The Sound of Waves
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Synopsis
A fractured country on the verge of freedom finds its people navigating the slippery crevices of love, morality and nationalism.
To escape the despair of his all-consuming, failed relationship with Dharini, Raghavan agrees to meet Lalita for an arranged match. Finding Lalita's cousin, the vivacious and captivating Sita, a far more amenable fit, he marries her instead. With a charming wife and a powerful government job in pre-Partition Delhi adding to his smugness and conceit, Raghavan turns a blind eye to the evils of the British Raj. Along comes Sita's cousin Surya, a dauntless revolutionary burning to right the wrong. His commitment to the socialist credo leads him to Dharini, a young and spirited party member, the woman Raghavan continues to long for. Cracks appear in the brittle foundations of their lives as the characters move from rural Thanjavur, Madras, Bombay, Karachi, New Delhi, Agra and Calcutta to Lahore.
With poignant detail and lyrical prose, Kalki's tour de force lays bare the emotions of ordinary people grappling with extraordinary changes, their circumstances riven with misfortunes, disasters and the carnage of Partition. The Sound of Waves is an impassioned tribute to everyday citizens and their woes, and an acute commentary on the aspirations of an emerging nation.
This book by Gowri Ramnarayan is the English translation of the bestselling Tamil novel Alai Osai by freedom fighter and novelist Kalki Krishnamurthy (1899-1954).
Release date: December 5, 2022
Publisher: Hachette India
Print pages: 672
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The Sound of Waves
Kalki R Krishnamurthy
First published in 2022 by Hachette India
(Registered name: Hachette Book Publishing India Pvt. Ltd)
An Hachette UK company
www.hachetteindia.com
This ebook published in 2022
(Text) Copyright © 1948 ‘Kalki’ R. Krishnamurthy
English translation copyright © 2022 Gowri Ramnarayan
‘Kalki’ R. Krishnamurthy and Gowri Ramnarayan assert the moral right to be identified respectively as the author and translator of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system (including but not limited to computers, disks, external drives, electronic or digital devices, e-readers, websites), or transmitted in any form or by any means (including but not limited to cyclostyling, photocopying, docutech or other reprographic reproductions, mechanical, recording, electronic, digital versions) without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales is purely coincidental. The contents of this book reflect the views of the author and translator. The Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation is not responsible for the same.
Certain place names, such as Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, among others, as well as the names of certain provinces and presidencies have been used to retain the historicity of the text.
Subsequent edition/reprint specifications may be subject to change, including but not limited to title, subtitle cover or inside finishes, paper, text colour and/or colour sections.
Paperback edition ISBN 978-93-93701-35-0
Ebook edition ISBN 978-93-93701-36-7
Hachette Book Publishing India Pvt. Ltd
4th & 5th Floors, Corporate Centre,
Plot No. 94, Sector 44, Gurugram 122003, India
Cover illustration and design by Paridhi Didwania
Originally typeset in Dante MT Std 10.5/13
by R. Ajith Kumar, New Delhi
CONTENTS
Translator’s Note
PART ONE: EARTHQUAKE
1. The Post Office
2. A Mother’s Heart
3. Letter from Bombay
4. Tantrums on the Threshold
5. Kitta Iyer’s Family
6. The Consultation
7. Padmapuram
8. Saundara Raghavan
9. The Door Opens
10. Kamakshi Ammal
11. If You Ask Me
12. It Happened in Karachi
13. When the Sky Crashed
14. The Coach Arrives
15. Rajam’s Secret
16. Goddess Supreme
17. Duraisami’s Household
18. The Three Friends
19. The Accident
20. Introducing a Cousin
21. Sita’s Beloved
22. A Slap on the Cheek
23. What is this Noise?
24. The Heart Missed a Beat
25. Speaking Glances
26. Rain of Flowers
27. Lightning Strikes
28. The Engagement
29. Letters from Bihar
30. Is This Your Fate?
31. Fight by the Sluice Gate
32. The World of Lovers
33. Aunt and Nephew
34. Tears at the Wedding
PART TWO: HURRICANE
1. The Journey to Delhi
2. Meeting at the Railway Station
3. The Seed of Sorrow
4. At the Street Corner
5. Haripura Congress
6. Half the Marriage
7. Lalita’s Letter
8. Sita’s Reply
9. The Jasmine Tower
10. Daydream
11. Taj Mahal
12. The Historian
13. Rajnipur
14. Rajnipur Lake
15. Rebirth
16. Devapattinam Election
17. Lalita! I Am Afraid…!
18. Who’s There?
19. Hello! Police?
20. A Weight Lifted
21. The Mad Woman of Rajnipur
22. The Door Opened!
23. Dharini’s Story
24. The Good Mother-in-Law
25. I Will Shoot Him!
26. War of Words
27. The Reason for the Journey
28. The Surging Sea
PART THREE: VOLCANO
1. The Vendor of Joss Sticks
2. ‘Let Japan Come!’
3. Birthday Raid
4. The Young Renunciate
5. The Secret of Success
6. Is Marriage Necessary?
7. On the Silver Street
8. Under the Tree
9. The Heart Stopped
10. ‘Just One Way’
11. Raghavan’s Ordeal
12. ‘Surya, Go Away!’
13. ‘If You are a Chaste Wife…’
14. The Hideaway
15. Another’s Secret
16. Sita’s Abduction
17. Blocked by the Yamuna
18. Fractured Head
19. ‘What Kind of a World is This?’
20. The Palace Garden
21. The Accusation
22. The Release
23. Happy Times
24. The Exploding Volcano
25. Lalita’s Letter
26. Anxieties Overcome
PART FOUR: THE DELUGE
1. A Mother’s Grievance
2. ‘Sita Is Coming!’
3. Doctor’s Orders
4. The Illusion Called Love
5. Seductive Siren
6. Water Bubbles
7. Eternal Life
8. ‘Praise the Great Rains!’
9. Pattabhi’s Rebirth
10. Accursed Elections!
11. Pattabhi’s Craze for Office
12. Vainglory
13. Raghavan’s Daydream
14. The Princess of Rajnipur
15. Gangabai’s Story
16. Ramamani’s Defeat
17. Lucky Escape!
18. Pattabhi’s Triumph
19. Feeding the Snake
20. Blow after Blow
21. The Visible God
22. Director Shyamsundar
23. Sita’s Prayer
24. My Heaven
25. The Following Year
26. The Mystery of the Telegram
27. A Voice in the Dark
28. Opening the Gates Of Hell
29. First Daughter
30. ‘Death, Come to Me!’
