My mother wrote to me of Sivakami Patti’s death in 1966. I received the aerogram weeks after her passing. At that point, Muchami was already several years gone. Sivakami Patti was staying in Pandiyoor when she heard the news of her old servant’s passing and she went immediately to take a ritual bath, dousing herself with water as one does only for the death of a close relative. My mother wrote and told me this, too; I think she had been almost puzzled by her own feelings about Muchami’s death until she saw her grandmother’s gesture.
I remember once, when I was in college, my cousin Shyama came to visit me. He had not gone on to finish his education-despite his performance in tenth, he ran away right after that summer in Cholapatti. He returned five years later, taking us all by surprise, and came to visit Thiruchi, where I was in my final year of a physics degree. My marriage was already arranged; I would be leaving for Canada at the end of the year.
We had gone to my favourite temple, the Rock Fort, climbed to the top and were sitting looking out on the Kaveri plain as he told me about people he had met, movements he had been part of. I wasn’t sure how much to believe-I wanted to delight in his adventures but had an inkling that the truth might be grimmer, or duller, and I preferred merely to hear the story he wanted to tell.
I think it was then that I realized I would need, at some point, to try to tell the events of my family’s life. Because as he spoke, I imagined between us a huge, illustrated book. The illustration showed us, sitting high on a rock temple, the valley of the Kaveri spread below us. The ornate, block-printed text told the story of Shyama’s adventures-as they really were, not as he was telling them. I felt that if I might turn back a few chapters, I would see Shyama and myself as children; a few more chapters and I would see my mother as a child; a few more and I might see Sivakami, coming to Cholapatti as a child bride. Maybe I could cross out some passages and scribble in the margins, make Vairum kind to his mother, or make Hanumarathnam live in spite of his horoscope.
Or maybe I would try, and find I could change nothing on the page, that all I could do was tell it differently, and maybe I would understand it better for that-the story of a world that, while it has not vanished, for those who know how to see, no longer exists for most of us.
And my story, too, may no longer exist for those who lived it, because it is in English and they knew only Tamil, maybe some Sanskrit. In any case, it’s not the story they would have told. The tale has transmuted, passed from my great-grandmother into my mother into me, from old world into new, little piles of ash, little piles of gold, a couple of long-petrified lemons-an inheritance I carry around and read alone as I did those novels of long ago.
So it is that I sit here with you, the book of our lives between us, telling my story, and my people’s, in lands and languages I know but that are not my own.
Acknowledgements
The Toss of a Lemon, while fictional, grew from stories told me by my grandmother, Dhanam Kochoi. I often asked my mother, Bhuvana Viswanathan, to translate, explain or elaborate; she and my dad, S. P. Viswanathan, answered countless questions on details and customs. The heart of this novel is, in many ways, as much theirs as my own. The rest of my Manathattai, Sholavandan and Senapratti families also contributed knowledge and histories, as did friends. I particularly thank Ravi Kumar, Vaidhehi Kumar, Lakshmi Athai, Janaki Athai, Ecchemu Athai, Sethurathnam (Ambi) Chithappa, Shyamala Chitthi, Dr. Ramaswamy, Sukumar Anna, Sujatha Akka, Raju Anna, Raju Mama, Pattu Mami, Kitcha Mama, Padma Mami, Vasantha Murthy, Nagy Nageswaran, Christine Agrawal, Dipak Saraswati, Raji Athai, Meenakshi Athai, Chellu Mama, Seetharaman Periappa, Visali Athai, Krishnan Chitthappa, Radhu Chitthi, Indhi Athai, Venketu Mama and my other grandmother, Vijayalakshmi Patti. Some of these dear ones have passed on since I began this endeavour; I hope I have honoured their memories.
Many books and articles assisted me in the writing of this work, but I must make special mention of S. Theodore Baskaran’s The Message Bearers: Nationalist Politics and the Entertainment Media in South India, 1880-1945, Eugene Irschick’s Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916-1929, Saskia Kersenboom’s Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South Asia, Rajagopal Parthasarathy’s translation of The Cilappatikaram of Ilanko Atikal, R. K. Narayan’s Ramayana, K. S. Narayanan’s Friendships and Flashbacks and M. S. S. Pandian’s The Image Trap. The siddhas’ song is an amalgamation of various songs translated in Kamil V. Zvelebil’s The Poets of the Powers. Those kind enough to share their expertise in person include V. Amarnath, S. Theodore Baskaran, Eugene Irschick, K. S. Narayanan and family, Rajagopal Parthasarathy, M. S. S. Pandian, S. Ramaswamy, K. V. Ramanathan and A. R. Venkatachalapathy. Their scholarship and storytelling propelled me toward a more complex understanding of my subjects than I otherwise could have achieved.
Catherine Bush, Ven Begamudré, Elizabeth Evans, Suzanne Feldman, Tom Kealey, DD Kugler, Ian McGillis, T. Jayashree, Shelley Tepperman, Malena Watrous and Siân Williams-dear friends and valued mentors-read this manuscript in parts or in its entirety. Their suggestions and support were invaluable. Thanks, also, to my professors and colleagues in the programs at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arizona, who read and responded to segments of the book, as well as to Brenda O’Donnell and Ruth Smillie, who vetted my first Canada Council application, and to Stephen Elliott, who gave me a computer.
My thanks to the friends and relatives who hosted me for periods of writing and research, the course of which they paved in many ways. There were many, but those on whom I imposed the most were Sethurathnam (Ambi) Chithappa and Shyamala Chitthi, Raju Mama and Pattu Mami, T. Jayashree and Madan Rao, Merrily Weisbord, Joe and Maureen McGillis, Sujatha Akka and Raju Anna, Rathna Anna and Janaki Mani, Dhorai Anna and Padma Mani, Chris Yanda and Vicki Thoms, and, once again, my parents.
I am deeply grateful to Anne Collins of Random House Canada for her warmth and incisiveness; to Ann Patty of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for making our vision hers; to Bruce Westwood and Carolyn Forde at Westwood Creative Artists for taking this book so many places it would not otherwise have gone; and to Shyam Selvadurai, who got the whole process started. Their buoyant enthusiasm has been a gift.
My mother, father and grandmother, whose humour and compassion inspire me, believed in The Toss of a Lemon long before it existed and read it for me when finally it did. So did Geoffrey Brock, my companion and anchor, who, with our children, ensures that my life is full with satisfactions books cannot provide.
The writing of this book has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Le Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec, a PEO Scholar Award, a Milton O. Riepe Summer Fellowship, a Monique Wittig Writer’s Scholarship, the MacDowell Colony, the Sacatar Colony and the American Academy in Rome. Excerpts have been published by AGNI Online and Prism International.
Padma Viswanathan
Padma Viswanathan is a fiction writer, playwright and journalist from Edmonton, Alberta. Her writing awards include residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Banff Playwrights' Colony, and first place in the 2006 Boston Review Short Story Contest. She received her Creative Writing MA from Johns Hopkins and her MFA from the University of Arizona, and lives with her family in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
