ might also have been one of those young men.
But in the story, the peeper was overshadowed by the woman who was peeped at. Annamma teacher was someone Zachariah knew very well. He says, “In those days marriage was considered the ultimate for a woman. That was what he wanted to high light then, that Annamma teacher died a spinster and that too a virgin spinster. But today looking back, he himself says, what makes him sad today is his character’s slavery.” On reading the story, we discover that Annamma is so enslaved that she refuses to have dreams. But she dares to identify Christ as her younger brother, because she is crossed the age of thirty-three where as Christ is at an eternal thirty-three. Christ the onlooker of her bath puts her into an eternal sleep. Annamma is an earning member of the family, but cannot own anything, even her salary.