31. The Survivor
32. Raghavan’s Grief
33. Raghavan’s Rage
34. Sita’s Spirit
35. The Panipat Camp
36. 31st January
37. Raghavan and Dharini
38. The Bell Rang!
39. God’s Mercy
40. ‘Lucky Sita!’
41. Surya’s Heart
42. Lalita’s Sister-in-law
43. Bhama’s Visit
Glossary
Translator’s Acknowledgements
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
‘Why do you spend so much time translating others?’ I asked Alastair Reid, whose writings were as brilliant as his translations of Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges. Reid laughed. ‘Would you say they are entirely different pursuits? Neruda had once told me, “Don’t translate my poems, Alastair! Make them better!” He knew, as I do, that translation is a process of making something your own.’
I was to understand what he meant only during the pandemic in 2020. That year, through the first lockdown, I read aloud Kalki R. Krishnamurthy’s Alai Osai, published in 1948 (literally, the sound of the waves) in daily Zoom sessions with my daughter Akhila Ramnarayan and sister Rukmini Ramachandran. After each session, we found ourselves discussing not only the novel’s literary features, but also arguing about politics, philosophy, ethics, the problems of society, colonialism, gender, protest movements, cultural revisionism and ideas that shape the world. We visited the historical landmarks of the Indian independence movement to which the novel took us; we witnessed extranational events that continue to impact us globally today. With satyagraha and ahimsa forming the axis of the novel, Kalki’s prose compelled us to ponder the values that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had resurrected as the force of truth and non-violence.
We asked ourselves, do these Gandhian principles have any meaning now, not as political weapons, but as values in personal and public life? Can violence really be overcome by non-violence? Can compassion conquer aggression? Can faith in peace and truth put an end to injustice and persecution? Most of all, we thought about what the word freedom means – in differing times, places, contexts.
Surely, ‘Kalki’ R. Krishnamurthy (1899–1954) wanted his novel to ignite such debates. Surely, the same questions ricocheted in his mind when he wrote it.
Kalki had planned to write Alai Osai against the panoramic backdrop of India’s struggle for independence, a paean to the glory of the Mahatma. It was to end with the waves of freedom resounding in triumphant bliss. But Partition brought with it shrieks of terror and wails of anguish. On 30 January 1948, free India reeled under the shock and grief of Gandhi’s assassination. Days later, Kalki’s obituary in his eponymous magazine overflowed with the angst, despair and fear for the future that he felt along with his countrymen everywhere. Through all that despondency, he did see a glimmer of hope, too.
O eyes! Shed tears! Shed tears until not a single drop remains. You will never see the Mahatma’s face, full of grace and compassion, ever again! You will never see the copper glow of his form!
O heart! Why do you tremble? Why do you ache? Have you forgotten that there is no death for the soul? If there is no death for the soul, can the Mahatma die?
O hands! Why do you tremble? A thousand times have you inscribed his name! Why do you falter now? Why do you shudder…?
Truth! Are you dead? Dharma! Have you perished? God! Where are you? Are you watching everything as a mere witness…?
We inflicted unbearable pain on his noble heart. We watched as he fasted for our wrongdoings. Finally, we continue to live on even after learning that he slumped to the ground, shot dead by a savage demon…
After the loss of the Mahatma, our life is plunged into a miasma of darkness. And yet, it is not as if there is no light to show the way. The Mahatma has left us an inextinguishable light, the immortal light of truth, to be sustained and fuelled by ahimsa and tyaga, non-violence and sacrifice. Let us venerate that light of truth. Let us ensure that whirlwinds and storms do not extinguish it.
In March 1948, as Kalki began to write the initial chapters of Alai Osai to be serialized in Kalki magazine, he must have known that with all the himsa the nation had witnessed, the novel could not celebrate the unmitigated triumph of ahimsa.
The act of writing became a scrutiny of both actions and the trends of thought during the crucial period when history was being rewritten in the subcontinent. It is as if Kalki directed a searchlight on the human mind through the novel in order to reveal the good and bad, villainy and saintliness, courage and cowardice, hypocrisy and integrity, blindness and foresight. He wrote, too, of temptations and snares, faults venial and unforgivable, disasters natural and manmade, passions channelled and unbridled, the lessons of history learnt and ignored. He claims that it was certainly him who started the novel, but his characters soon took over and began to tell their own stories.
The storyline follows the fortunes of Sita, raised in a poor Tamil family in Bombay, married to an arrogant ‘hero’ holding an enviable government job in Delhi, an enthusiastic supporter of British rule in India. In contrast, Surya, Sita’s cousin and well-wisher, remains a doughty revolutionary and radical reformist, committed to socialism, championing freedom for the nation and equal rights for every citizen.
The Sound of Waves roams through a wide geographical terrain. From rural Tamil Nadu, it traverses Madras, Bombay, Karachi, Delhi, Agra, Lahore, Panipat, Haripura, the fictional southern town Devapattinam, and a royal state in Rajasthan designated as Rajnipur. Kalki had travelled to most of these places himself, first as a young volunteer in the national sessions of the Congress, then as a journalist covering political events.
After writing the initial chapters, he extended his trip to the capital to see his life-long mentor C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) installed as the governor-general of free India, to include scouting out the novel’s locations in Old and New Delhi, accompanied by magazine illustrator Chandira, and photographer Ellis R. Dungan (an American director of Tamil/Telugu films in the 1940s). He went to refugee camps in Panipat and Kurukshetra and heard first-hand accounts of genocides. Earlier, he had toured through the areas affected by the 1946 communal riots in Calcutta. These live experiences gave his novel a national sweep and historic dimensions.
Other happenings in his personal life, too, left their mark on the writer. Once, as a child, Krishnamurthy got nearly drowned in the village pond. His biographer ‘Sunda’ (M.R.M. Sundaram) suggests that this ordeal might have made the image of getting submerged under the waves a recurrent motif in Kalki’s fiction. Alai Osai is dominated by the visual, aural and tactile image of the billowing waves. Noting how it becomes an asphyxiating experience for the reader, writer/critic Ki. Va. Jagannathan cites the paragraph where Sita sinks into the River Chenab as one of the most powerful passages in modern Tamil fiction.
