The final story in the Kisah Dari Siru Kambam
anthology (Uthaya Sankar SB; RM30), “Chitra Paurnami”, is a subtle tale of
family and forgiveness.
An elderly woman and her
grandchild celebrate a festival together. The true meaning of said festival
day, Chitra Paurnami, is discussed at length: held in honour of Chitragupta,
the God of Death’s assistant, a family invites the visiting divinity into their
home and serves him a sumptuous feast — in hopes that when it is their time to
be judged in the afterlife, he will plead on their behalf.
But that tradition is
considered passé, and most of Grandma’s family prefer to celebrate at the
temple, with “kavadi, berjalan di atas
bara api, dan pembawaan rata” — needless ostentations, she says, “Saya tak boleh terima.”
So only Grandma and her one
doting grandkid are at home when a mysterious young man comes around for a
meal.
This man’s identity is never
revealed. Who is he? Is he Chitragupta? Or someone more down-to-earth, though
equally remote? At the start of the story, complaining that she’d prepared too
much food, Grandma offhandedly mentions that:
“Kita sebenarnya ada saudara-mara di sekitar Taiping. Tapi tentu ayah dan ibu awak tak benarkan mereka datang
berkunjung ke rumah kita kerana masalah lama … ”
Bahasa Malaysia vs Bahasa
Melayu
Kisah Dari Siru Kambam presents a broad overview of
Uthaya Sankar SB’s career. Its contents
— 20 short stories — are ordered chronologically: the last, “Chitra Paurnami”,
was published in February 2013; the first, “Nayagi”, appeared in 1992.
Uthaya is a rarity, an
Indian-Malaysian author who writes exclusively in Bahasa Malaysia.
His style is formal, closer
to the pages of Dewan Budaya than the
post-modern urban grit of Fixi’s stable of writers. This suits
his work just fine; for Uthaya, crossing the linguistic divide is a patriotic
mission, to be fought out in the national mainstream.
“I regard Bahasa Malaysia as my first language.”
“Bahasa Malaysia is our
national language,” he has said. “I regard Bahasa Malaysia as my first language.”
Uthaya’s choice to write in Bahasa
Malaysia has pitted him against the race-obsessed literary establishment. In
1999, he got into a “little war” with Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) after
the government body insisted he use the term “Bahasa Melayu” in one of his
collections. More recently, the publication of “Chitra Paurnami” was delayed
for six months; a magazine editor had accused it of “seeking to spread the Hindu faith” —
because describing Hindu beliefs counts as proselytising, apparently.
Engorged Metaphor
Among the stories of this
collection, Uthaya’s activist streak is most obvious in the allegorical “Interlok dan Siru Kambam”.
An old temple receives a new
statue of the god Shiva. Unfortunately, this new idol is unintentionally
offensive: “berbogel bulat dan alat sulit
ditonjolkan secara berlebihan”.
Hijinks ensue. Ordinary folk
are outraged; the Perpena is unrepentant; politicians get involved; an expert
iconographer puts forth a 16-point amendment list that must be carried out on
the idol “sebelum ia layak diangkat
sebagai berhala”.
Sound familiar? In the course
of events, a character points out that Siru Kambam’s Shiva scandal mirrors the
national debate over Abdullah Hussain’s Interlok — Gapena, the Education
Ministry, the 106 proposed amendments (that Uthaya himself was
instrumental in compiling), etc.
To which locals reply: “Ini cuma isu setempat … mustahil dapat
disamakan dengan suatu isu nasional.”
That’s a deft criticism of
the Malaysian tendency to keep to and defend our social and/or communal
pigeonholes, our refusal to acknowledge that, yes, an issue affecting one community
inevitably actually affects all of us.
Moral Judgement
Not all of Uthaya’s
commentary is so masterful. Some of the book’s other pieces veer into
preachiness.
“Datuk Datang ke Kampung Kami” is a
bitter excoriation of the ethnic-Indian community, unable to appreciate Indian
writers writing outside the Tamil-language ghetto. The sweepingly-monikered “Wanita” has its protagonist berating a
married female colleague for her decision to be “trendy” and take on her
husband’s name:
“Kaum wanita tidak akan mendapat tempat yang mulia di mata dunia …
selagi mereka masih menganiaya diri; mengikat diri pada amalan kolot yang tidak
berasas.”
Which sounds like a feminist
call to arms — “Women, stand up for your rights!” — but the protagonist giving
this authoritative lecture is male, and pooh-poohs his colleague’s dissenting
opinions at every turn; he is yet another man trying to police a woman’s
behaviour.
A Model Malaysia
Siru Kambam is fictional: a
mixed, Indian-majority district, close to Taiping. All of the stories in Kisah Dari Siru Kambam
feature it as their context, and life there is an idyll of peace and mutual
respect.
Uthaya tends to employ his
imagined township as a foil — a microcosmic lab into which Big Malaysian Issues
may be dropped and their effects felt.
But the best works in this
volume are the ones that focus on the people of Siru Kambam; the ones that
invest in them as characters, not just as author-surrogates; the ones where
socio-cultural anxieties function as mirrors to personal triumphs or tragedies.
Like “Chitra Paurnami”, my
favourite story, “Jangan Pandang Sang Bulan”, also
features grandparents and a Hindu festival.
An elderly couple describes
Vinayagar Chaturthi to their grandchildren, and explains the taboo against
looking at the moon on Ganesha’s holy day — because it dared laugh at the
elephant-headed god, the moon is punished by averted gazes.
But grandfather’s
lively, jokey storytelling and grandmother’s sweet modakams mask a terrible fact: the two don’t talk to each other any
more.
Only obliquely referenced in
the text, “Jangan Pandang Sang Bulan”’s silent, domestic pain — unexplained and
empathetically considered — rings louder than any declamation or judgment.
A Softer Struggle
Uthaya wears many big,
important hats. He writes columns for four separate media publications; he
founded Kavyan,
a Bahasa Malaysia literature appreciation society; he was a central figure in
the Interlok controversy. It’s clear he
views himself as a crusader — in the forward to this latest collection, he
quotes Gandhi and says that the anthology’s
publication:
“meneruskan pendirian, perjuangan dan jati diri
saya.”
All that nation-building can
get a bit strident. It is in his less “important” stories that Uthaya’s
artistry shines through. His sensitivity; his ear for the quiet, easily-missed
moments that define human relationships — these are the attributes that make Kisah Dari Siru Kambam
such a pleasure to read.
[This
review was published in Kakiseni on 15 April 2013. Zedeck Siew is a fiction writer and
freelance critic. He is currently working on his first book and blogs
sporadically on zedecksiew.tumblr.com] [BUY THIS BOOK]