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SANDHYA MARY AND JAYASREE KALATHIL
Jayasree Kalathil: The first thing that struck me when I read Maria Verum Maria in the original Malayalam is how unique it was in the context of Malayalam literature. I can’t remember ever reading a novel quite like it. Could you tell me a little about how it came about?
Sandhya Mary: Maria Verum Maria was never meant to be a novel. You know how you have all these crazy thoughts in your head while you lead a normal – well, almost normal – life? I just wanted to know how crazy my thoughts or my head could go. So, I started writing these down in the form of notes. It was fun! I thoroughly enjoyed all that craziness, all that humour in Maria. There were times I couldn’t control my laughter after writing certain parts. And the best part was that, not being a literary work, I was under no pressure to finish it. Then, for a few years, I didn’t write anything at all. I even lost some of the small notebooks in which I had written these notes. It never felt like the process of writing a novel. It started as a conversation between me and Jesus. Then I added characters on the way. So, writing Maria was like a celebration of everything ‘not normal’. There are only two things that I did deliberately or consciously. One, I gave the story a subtle but definitive political touch, and two, I wanted the narrative to be unsystematic, less structured, something that would reflect the thoughts and writing of a scattered mind – after all, it is written by Maria. I am glad that you think it is unique in Malayalam literature, and I know generally what attracted you to Maria. But I am curious to know why you chose to translate it.
JK: As you know, I have a personal, professional and political interest in this human experience we call ‘madness’. In my academic and political work, I have explored representations of madness in our cultural imaginary, in literature, art, cinema and so on. Often, these representations are appalling, discriminatory and downright harmful in the way they depict the world and human experiences as a dichotomy of sanity/insanity or normal/abnormal. Even much-celebrated stories like M.T. Vasudevan Nair’s ‘Iruttinte Athmaavu’ (The Soul of Darkness) or the film Thaniyavarthanam depict madness as a curse that follows one through generations, something that is all-consuming, from which there is no escape, something to be hated, feared. There are exceptions too, of course, for instance N. Prabhakaran’s stories, some of which are included in Diary of a Malayali Madman.
SM: Velayudhan in ‘Iruttinte Athmaavu’ is a realistic representation of how madness was seen in that era. After all, it was written in the 1960s.
JK: Yes, of how ‘normal’ people saw madness or thought of mad people. But the point I am trying to make is that it is told from that very sanist and ableist perspective, even though Velayudhan, the person deemed mad, is given the narrative voice. In our literature, the story of madness is often told from the point of view of what society sees as sanity.
SM: Narrating the story of madness from the point of view of the person deemed mad is not that common in our fiction. As you pointed out, the madman Aagi in the title story in Diary of a Malayali Madman is an exception. I love that story for its approach towards madness, its humour, and for its politics. The difference between Aagi and Maria is that he recognizes he is mad, whereas for Maria her mental state is the normal state. There are times when Maria is not sure about her mental state, and that is also part of her character – she is generally not too sure about herself or about anything else. She was born with a scattered or a floating mind.
Society will very easily brand you mad or crazy just because you don’t live according to its norms and conditions, or it sees you as being different from its conception of normal or from so-called normal people. That is so cruel. Why can’t we accept that there is nothing called normalcy? I agree that there might be situations where people need help with emotional or psychological problems that they face. But if a person is happy, or maybe not even that happy, and talks to themselves, who are we to brand them crazy? Or what if I feel like counting crows today? You leave me alone and let me count my crows. I have often felt that if screaming out loud was considered okay in our society, many of us would not end up in psychiatric treatment. I mean, when you are so angry or so pissed off, just scream out loud and let it out!
JK: I think what we are talking about is the fact that writing about madness is hard, especially in a socio-cultural context where madness has not always been represented sensitively, where it has been consistently used in literature and films as comic relief or to represent evil or to drive in the message that being mad is equal to being cursed with a life not worth living. And it continues to be used so even by otherwise politically informed people. Did you have access to a political, creative or social community to write so differently about madness? What were your inspirations for these characters?
SM: I am from a very ‘normal’, conservative, Christian family. Everybody lived a normal life and died a normal death. Even as a child, I had this vague idea that I didn’t want to live like my parents or like the innumerable aunts and uncles I knew. There was not even a single ‘different’ person in our locality. I met such people, people who were somewhat different, for the first time in my life while I was doing my master’s in journalism at Thiruvananthapuram. It was a bohemian set of people who lived in an old lodge called Karthika. I instantly felt that I belonged to that place. We were all very poor, but we shared everything – weed, booze and money. I got the idea for Hari and Vinayakan’s room from Karthika. Apart from that, I don’t think that place inspired me in other ways of thinking about madness. Because, outside of that building, most of these people lived a somewhat normal life. But that place provided some kind of solace to me, something like a blanket effect that protected me or kept me away from the outside world. And I knew a few people who were ‘branded bhranthans’, people who were deemed mad, who were highly creative but different from the rest of us, whose families were giving them psychiatric treatment even though they had brilliant minds!