By the time Kalki started writing Alai Osai, he had become a cult figure in the Tamil realm as journalist, political analyst, social reformist, magazine editor, critic of the arts, custodian of culture, proponent of Tamil music, commentator on current affairs, and ace fictionist. He had even penned a film script and a few poems. A fellow journalist called him ‘a film star among writers’. He had written the first historical novel in Tamil, a genre in which he remains unsurpassed. Parthiban Kanavu (serialized 1941–43) allegorizes the thirst for freedom in a Chola prince. Sivagamiyin Sapatham (1944–46) recreates the glorious era of the Pallavas with their magnificent traditions of art, culture and literary achievements, which were brought to bear on contemporary Tamil self-fashioning. This process was to gain greater power with Ponniyin Selvan (1950–54), which immediately followed Alai Osai (1948). This mammoth saga of the imperial Cholas was to break records as the single most-read Tamil work of fiction, then and now. By the time it appeared, the Audit Bureau of Circulations had certified that each Kalki issue had a print order of 71,366. In the 1950s, Kalki’s circulation was higher than that of any newspaper or magazine in any language in India.
In every town and village across the state, on the day the weekly issue of Kalki arrived, readers queued at railway stations, bus stops and newsstands, to grab their copies. To avoid tussles among family members, some households subscribed to two issues, in others the whole family gathered to hear the chapters read aloud.
Kalki was not only a prolific writer, but also a sought-after public speaker. He was a proponent of social reforms who ran political and cultural campaigns through speech and writing. He helped organize literary events and poetry festivals, and promoted fundraising for multiple causes. He masterminded mega projects like the building of memorials to Subramania Bharati in the poet’s native town, and to Gandhi in Madras.
Kalki’s career began when he quit school in response to Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, enlisting in the freedom struggle as a writer of pamphlets for the Congress party. His training in journalism was at Navasakthi, Madras, edited by Tamil scholar, trade unionist and independence activist T.V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar. Further honing came from Rajaji when Kalki assisted his leader in editing and publishing the anti-liquor magazine Vimochanam. When Rajaji and other Congress leaders were imprisoned by the British Raj, Kalki went underground to write and distribute subversive tracts. He was also to be charged with sedition and jailed multiple times.
It was when he joined the magazine Ananda Vikatan that Kalki came into his own as editor and writer. His political writings provoked strong responses, and his art critiques launched debates. He revelled in polemical disputes with political adversaries and fellow scribes who attacked him. In no time at all, he found himself turning into a beloved author for thousands of readers.
Kalki used his trademark humour – ranging from saucy slapstick to biting satire – to deadly effect in responding to the antagonism engendered by his success. But he did not forget the French philosopher Voltaire’s injunction, a favourite, ‘I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ He bore no malice or rancour. He was also quick to praise merits in his opponents. In his obituary on Kalki, Dravidian Party leader C.N. Annadurai noted, ‘Many had been vexed and angered by the renaissance brought into the field of writing by our movement. But Kalki welcomed it. He never hesitated to applaud the good qualities in his opponents, nor was he afraid to praise them!’ Another declared, ‘Kalki could appreciate the fragrance of a flower even when it bloomed in his adversary’s garden.’
As in the writings of many of his contemporaries, Kalki’s essays burned with nationalistic fervour and reformist zeal. A believer in gender equality, he denounced child marriage and campaigned for women’s education and widow remarriage, often through the medium of his memorable stories. His women were not always victims. They could be strong, sagacious, possessing keen intellects. They could be free-spirited, dauntless, insisting on their rights in a patriarchal world. In Sarathaiyin Thanthiram, his first book of short fiction, a woman uses her wits to solve a tricky problem. In Ponniyin Selvan, young Princess Kundavai is deemed the wisest of all. In the controversial novel Tyagabhumi, when her father urges Savitri (named after the ideal wife of Hindu legends) to sacrifice her pride and return to her husband, the daughter says, ‘I will make any sacrifice for freedom, but not for slavery.’ Such a statement could not but provoke indignant protests in the 1930s.
He wrote under no fewer than thirteen pen names, in diverse genres, all progressing towards a single goal. ‘Kalki’, his best-known pseudonym, makes that purpose crystal clear. A Sri Lankan newspaper quoted him explaining his choice of this apocalyptic figure.
It is natural for every young writer to believe that he will banish old epochs and create a new epoch. Imagining myself to be a mighty warrior ushering in a new age, I named myself after Lord Vishnu’s tenth avatar that heralds a new yuga… (impelled by) the urge to express new ideas, launch readers into new directions, and shape a new age.
Kalki realized that helping overcome the mental stupor engendered by colonization was the first step in creating that new age. Every word he wrote as crusader, reformist, analyst, or fictionist, sought to promote self-confidence and cultural pride in his compatriots, replacing self-distrust and the sense of inferiority. When a critique in 1933 accused him of aiming at propaganda instead of literary worth, Kalki responded by parodying a purple passage about the beauties of spring, somehow turning it into an exhortation to wear khadi in all seasons. He concluded, ‘Expect writings of lasting literary value from the hundreds and thousands of Tamil writers who will appear hereafter. Let me be what I am, a propagandist!’
Many works of Kalki have stood the test of time. The historical novel Sivagamiyin Sapatham highlights the renaissance of the arts that accompanied the rise of Indian nationalism. But it also underscores how religion can be a manipulative tool in the hands of the state, while championing peaceful co-existence among the followers of different faiths as vital for prosperity. He dwells on how civilian lives as well as art, learning, ethics and culture become the casualties of war.
In his epilogue to Ponniyin Selvan, Kalki unequivocally declares that his mammoth five-volume saga reaches its climax where Prince Arulmozhi rejects the throne offered to him and crowns his uncle because he recognizes his claim to kingship as greater than his own. This is the author’s exaltation of satya (truth), dharma (righteousness) and tyaga (sacrifice) as the highest human values. However, his legion of readers through generations have rejoiced far more in the swashbuckling adventures and convoluted political machinations foregrounding the novel, not to mention the grandeur of their Tamil heritage that it glorifies.
Kalki remained steeped in Tamil culture, devoted to the Tamil language, and proud of his Tamil identity. But he was a stranger to provincialism. His outlook had a global perspective. This inclusive vision drives The Sound of Waves.
Every writer is influenced by other writers. We know that while Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas triggered his taking up historical fiction, the writers who stirred his soul were the bard Kamban, bhakti songsters, mystic poets, Rabindranath Tagore and Subramania Bharati. The Sound of Waves also discloses that Kalki knew his Karl Marx. Utterly condemning violence as a Gandhian, Kalki shapes the character Surya with empathy for the radical revolutionaries of the Socialist Party. As the novel progresses, we also see why Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy were so dear to the author. He was won over by their humanitarian vision.
