Meera Srinivasan

What do musician TM Krishna, writer Perumal Murugan, historian AR Venkatachalapathy, and publisher Kannan Sundaram have in common with audiences in Jaffna? Their shared interest in all things art, literature, and history. During their recent visit to this northern Sri Lankan town, it was hard to miss both, their connection with the audience, and the camaraderie among themselves.

Literature buffs and students gathered last week at the Kailasapathy auditorium — named after the renowned Sri Lankan Tamil journalist-turned-scholar — at the University of Jaffna, to listen to academics discuss Krishna’s book Maraikkapatta Mrudanga Sirpigal – Sebastian Kudumba Kalai, the Tamil translation of his acclaimed Sebastian And Sons: A Brief History Of The Mridangam Makers. The Tamil translation, by DI Aravindan for Kalachuvadu Publications, was not unfamiliar to many in the audience.

“TM Krishna’s different writings are part of our syllabus now. His perspective as a practitioner and researcher of the sociology of the arts offers an important entry point to our histories,” said T Sanathanan, who heads the University’s Fine Arts Department.

The speakers touched upon various facets of the book, endorsing Krishna’s insider argument on the erasure of the identity and labour of the makers of the mridangam, a percussion instrument integral to the Carnatic concert stage. They pointed to the underlying exploitation and oppression in the making of the mridangam, that Krishna foregrounds in the book.

The more engaging segment was the question and answer session that followed, with younger members in the audience taking the lead. They had many questions for Krishna — about his vantage point as an artiste, his choice of referring to music as “she”, how his work as an activist impacts his artistic career.

In his candid responses, Krishna broke down what it means to court discomfort, to be scrutinised, confronted, pushed to think, and to constantly learn.Being challenged is not new to the singer. Neither is the discerning Jaffna audience.

Krishna’s last visit to northern Sri Lanka was a decade ago. In 2011, he was among the first musicians to undertake a performance tour in the war-battered province that was struggling to get out of a 30-year-long civil war. In the following years, he also brought down fellow artistes for performances and discussions, including at the University of Jaffna.

Jaffna has seen some significant changes in these 10 years. For instance, the town has more connectivity with Tamil Nadu. In fact, the flight that Krishna and team took from Chennai landed at the Palaly airport in Jaffna, sparing them the long road trip from capital Colombo.

Krishna, too, is a different artiste since his last visit in 2013, the same year his first book A Southern Music – The Karnatik Story was published. “It started with me trying to ask questions of the prevalent Carnatic kutcheri [concert] format. I found the very structure of the concert restrictive. I tried to get out of that convention, and that was liberating. The freedom I experienced led me to broader questions surrounding our arts and society,” he told an audience member, who quizzed him on his journey from being an artiste to an activist.

Krishna performed four songs, including ‘Paarka paarka teera inbam’ penned by Perumal Murugan, with no accompaniment but a strain of the shruti [pitch]. His voice filled the auditorium, offering hope and joy in equal measure.

‘Truth in fiction, lies in history’

In a similar, engaging discussion the following day, Perumal Murugan and Venkatachalapathy dwelled on the spectrum of fiction and history.

Murugan laid out the traps that could arise with a tendency to romanticise literature or valourise culture of a particular time, like the Sangam era in Tamil literature. Any critical questioning would invariably lead to the “traitor” label, said the writer who faced a concerted attack by conservative religious and caste groups over his acclaimed novel Mathorupagan [One Part Woman in English] some years ago. “You can’t talk about the Ramayana or the Mahabharata in the realm of fiction now, that is the situation.”

On the other hand, he pointed out the importance of being acutely aware of the silences in our histories. “While history textbooks usually stop with a chronological account of dynasties and conquests, novels have offered a valuable insight into the land, life, and socio-economic context of a story set in a certain space and time…in a way you make the very terrain and its sights a character in your novel,” Murugan noted. “If you read Sundara Ramasamasy’s Puliyamarathin Kadai, you recognise those places in Nagercoil. People who read T Janakiraman’s Mogamul go to Kumbakonam looking for Yamuna’s house. That’s how real and impactful this literary device can be.”

Venkatachalapathy concurred, as he addressed the Jaffna audience that is intimately aware of some of the most troubled and contested histories on the island. “You can possibly write good fiction without reading much history, but I believe you can’t write a mediocre account of history without engaging with literature and fiction.”

In particular, the historian-author pointed to the omission of labour struggles in popular accounts of history. “But for novelists, we would have never had a record of these…it took a writer like Ki. Rajanarayanan to document the migration of Telugu-speaking people to southern Tamil Nadu. Writers like Pudumaipiththan, Tho. Mu. Si. Ragunathan have given us important accounts of labour histories in their work,” he said.

Incidentally, students at the University of Jaffna had put up an exhibition titled Burden of Paradise, showcasing stories of Sri Lanka’s Malaiyaha [hill country] Tamils. The community is marking 200 years since the British brought down their South Indian ancestors to work in Sri Lanka’s coffee and tea plantations. It has taken two centuries for the rest of Sri Lanka to begin acknowledging their history and labour, a crucial contributor to the island’s economy.

Courtesy:The Hindu