JK: You said earlier that you have given the story a subtle but definitive political message. In my reading, this message was that madness, which is often seen as some sort of fault or deficiency within an individual’s psyche or personality, is really about society and how we treat individuals who are different – for whatever reasons – within that society. Madness is our response to problems with living. Throughout my professional life as an activist-researcher in the field of mental health and human rights, this is something I have worked hard to establish. And I think many of those who read Maria will understand this way of looking at madness. Often, as we touched upon earlier, in literary representations of madness, the narrative voice is given to the ‘normal’ or the ‘sane’. I found it refreshing that in Maria the story is told from the perspective of Maria and Geevarghese, undoubtedly the ‘maddest’ of the characters.
SM: I loved that intermingling in narration. Sometimes both of them narrate the same story at different times from their own perspective. That was kind of an experiment. I thought I would use Geevarghese to give a different perspective to Maria’s story. What I am trying to say through Maria and through Geevarghese is this: let everyone live their own lives in their own way. Like I said earlier, don’t brand anyone. Be inclusive. Maria, though not deliberately, is trying to deconstruct the existing family system. Society, her family, all expect her to live a normal life, to get married in a conventional way, to have kids, to fit in. I have always wondered, why is it that everybody is living the exact same life? Society should be full of wonderfully different people, living diverse lives. Also, I wanted to touch upon the notion of being ‘successful’ in life. Every human being is under so much pressure to be successful. We always hear, ‘Don’t waste your time!’ What if I don’t want to use it? What if I just want to go through it? I think Maria is ultimately about being verum Maria – just Maria. Maria is also about a just world. At one point in the novel, in her conversation with Karthav Eesho Mishiha, Maria demands a world that is fair to all human beings. At another point, in lashing out at human beings and their behaviour, Chandippatti demands that they make a just world for all animals.
JK: Another thing that attracted me to Maria is your use of a child’s perspective. I am partial to stories that have a child as the protagonist, or stories that are told, at least for the most part, from the point of view of a child. For me, Little Maria is a worthy member of a whole line-up of literary children who are smart and precocious and yet vulnerable and innocent, possessing a well-developed and richly imaginative inner world. I am talking about literary children like Harper Lee’s Scout (To Kill a Mockingbird), Donna Tartt’s Harriet (The Little Friend), the young Gerald Durrell in his autobiographical My Family and Other Animals. Having written a story with a child as a protagonist myself – Anu in The Sackclothman – I am intrigued by the possibilities of storytelling opened up by the perspective of the child, especially a child who, like Maria and the others I’ve mentioned here, is not conceived of as living a stereotypical family life or childhood. It is hard to find such children in Malayalam literature.
SM: Yes, it is not that common. But we do have Annie in Sarah Joseph’s Aalahayude Penmakkal (Aalaha’s Daughters) and the teenager Lucy in another one of her novels, Maattathi. And although The God of Small Things is an English novel, Arundhati Roy’s Rahel is a Malayali kutty! And I’ve just noticed – they are all girls, including Maria!
Placing a child, Little Maria, as the main narrative perspective, gave me immense creative freedom. The issue with grown-ups is that they think in a certain way, behave in a certain way. You should have a rational, logical explanation for everything. Children don’t have to fit into anything. They can be wild, crazy, make up things … Also, I loved myself as a child, although I hated my childhood. I too grew up with my grandparents, though my grandfather was nothing like the wise Geevarghese. He was just an ordinary guy. I knew him only as my grandfather and never as a person. We never had any conversations like the ones Maria and Geevarghese have in our life, but we liked each other’s company in a peculiar, grown-up way. I was his constant companion, but we were more or less silent most of the time! Maybe I filled that silence with my imagination.
JK: I read in one of your interviews that you started writing Maria in English. As your English translator, I found that interesting. Why did you switch languages? And how was it to then read the novel written in English by someone else?
SM: Like many of us, I talk to myself a lot. In the beginning of my twenties, I started thinking in English – perhaps it was to improve my language – and I loved it! I assumed that my ‘self-talking English’ was good, though there must have been some usage errors. Also, at that time, I was doing lots and lots of translation, from English to Malayalam and vice versa. Like I said, Maria was originally written as notes of my thoughts, and so they naturally came out in English. And when I realized that it could be a novel, I switched to Malayalam. The interesting thing is that I was translating many of the parts in the novel into Malayalam from English! It is funny that you were re-translating those parts back into English. So, for me, I had the whole story of Maria in English in my head, even the Malayalam parts, and to be frank, I was a little worried about how it would turn out in translation, whether I would like the new Maria. Then again, I am very passive about my writing, and I forgot about it soon. But when I read your translation, it almost felt not translated, almost the same but at the same time a totally independent novel. It was as though the Maria in my head had jumped into yours! Let me mention one particular scene, the scene where Maria meets Mathiri in the two-dimensional, black-and-white heaven while taking Geevarghese’s soul to the Other World. This is one of my favourite scenes: one, because they are two mad women from two completely different generations; and two, because it is a place where everyone’s dreams are shattered, not just Maria’s. Then that scene leads into, merges with, Geevarghese’s death. For me, this was one of the most intense and creative episodes in the novel. And the translation has maintained that intensity and creativity to the full.