Like all literary works worth their salt, Alai Osai brings different experiences to the reader at different times. As an adolescent, I saw it as the story of my parents’ generation, moving from village to town, expanding their horizon through education, progressing with reform and modernization. Later, I saw it as a major literary document recording a highly significant time in India’s history through the lives of ordinary people. When I became a journalist, I recognized that Alai Osai had absorbed a news reporter’s documentary techniques in a work of fiction. Now I see how it foreshadowed things to come. It anticipates some of the realities I witness today. I suppose I took on the time-consuming task of translating this novel because I believe that this novel has a resonance beyond the Tamil realm.
Not for nothing did A.K. Ramanujan say that ‘translation is repossession’. During the ‘Covid years’, I was lucky enough to translate Kalki’s Tamil biography Ponniyin Pudalvar by M.R.M. Sundaram, as Kalki Krishnamurthy: His Life and Times, which maps the socio-political, reformist-renaissance movements in India during the first half of the twentieth century, of which Kalki had been witness, participant and documenter. Then, I translated Alai Osai, where Kalki himself chronicles the same era through fiction. A work that the author believed to be the ‘best offering he could make with pride and humility, to the people of his land.’
I am at an advantage when it comes to translating Kalki’s works for a simple reason – I am at home in Kalki’s world, and with his words. As his granddaughter, I grew up reading his fiction and non-fiction in the bound volumes of Kalki magazine from its first issue. I have sung his songs. In my avatar as a dramatist, I have written and directed two plays based on his work.
Theatrical adaptation brings its own challenges, as, equally, has translation. Kalki’s style has been branded as Kalkitamizh. It has zest, verve, lilt, pace. It thrives on images – visual, aural, olfactory, even tactile. He uses synaesthesia all the time. Onomatopoetic phrases streak past with carefree abandon. Allusive lines from writers past and present, from Sangam poetry to Subramania Bharati, twinkle in and out, adding context, texture, and charm. Humour brightens understanding. And yet, the writing flows on, with no stops, no breaks!
Kalki was churning out so much every week, and on such diverse subjects, that the handwritten pages were veritably rushed to the press before the ink dried on them, leaving scarcely any time for revision or deliberate craft. What an adventure to try to capture that spontaneity in English!
We know that the cultural milieu of any region is so wedded to its language that it is always difficult to transpose it into another language, especially into the Anglo-Saxon tongue (ironically, the language of the very colonizer against whom the novel militates) which registers a different temperature altogether.
With Kalki, the real problem is to convey the import of his descriptions of nature and landscape, and other external locations and settings. Every descriptive detail has its own resonance, adding nuances in the situations, characters, actions and states of mind. I had to ‘shrink’ some of them in translation. Elsewhere too, I have abridged passages which glide along in the Indian tongue, but turn redundant in English.
In boyhood, Kalki regularly performed harikatha, a form of storytelling with songs and a little dancing in between. This oral tradition informs his writing style. Without being overtly colloquial, it carries the ease, chattiness, digressions and even the repetitions of raconteuring, stopping now and then to address the reader directly. Like a friend talking as he strolls with you, arm around your shoulder and, as Rajaji put it, ‘never looking back’. As a translator, I found this tone extremely challenging.
Kalki, too, had faced the challenges of translation with his first published book Sathya Sothanai, Mahatma Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth. A newcomer to writing then, he must have crafted his own methods to translate the serialized chapters, working in the same dusty library where he had located them in the issues of Young India.
Like Kalki, I had to find my own tools for this new job. My long years in journalism helped me. Writing for an English daily meant that I had to translate much of my source material from the vernacular – oral or written, in first person or third. A Hindustani musician spoke in Urdu, a forest guard in Hindi, a Madurai historian in Tamil, an actor from Trichur in Malayalam. Interviewees from many regions communicated in a language in which English played a minimal role. In translating The Sound of Waves, I decided to go with my instinct, relying on careful reading to find my way during the long trek.
Alai Osai follows the old Indian literary tradition of ending on an auspicious note with overt optimism. But Kalki could not shut out the nightmares that freedom brought, nor the echo of the gunshot ending the life of the man who represented the values and paradoxes underpinning that newly won freedom.
He had not read Faiz Ahmad Faiz, but Kalki surely knew what the poet across the border had seen on 15 August 1947:
These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light –
This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with freedom,
we had set out in sheer longing,
so sure that somewhere in its desert the sky harboured
a final haven for the stars, and we would find it.
He also knew that the struggle to maintain freedom is as difficult as the struggle to attain freedom. In the most passionate expression of his dreams and hopes for independent India, Kalki transmutes The Sound of Waves into the rallying cry of satyagraha, urging us to strive ceaselessly, and with conviction, to better ourselves, the nation, and the world.
1
THE POST OFFICE
A veritable forest of banyan trees had spread on both sides of the road. It was a dense tangle of aerial roots and branches. As with any attempt to find the supreme being, it was impossible to discover where the road began and where it ended.
The post office of Rajampettai village stood at the corner where the road running from east to west turned towards the north. The door was locked. The postbox, hanging from an iron chain on the pillar, looked as forlorn as an abandoned orphan.
A little ahead, a bullock cart rolled by in slow motion, creaking and swaying to an unhurried rhythm, the cartman’s cries goading the animals on.
Facing the post office on the other side of the road was a mithai kadai, with no one in sight outside its precincts. However, from within came sounds of sizzling and sputtering. Along with the aroma of sauteed onions, they announced that the stall keeper was frying masal vadai.
Nesting without a care on the banyan trees were birds who screeched merrily.
There! The tap-tap of footwear announces the arrival of Mr K.P. Bangaru Naidu BPM. Don’t miss the ‘BPM’! It stands for ‘Branch Post Master’!
A village postmaster may earn a small salary but he wields considerable authority, while his official responsibilities are even greater. ‘The District Collector or His Excellency the Governor himself has no power inside this post office!’ Naidu garu proudly declared. ‘Even if the governor asks me to hand over to him a letter addressed to someone else, I have the authority to say NO!’
Here he comes, Postmaster Bangaru Naidu. He inserts the key into the lock. The door opens at once.
Bangaru Naidu enters his kingdom. As soon as he crosses the threshold, he stands transfixed, unable to take a single step forward.
Seated inside, Postman Balakrishnan is nonchalantly sorting the mail.
Seeing the postmaster frozen in astonishment, Balakrishnan asks, ‘Sir! Why are you staring at me? Do I look like a ghost…?’
‘You… you… how… how... how did you get in?’ Bangaru Naidu stuttered.
‘Witchcraft, sir! For a few years I was a disciple of the great sorcerer Pitambara Iyer. I can glide through walls in the blink of an eye.’
