Stories of the True by Jeyamohan translated by Priyamvada

Stories of the True : Translated from the Tamil by Priyamvada by ஜெயமோகன் [Jeyamohan]
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating stories and the translation is par excellence. Many of the tales are based on real persons – both local as well as foreign.
As a Palliative Care Physician, I have been dealing with cancer patients with intractable pain and spiritual suffering and existential issues. Thus, pain perception is a subject that fascinates me.

‘To observe pain is a great practice. No meditation can equal it. Pain reveals everything – who we are, how our mind and intellect function, all of it. What is pain? It’s a state that’s just a little different from our normal state of being. But our mind yearns to go back to that erstwhile normalcy … that’s the problem with being in pain. Half the pain will disappear if we begin to observe it. Of course, there are severe pains too. Of the kind that goes to show that man isn’t so great after all and he is just another animal.’ ...
‘Jeyamohan, the pain’s like an infant, now. It squats on the hip, its nose dripping with snot and wails non-stop. It wakes up suddenly at night and troubles the life out of me. But it is my pain. It has emerged from my body. So, isn’t it natural that I will feel affection for it? Let the wretched thing be. We will make a fine human being of it, all right?’

About suffering

The curd’s being churned in a pot with a churner. The pot is our body. The curd is the life within. And the churning rod is the suffering. Suffering throws life about every which way. Have you seen how curd looks when it’s being churned? It will gather to one side, froth and rise, and threaten to leap out any second. At once the churner will chase after the curd. Afraid that it’ll be kicked out, the curd will rush to the other side. Not moment’s rest can it afford. Foaming and frothing, huffing and puffing … the great suffering man is put through is much the same. The turbulence of it all- that is torment...
When you churn suffering, you get clarity.

His searingly vivid description of the caste-based brutality and inequality

…to be given a name was a luxury in itself. Since his father was born dark-skinned, he was called Karuthaan. His younger brother had prominent lips like the sundeli mouse, and so he was named Sundan. The younger sister was somewhat fair-skinned, therefore, she was Vellakutty. It was indeed like naming dogs. Not the ones that belonged to caste landowners. They were well named. I am talking about stray dogs...
Each such worker-caste group had a leader of its own. Within his egg-sized dominion the leader was king, with unassailable authority to kill and bury too. As for the rest, they ranked lower than even the mud beneath his feet...
Every person on the estate was assigned a place in its descending chain of command. Spit wove its way through, adding definition to the rungs of hierarchy. If the overseer spat on the wage slave, the slave could not wipe the spit off until the overseer was out of sight. If the juice from chewed betel leaf found its way from the infuriated Kariyastha on to the newcomer he had to beat it with a submissive smile. The Kariyastha had to be ready to offer a spittoon to the Karainairs if they so much as pursed their lips with a mouthful of betel leaves. And the royalty may pay a visit to his home, the Karianair himself had to follow them with a spittoon in hand.

The yeoman work done by Christian missionaries in colonial India (for that matter, even in the present day) in the field of health and education is nullified in their zest for conversion of Hindus to their faith. They will especially target the vulnerable – whether due to caste exclusion, poverty or illness – and offer inducements of money, housing, jobs or spiritual salvation. I have encountered numerous such cases where terminally ill cancer patients are tempted with salvation and even freedom from pain and suffering if they convert to Christianity; patients gasping for breath or in a delirium are not spared! Here is a poor woman saddled with multiple children and whose husband is on his deathbed in a Mission hospital after a fall from a palm tree

Then why don’t all of you convert? If you convert, you will find a way through life. I will recommend this boy to the London Missionary Society. I will ask them to give him a job here, at the hospital…The nurse-amma spoke up now. ‘Look here, Sayyib’s saying that if you convert and join the vedham – the way of Christ – Sayyib will have this fellow admitted in a school and get him an education. He’ll also make some arrangement for your well-being. You and your children will have kanji to drink. What do you say?’ she asked loudly.

Elephant Doctor and The Meal Tally are the best stories.

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The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem

The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy by Stanisław Lem
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whimsical, quirky stories set in ridiculous and alien scenarios – just like Gulliver’s travels but on a galactic scale, with a generous dose of absurd alien neologisms in the vein of Lewis Carroll or Anthony Burgess, achieving Joycean levels

the enigmatic monsters were known under the following names: prucks, borkers,nuffits, gnuttles, garrugulas, malomorps, zops, yots, yuts, batats, rifflers, thycandorines, closh, flibbage and morchmell.

In the General Assembly of United Planets, here is how the utterly insignificant humans (Monstroteratum Furiosum aka the Stinking Meemy) stand in the Galactic scheme of things

In accordance with the accepted systems of taxonomy and nomenclature, all anomalous forms found in our Galaxy are contained within the phylum Abberentia (Deviates, Freaks), which is divided into the subphyla Debilitales (Boobs) and Antisapientinales (Screwheads). To the latter subphylum belong the classes Canaliacaea (Thuglies) and Necroludentia (Corpselovers). Among the Corpselovers we distinguish, in turn, the orders Particidiaceae (Fatherbeaters), Matriphagideae (Mothereaters) and Lasciviaceae (Abominites, or Scumberbutts. The Abominites, highly degenerate forms, we divide into Cretininae (Clenchpoops viz. Cadaverium Mordans or the Chewcarcass Addlepate) and Horrorsrissimae (Howlmouths, with the classic example of the Outchested Backshouldered Dullard, Idiontus Erectus Gzeemsi). A few of the Howlmouths have actually been known to create their own pseudo-cultures; among these are the species as Anophilus Belligerens, the Bungford Tuff, which calls itself Genius Pulcherrimus Mundanus, or that most curious specimen, possessing an entirely bald body and observed by Grammpluss in the darkest corner of our Galaxy - Monstroteratum Furiosum (the Stinking Meemy), which has given itself the name of Homo Sapiens… the separate order Degeneratores, to which belonged the Fouljowls, Upgluts, Necrovores and Stifflickers: the application of the term ‘Monstroteratus’ to humans, was incorrect – instead one should follow the nomenclature of the Aquarian School, employing the more consistent term of Bug-eyed Bogus (Artefactum Abhorrens)

This is the ignominious origin of life on Earth

…these miscreants then emptied on the rocks of lifeless Earth six barrels of gelatinous glue, rancid, plus two cans of albuminous paste, spoiled, and that to this ooze they added some curdled ribose, pentose and levulose, and – as that filth was not enough – they poured upon it three large jugs of a mildewed solution of amino acids, then stirred the seething swill with a coal shovel twisted to the left… wilfully and knowingly sneeze into that protoplasmal matter, and, infected it thereby with the most virulent viruses, guffawed that he had thus breathed “the fucking breath of life” into those miserable evolutionary beginnings.

Here is a description of the inhabitants of the planet Enteropia

…dominant race – the Ardrites, intelligent beings, polydiaphanohedral, nonbisymmetrical and pelissobrachial, belongling to the genus Siliconoidea, order Polytheria, class Luminifera. Like all Polytheria the Artrites are subject to periodic discretional splitting. They form families of the spherical type … Fauna of the siliconoidal var., prin. species: slebs, autochial, dendernifts, gruncheons, squamp and whispering octopockles. Aquatic fauns: constitute the raw material of the food industry. Prin. species: infernalia (hellwinders), chungheads, frinkuses and opthropularies. Unique to Enteropia is the torg, with its bollical fauna and flora. In our Galaxy that only thing analogous to it are the hii in the frothless sump bosks of Jupiter

Alas! At times it does tend to get tiresome and repetitious.

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