And that makes me curious about your process of translation. Maria, I believe, is written in a very simple language, the simplest imaginable I would say. But it has many instances of playing with language, twisting words, making up words, colloquial usage. I would like to know how you translated these, how difficult or easy the process was for you, what choices you made.
JK: That is an interesting question, and one I get asked a lot. Let me just say, first of all, that while a translator often works focused at the level of a single word, getting bogged down with words can also be detrimental. One of my favourite translators, Edith Grossman, who recently passed away, said: ‘A translation can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable.’ With Maria, as with my other translations, my effort was to understand and capture your intention when you made up words or played with words. This I understood primarily as a way of giving Maria a unique voice to match her unique way of being in this world, what you call in the novel her ‘Marian’ way of being. For instance, Maria likes to use the word ‘bhayankara’, which can translate into English in many different ways depending on the context, as terrible, terrific, super, awesome, fearsome and so on. Given that Maria also has a certain colloquial Americanism in her speech, I chose to retain ‘super’. There are other colloquial or made-up words – ‘dookly’ and ‘kundappanatti’, for example – that Maria uses, that others, even Jesus Christ, learn from Maria. I’ve chosen to retain these as they are because, well, the idea that others learn words and make them part of their speech is how a language acquires new words.
But it is not just Maria who plays with words and syntax in this book. Pretty much every character is at it. I think this is one of the reasons why, even though the book is the story of Maria, the little neglected girl who eventually had to grow up, and all the fascinating, irritating, nurturing, devastating things that happened meanwhile, it is also about a whole community. Maria is surrounded by fascinating characters, both human and animal, and each of these characters is drawn out and developed fully. Some of them are familiar – we all probably know a Mariyamma toiling alone inside old extended families, or an eccentric Anna valyamma pacing the corridors of a house which is at once her sanctuary and her prison. But the others – like Mathiri valyammachi, who rewrites the Bible, and Chirammel Kathanar, the world-famous magician-priest – are refreshingly unfamiliar in Malayalam literature. You have even given St George the Martyr – Geevarghese Sahada – a new, specifically small-town-Kerala lease of life. And then, of course, there are the non-human characters – Chandippatti, the dog who is a philosopher, and the wily, smart parrot, Ammini.
SM: People have asked me if Maria is autobiographical. How can it be? I never had a talking dog! I never knew a talking parrot! I don’t have a Geevarghese in my family, or a Mathiri valyammachi, or an Anna valyamma, or a Chirammel Kathanar. Maybe a Mariyamma, yes, but as you say, all elderly matriarchs are more or less like Mariyamma. About Geevarghese Sahada, I have been seeing him in that exact posture for years. I mean, sitting on a horse in that same position for so many years … Naturally you imagine a story for him or about him! It is the same with Jesus Christ, Karthav Eesho Mishiha. I stopped being a believer by the end of my teenage years, but these characters remain in your cultural life, just like Syrian Christian cuisine or carols at Christmas time, or the Christmas star. All those characters and situations came out naturally without much effort on my part.
As for Chandippatti and Ammini, I think I have excellent communication skills with animals. I really talk with them, and they respond too! The kind of special IQ and EQ they have is beyond our understanding. Ammini and Chandippatti, especially, are results of that communication. The idea of Chandippatti came from a totally crazy dog I met briefly at a bus stop. It gives me immense joy to be with cats and dogs. For me, they are family; we don’t own them, they own us. They are more part of my life than human beings. And, as with the child protagonist who provides the narrative perspective, animal characters give space for immense creative freedom and imagination.
JK: And because of all these people and animals, although the book is about Maria who is ‘just Maria’, it is also about a community, the story of ‘Maria’s land’ – Kerala – in a specific moment in history, a social commentary on the idea of family and the tenets of patriarchy, and how women – and men – of different generations negotiate its vicious waters. So, I was intrigued by the phrase with which the novel ends – ‘poor Maria’. Why so?
SM: I am glad you asked that question. That ‘poor’ is not only meant for Maria, but for every human being who, despite being a beautiful soul, ends up lost or branded as a failure because we suck as a society.
JK: You have said somewhere that you found ‘the task of having to neatly and systematically convey the ideas inside my head boring’, and that you did not publish your first story until the age of thirty. And yet you have published a collection of short stories as well as Maria.
SM: I never thought about writing fiction until I was thirty, though I always knew I could write! But then, the first story I wrote got published in Mathrubhumi weekly, the leading Malayalam literary magazine. After publishing three or four stories, I almost stopped writing – for no particular reason. I am a very lazy writer. Being creative is one thing, but the process of writing requires much effort and discipline, as you know very well. And my first instinct is to skip it! I have never had that ‘I must write this down’ kind of feeling about anything. These days I don’t write much fiction, only a few short stories. I have a novel in mind, but I postpone writing it!