‘Tell me the truth, boy! Don’t play silly games.’
‘Play, sir? Am I a little child to be playing games?’
‘Tell me how you got into the post office through the locked door?’
‘Was the door locked? Did you check?’
‘Of course! I unlocked it just now, with this key!’
‘You may have unlocked the lock but did you open the door?’
‘Tambi! To unlock the door is to open the door. Why do you speak in riddles?’
‘No, sir! Not at all. Maybe you were in a jolly mood last evening. You turned the key in the lock all right but without bolting the latch.’
The postmaster looked up at the ceiling and spoke with folded hands, ‘Balakrishna! God has saved us! What a misfortune it would have been if a burglar had got in as you did?’
‘What misfortune? It would have been the poor burglar’s misfortune. What do we have here to attract burglars? Never mind sir, hand me the key to the post box.’
Balakrishnan took the key, opened the post box, brought the mail in, and started postmarking the postage stamps affixed to them.
The postmaster, who was counting the postage stamps that were stored in a little tin box, looked up suddenly and asked, ‘Balakrishna, did you change the da
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This ebook published in 2022
(Text) Copyright © 1948 ‘Kalki’ R. Krishnamurthy
English translation copyright © 2022 Gowri Ramnarayan
‘Kalki’ R. Krishnamurthy and Gowri Ramnarayan assert the moral right to be identified respectively as the author and translator of this work.
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales is purely coincidental. The contents of this book reflect the views of the author and translator. The Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation is not responsible for the same.
Certain place names, such as Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, among others, as well as the names of certain provinces and presidencies have been used to retain the historicity of the text.
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Cover illustration and design by Paridhi Didwania
Originally typeset in Dante MT Std 10.5/13
by R. Ajith Kumar, New Delhi
CONTENTS
Translator’s Note
PART ONE: EARTHQUAKE
1. The Post Office
2. A Mother’s Heart
3. Letter from Bombay
4. Tantrums on the Threshold
5. Kitta Iyer’s Family
6. The Consultation
7. Padmapuram
8. Saundara Raghavan
9. The Door Opens
10. Kamakshi Ammal
11. If You Ask Me
12. It Happened in Karachi
13. When the Sky Crashed
14. The Coach Arrives
15. Rajam’s Secret
16. Goddess Supreme
17. Duraisami’s Household
18. The Three Friends
19. The Accident
20. Introducing a Cousin
21. Sita’s Beloved
22. A Slap on the Cheek
23. What is this Noise?
24. The Heart Missed a Beat
25. Speaking Glances
26. Rain of Flowers
27. Lightning Strikes
28. The Engagement
29. Letters from Bihar
30. Is This Your Fate?
31. Fight by the Sluice Gate
32. The World of Lovers
33. Aunt and Nephew
34. Tears at the Wedding
PART TWO: HURRICANE
1. The Journey to Delhi
2. Meeting at the Railway Station
3. The Seed of Sorrow
4. At the Street Corner
5. Haripura Congress
6. Half the Marriage
7. Lalita’s Letter
8. Sita’s Reply
9. The Jasmine Tower
10. Daydream
11. Taj Mahal
12. The Historian
13. Rajnipur
14. Rajnipur Lake
15. Rebirth
16. Devapattinam Election
17. Lalita! I Am Afraid…!
18. Who’s There?
19. Hello! Police?
20. A Weight Lifted
21. The Mad Woman of Rajnipur
22. The Door Opened!
23. Dharini’s Story
24. The Good Mother-in-Law
25. I Will Shoot Him!
26. War of Words
27. The Reason for the Journey
28. The Surging Sea
PART THREE: VOLCANO
1. The Vendor of Joss Sticks
2. ‘Let Japan Come!’
3. Birthday Raid
4. The Young Renunciate
5. The Secret of Success
6. Is Marriage Necessary?
7. On the Silver Street
8. Under the Tree
9. The Heart Stopped
10. ‘Just One Way’
11. Raghavan’s Ordeal
12. ‘Surya, Go Away!’
13. ‘If You are a Chaste Wife…’
14. The Hideaway
15. Another’s Secret
16. Sita’s Abduction
17. Blocked by the Yamuna
18. Fractured Head
19. ‘What Kind of a World is This?’
20. The Palace Garden
21. The Accusation
22. The Release
23. Happy Times
24. The Exploding Volcano
25. Lalita’s Letter
26. Anxieties Overcome
PART FOUR: THE DELUGE
1. A Mother’s Grievance
2. ‘Sita Is Coming!’
3. Doctor’s Orders
4. The Illusion Called Love
5. Seductive Siren
6. Water Bubbles
7. Eternal Life
8. ‘Praise the Great Rains!’
9. Pattabhi’s Rebirth
10. Accursed Elections!
11. Pattabhi’s Craze for Office
12. Vainglory
13. Raghavan’s Daydream
14. The Princess of Rajnipur
15. Gangabai’s Story
16. Ramamani’s Defeat
17. Lucky Escape!
18. Pattabhi’s Triumph
19. Feeding the Snake
20. Blow after Blow
21. The Visible God
22. Director Shyamsundar
23. Sita’s Prayer
24. My Heaven
25. The Following Year
26. The Mystery of the Telegram
27. A Voice in the Dark
28. Opening the Gates Of Hell
29. First Daughter
30. ‘Death, Come to Me!’
31. The Survivor
32. Raghavan’s Grief
33. Raghavan’s Rage
34. Sita’s Spirit
35. The Panipat Camp
36. 31st January
37. Raghavan and Dharini
38. The Bell Rang!
39. God’s Mercy
40. ‘Lucky Sita!’
41. Surya’s Heart
42. Lalita’s Sister-in-law
43. Bhama’s Visit
Glossary
Translator’s Acknowledgements
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
‘Why do you spend so much time translating others?’ I asked Alastair Reid, whose writings were as brilliant as his translations of Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges. Reid laughed. ‘Would you say they are entirely different pursuits? Neruda had once told me, “Don’t translate my poems, Alastair! Make them better!” He knew, as I do, that translation is a process of making something your own.’
I was to understand what he meant only during the pandemic in 2020. That year, through the first lockdown, I read aloud Kalki R. Krishnamurthy’s Alai Osai, published in 1948 (literally, the sound of the waves) in daily Zoom sessions with my daughter Akhila Ramnarayan and sister Rukmini Ramachandran. After each session, we found ourselves discussing not only the novel’s literary features, but also arguing about politics, philosophy, ethics, the problems of society, colonialism, gender, protest movements, cultural revisionism and ideas that shape the world. We visited the historical landmarks of the Indian independence movement to which the novel took us; we witnessed extranational events that continue to impact us globally today. With satyagraha and ahimsa forming the axis of the novel, Kalki’s prose compelled us to ponder the values that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had resurrected as the force of truth and non-violence.
We asked ourselves, do these Gandhian principles have any meaning now, not as political weapons, but as values in personal and public life? Can violence really be overcome by non-violence? Can compassion conquer aggression? Can faith in peace and truth put an end to injustice and persecution? Most of all, we thought about what the word freedom means – in differing times, places, contexts.
Surely, ‘Kalki’ R. Krishnamurthy (1899–1954) wanted his novel to ignite such debates. Surely, the same questions ricocheted in his mind when he wrote it.
Kalki had planned to write Alai Osai against the panoramic backdrop of India’s struggle for independence, a paean to the glory of the Mahatma. It was to end with the waves of freedom resounding in triumphant bliss. But Partition brought with it shrieks of terror and wails of anguish. On 30 January 1948, free India reeled under the shock and grief of Gandhi’s assassination. Days later, Kalki’s obituary in his eponymous magazine overflowed with the angst, despair and fear for the future that he felt along with his countrymen everywhere. Through all that despondency, he did see a glimmer of hope, too.
O eyes! Shed tears! Shed tears until not a single drop remains. You will never see the Mahatma’s face, full of grace and compassion, ever again! You will never see the copper glow of his form!
O heart! Why do you tremble? Why do you ache? Have you forgotten that there is no death for the soul? If there is no death for the soul, can the Mahatma die?
O hands! Why do you tremble? A thousand times have you inscribed his name! Why do you falter now? Why do you shudder…?
Truth! Are you dead? Dharma! Have you perished? God! Where are you? Are you watching everything as a mere witness…?
We inflicted unbearable pain on his noble heart. We watched as he fasted for our wrongdoings. Finally, we continue to live on even after learning that he slumped to the ground, shot dead by a savage demon…
After the loss of the Mahatma, our life is plunged into a miasma of darkness. And yet, it is not as if there is no light to show the way. The Mahatma has left us an inextinguishable light, the immortal light of truth, to be sustained and fuelled by ahimsa and tyaga, non-violence and sacrifice. Let us venerate that light of truth. Let us ensure that whirlwinds and storms do not extinguish it.
In March 1948, as Kalki began to write the initial chapters of Alai Osai to be serialized in Kalki magazine, he must have known that with all the himsa the nation had witnessed, the novel could not celebrate the unmitigated triumph of ahimsa.
The act of writing became a scrutiny of both actions and the trends of thought during the crucial period when history was being rewritten in the subcontinent. It is as if Kalki directed a searchlight on the human mind through the novel in order to reveal the good and bad, villainy and saintliness, courage and cowardice, hypocrisy and integrity, blindness and foresight. He wrote, too, of temptations and snares, faults venial and unforgivable, disasters natural and manmade, passions channelled and unbridled, the lessons of history learnt and ignored. He claims that it was certainly him who started the novel, but his characters soon took over and began to tell their own stories.
The storyline follows the fortunes of Sita, raised in a poor Tamil family in Bombay, married to an arrogant ‘hero’ holding an enviable government job in Delhi, an enthusiastic supporter of British rule in India. In contrast, Surya, Sita’s cousin and well-wisher, remains a doughty revolutionary and radical reformist, committed to socialism, championing freedom for the nation and equal rights for every citizen.
The Sound of Waves roams through a wide geographical terrain. From rural Tamil Nadu, it traverses Madras, Bombay, Karachi, Delhi, Agra, Lahore, Panipat, Haripura, the fictional southern town Devapattinam, and a royal state in Rajasthan designated as Rajnipur. Kalki had travelled to most of these places himself, first as a young volunteer in the national sessions of the Congress, then as a journalist covering political events.
After writing the initial chapters, he extended his trip to the capital to see his life-long mentor C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) installed as the governor-general of free India, to include scouting out the novel’s locations in Old and New Delhi, accompanied by magazine illustrator Chandira, and photographer Ellis R. Dungan (an American director of Tamil/Telugu films in the 1940s). He went to refugee camps in Panipat and Kurukshetra and heard first-hand accounts of genocides. Earlier, he had toured through the areas affected by the 1946 communal riots in Calcutta. These live experiences gave his novel a national sweep and historic dimensions.
Other happenings in his personal life, too, left their mark on the writer. Once, as a child, Krishnamurthy got nearly drowned in the village pond. His biographer ‘Sunda’ (M.R.M. Sundaram) suggests that this ordeal might have made the image of getting submerged under the waves a recurrent motif in Kalki’s fiction. Alai Osai is dominated by the visual, aural and tactile image of the billowing waves. Noting how it becomes an asphyxiating experience for the reader, writer/critic Ki. Va. Jagannathan cites the paragraph where Sita sinks into the River Chenab as one of the most powerful passages in modern Tamil fiction.
By the time Kalki started writing Alai Osai, he had become a cult figure in the Tamil realm as journalist, political analyst, social reformist, magazine editor, critic of the arts, custodian of culture, proponent of Tamil music, commentator on current affairs, and ace fictionist. He had even penned a film script and a few poems. A fellow journalist called him ‘a film star among writers’. He had written the first historical novel in Tamil, a genre in which he remains unsurpassed. Parthiban Kanavu (serialized 1941–43) allegorizes the thirst for freedom in a Chola prince. Sivagamiyin Sapatham (1944–46) recreates the glorious era of the Pallavas with their magnificent traditions of art, culture and literary achievements, which were brought to bear on contemporary Tamil self-fashioning. This process was to gain greater power with Ponniyin Selvan (1950–54), which immediately followed Alai Osai (1948). This mammoth saga of the imperial Cholas was to break records as the single most-read Tamil work of fiction, then and now. By the time it appeared, the Audit Bureau of Circulations had certified that each Kalki issue had a print order of 71,366. In the 1950s, Kalki’s circulation was higher than that of any newspaper or magazine in any language in India.
In every town and village across the state, on the day the weekly issue of Kalki arrived, readers queued at railway stations, bus stops and newsstands, to grab their copies. To avoid tussles among family members, some households subscribed to two issues, in others the whole family gathered to hear the chapters read aloud.
Kalki was not only a prolific writer, but also a sought-after public speaker. He was a proponent of social reforms who ran political and cultural campaigns through speech and writing. He helped organize literary events and poetry festivals, and promoted fundraising for multiple causes. He masterminded mega projects like the building of memorials to Subramania Bharati in the poet’s native town, and to Gandhi in Madras.
Kalki’s career began when he quit school in response to Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, enlisting in the freedom struggle as a writer of pamphlets for the Congress party. His training in journalism was at Navasakthi, Madras, edited by Tamil scholar, trade unionist and independence activist T.V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar. Further honing came from Rajaji when Kalki assisted his leader in editing and publishing the anti-liquor magazine Vimochanam. When Rajaji and other Congress leaders were imprisoned by the British Raj, Kalki went underground to write and distribute subversive tracts. He was also to be charged with sedition and jailed multiple times.
It was when he joined the magazine Ananda Vikatan that Kalki came into his own as editor and writer. His political writings provoked strong responses, and his art critiques launched debates. He revelled in polemical disputes with political adversaries and fellow scribes who attacked him. In no time at all, he found himself turning into a beloved author for thousands of readers.
Kalki used his trademark humour – ranging from saucy slapstick to biting satire – to deadly effect in responding to the antagonism engendered by his success. But he did not forget the French philosopher Voltaire’s injunction, a favourite, ‘I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ He bore no malice or rancour. He was also quick to praise merits in his opponents. In his obituary on Kalki, Dravidian Party leader C.N. Annadurai noted, ‘Many had been vexed and angered by the renaissance brought into the field of writing by our movement. But Kalki welcomed it. He never hesitated to applaud the good qualities in his opponents, nor was he afraid to praise them!’ Another declared, ‘Kalki could appreciate the fragrance of a flower even when it bloomed in his adversary’s garden.’
As in the writings of many of his contemporaries, Kalki’s essays burned with nationalistic fervour and reformist zeal. A believer in gender equality, he denounced child marriage and campaigned for women’s education and widow remarriage, often through the medium of his memorable stories. His women were not always victims. They could be strong, sagacious, possessing keen intellects. They could be free-spirited, dauntless, insisting on their rights in a patriarchal world. In Sarathaiyin Thanthiram, his first book of short fiction, a woman uses her wits to solve a tricky problem. In Ponniyin Selvan, young Princess Kundavai is deemed the wisest of all. In the controversial novel Tyagabhumi, when her father urges Savitri (named after the ideal wife of Hindu legends) to sacrifice her pride and return to her husband, the daughter says, ‘I will make any sacrifice for freedom, but not for slavery.’ Such a statement could not but provoke indignant protests in the 1930s.
He wrote under no fewer than thirteen pen names, in diverse genres, all progressing towards a single goal. ‘Kalki’, his best-known pseudonym, makes that purpose crystal clear. A Sri Lankan newspaper quoted him explaining his choice of this apocalyptic figure.
It is natural for every young writer to believe that he will banish old epochs and create a new epoch. Imagining myself to be a mighty warrior ushering in a new age, I named myself after Lord Vishnu’s tenth avatar that heralds a new yuga… (impelled by) the urge to express new ideas, launch readers into new directions, and shape a new age.
Kalki realized that helping overcome the mental stupor engendered by colonization was the first step in creating that new age. Every word he wrote as crusader, reformist, analyst, or fictionist, sought to promote self-confidence and cultural pride in his compatriots, replacing self-distrust and the sense of inferiority. When a critique in 1933 accused him of aiming at propaganda instead of literary worth, Kalki responded by parodying a purple passage about the beauties of spring, somehow turning it into an exhortation to wear khadi in all seasons. He concluded, ‘Expect writings of lasting literary value from the hundreds and thousands of Tamil writers who will appear hereafter. Let me be what I am, a propagandist!’
Many works of Kalki have stood the test of time. The historical novel Sivagamiyin Sapatham highlights the renaissance of the arts that accompanied the rise of Indian nationalism. But it also underscores how religion can be a manipulative tool in the hands of the state, while championing peaceful co-existence among the followers of different faiths as vital for prosperity. He dwells on how civilian lives as well as art, learning, ethics and culture become the casualties of war.
In his epilogue to Ponniyin Selvan, Kalki unequivocally declares that his mammoth five-volume saga reaches its climax where Prince Arulmozhi rejects the throne offered to him and crowns his uncle because he recognizes his claim to kingship as greater than his own. This is the author’s exaltation of satya (truth), dharma (righteousness) and tyaga (sacrifice) as the highest human values. However, his legion of readers through generations have rejoiced far more in the swashbuckling adventures and convoluted political machinations foregrounding the novel, not to mention the grandeur of their Tamil heritage that it glorifies.
Kalki remained steeped in Tamil culture, devoted to the Tamil language, and proud of his Tamil identity. But he was a stranger to provincialism. His outlook had a global perspective. This inclusive vision drives The Sound of Waves.
Every writer is influenced by other writers. We know that while Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas triggered his taking up historical fiction, the writers who stirred his soul were the bard Kamban, bhakti songsters, mystic poets, Rabindranath Tagore and Subramania Bharati. The Sound of Waves also discloses that Kalki knew his Karl Marx. Utterly condemning violence as a Gandhian, Kalki shapes the character Surya with empathy for the radical revolutionaries of the Socialist Party. As the novel progresses, we also see why Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy were so dear to the author. He was won over by their humanitarian vision.
Like all literary works worth their salt, Alai Osai brings different experiences to the reader at different times. As an adolescent, I saw it as the story of my parents’ generation, moving from village to town, expanding their horizon through education, progressing with reform and modernization. Later, I saw it as a major literary document recording a highly significant time in India’s history through the lives of ordinary people. When I became a journalist, I recognized that Alai Osai had absorbed a news reporter’s documentary techniques in a work of fiction. Now I see how it foreshadowed things to come. It anticipates some of the realities I witness today. I suppose I took on the time-consuming task of translating this novel because I believe that this novel has a resonance beyond the Tamil realm.
Not for nothing did A.K. Ramanujan say that ‘translation is repossession’. During the ‘Covid years’, I was lucky enough to translate Kalki’s Tamil biography Ponniyin Pudalvar by M.R.M. Sundaram, as Kalki Krishnamurthy: His Life and Times, which maps the socio-political, reformist-renaissance movements in India during the first half of the twentieth century, of which Kalki had been witness, participant and documenter. Then, I translated Alai Osai, where Kalki himself chronicles the same era through fiction. A work that the author believed to be the ‘best offering he could make with pride and humility, to the people of his land.’
I am at an advantage when it comes to translating Kalki’s works for a simple reason – I am at home in Kalki’s world, and with his words. As his granddaughter, I grew up reading his fiction and non-fiction in the bound volumes of Kalki magazine from its first issue. I have sung his songs. In my avatar as a dramatist, I have written and directed two plays based on his work.
Theatrical adaptation brings its own challenges, as, equally, has translation. Kalki’s style has been branded as Kalkitamizh. It has zest, verve, lilt, pace. It thrives on images – visual, aural, olfactory, even tactile. He uses synaesthesia all the time. Onomatopoetic phrases streak past with carefree abandon. Allusive lines from writers past and present, from Sangam poetry to Subramania Bharati, twinkle in and out, adding context, texture, and charm. Humour brightens understanding. And yet, the writing flows on, with no stops, no breaks!
Kalki was churning out so much every week, and on such diverse subjects, that the handwritten pages were veritably rushed to the press before the ink dried on them, leaving scarcely any time for revision or deliberate craft. What an adventure to try to capture that spontaneity in English!
We know that the cultural milieu of any region is so wedded to its language that it is always difficult to transpose it into another language, especially into the Anglo-Saxon tongue (ironically, the language of the very colonizer against whom the novel militates) which registers a different temperature altogether.
With Kalki, the real problem is to convey the import of his descriptions of nature and landscape, and other external locations and settings. Every descriptive detail has its own resonance, adding nuances in the situations, characters, actions and states of mind. I had to ‘shrink’ some of them in translation. Elsewhere too, I have abridged passages which glide along in the Indian tongue, but turn redundant in English.
In boyhood, Kalki regularly performed harikatha, a form of storytelling with songs and a little dancing in between. This oral tradition informs his writing style. Without being overtly colloquial, it carries the ease, chattiness, digressions and even the repetitions of raconteuring, stopping now and then to address the reader directly. Like a friend talking as he strolls with you, arm around your shoulder and, as Rajaji put it, ‘never looking back’. As a translator, I found this tone extremely challenging.
Kalki, too, had faced the challenges of translation with his first published book Sathya Sothanai, Mahatma Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth. A newcomer to writing then, he must have crafted his own methods to translate the serialized chapters, working in the same dusty library where he had located them in the issues of Young India.
Like Kalki, I had to find my own tools for this new job. My long years in journalism helped me. Writing for an English daily meant that I had to translate much of my source material from the vernacular – oral or written, in first person or third. A Hindustani musician spoke in Urdu, a forest guard in Hindi, a Madurai historian in Tamil, an actor from Trichur in Malayalam. Interviewees from many regions communicated in a language in which English played a minimal role. In translating The Sound of Waves, I decided to go with my instinct, relying on careful reading to find my way during the long trek.
Alai Osai follows the old Indian literary tradition of ending on an auspicious note with overt optimism. But Kalki could not shut out the nightmares that freedom brought, nor the echo of the gunshot ending the life of the man who represented the values and paradoxes underpinning that newly won freedom.
He had not read Faiz Ahmad Faiz, but Kalki surely knew what the poet across the border had seen on 15 August 1947:
These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light –
This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with freedom,
we had set out in sheer longing,
so sure that somewhere in its desert the sky harboured
a final haven for the stars, and we would find it.
He also knew that the struggle to maintain freedom is as difficult as the struggle to attain freedom. In the most passionate expression of his dreams and hopes for independent India, Kalki transmutes The Sound of Waves into the rallying cry of satyagraha, urging us to strive ceaselessly, and with conviction, to better ourselves, the nation, and the world.
1
THE POST OFFICE
A veritable forest of banyan trees had spread on both sides of the road. It was a dense tangle of aerial roots and branches. As with any attempt to find the supreme being, it was impossible to discover where the road began and where it ended.
The post office of Rajampettai village stood at the corner where the road running from east to west turned towards the north. The door was locked. The postbox, hanging from an iron chain on the pillar, looked as forlorn as an abandoned orphan.
A little ahead, a bullock cart rolled by in slow motion, creaking and swaying to an unhurried rhythm, the cartman’s cries goading the animals on.
Facing the post office on the other side of the road was a mithai kadai, with no one in sight outside its precincts. However, from within came sounds of sizzling and sputtering. Along with the aroma of sauteed onions, they announced that the stall keeper was frying masal vadai.
Nesting without a care on the banyan trees were birds who screeched merrily.
There! The tap-tap of footwear announces the arrival of Mr K.P. Bangaru Naidu BPM. Don’t miss the ‘BPM’! It stands for ‘Branch Post Master’!
A village postmaster may earn a small salary but he wields considerable authority, while his official responsibilities are even greater. ‘The District Collector or His Excellency the Governor himself has no power inside this post office!’ Naidu garu proudly declared. ‘Even if the governor asks me to hand over to him a letter addressed to someone else, I have the authority to say NO!’
Here he comes, Postmaster Bangaru Naidu. He inserts the key into the lock. The door opens at once.
Bangaru Naidu enters his kingdom. As soon as he crosses the threshold, he stands transfixed, unable to take a single step forward.
Seated inside, Postman Balakrishnan is nonchalantly sorting the mail.
Seeing the postmaster frozen in astonishment, Balakrishnan asks, ‘Sir! Why are you staring at me? Do I look like a ghost…?’
‘You… you… how… how... how did you get in?’ Bangaru Naidu stuttered.
‘Witchcraft, sir! For a few years I was a disciple of the great sorcerer Pitambara Iyer. I can glide through walls in the blink of an eye.’
‘Tell me the truth, boy! Don’t play silly games.’
‘Play, sir? Am I a little child to be playing games?’
‘Tell me how you got into the post office through the locked door?’
‘Was the door locked? Did you check?’
‘Of course! I unlocked it just now, with this key!’
‘You may have unlocked the lock but did you open the door?’
‘Tambi! To unlock the door is to open the door. Why do you speak in riddles?’
‘No, sir! Not at all. Maybe you were in a jolly mood last evening. You turned the key in the lock all right but without bolting the latch.’
The postmaster looked up at the ceiling and spoke with folded hands, ‘Balakrishna! God has saved us! What a misfortune it would have been if a burglar had got in as you did?’
‘What misfortune? It would have been the poor burglar’s misfortune. What do we have here to attract burglars? Never mind sir, hand me the key to the post box.’
Balakrishnan took the key, opened the post box, brought the mail in, and started postmarking the postage stamps affixed to them.
The postmaster, who was counting the postage stamps that were stored in a little tin box, looked up suddenly and asked, ‘Balakrishna, did you change the da
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The Sound of Waves
Kalki R Krishnamurthy
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