With a similar well-intentioned, if naive, zeal, Sivasankari has undertaken to share the abundant bounty of the literary tree whose seed she has sown. This tree, she believes, will rid the land of all discord and misunderstandings by demonstrating that the various literatures of India can serve as bridges between the diverse peoples.
In this first volume, Sivasankari offers us a southern harvest from her literary kalpavriksha, a pot pourri from the four states of the Dakshin. Each state is introduced by a travelogue by Sivasankari. Then, from each state, six to eight authors are chosen. There is an interview with each author, followed by a story or a selection of poems. Each section ends with a survey of the modern literature in that language. These surveys are taken from the previously published anthologies of Modern Indian Literature, published by the Sahitya Akademi. The interviews are all by Sivasankari, while the selected works of each author are translated by various hands.The previous publication details, if any, of these works and their translations are not given. The copyright page, with blase nonchalance, simply says "(c) 1998 Sivasankari"!
As might be expected, there is a great deal of unevenness in this selection. Though most of the authors included are not only well-known and established, but are very much a part of the literary canon, indifferent or incompetent translations fail to do justice to the originals. Then there is the problem of inclusions/exclusions, which every anthologist must face. For example, the Kerala section includes Thakazhi Siva-sankaran Pillai, Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer and M.T. Vasudevan Nair, but leaves out O.V. Vijayan. In the poetry section, a young poet like Balachandran Chullikad is included, while Ayappa Paniker, Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan, K. Sachidanandan or Vinaychandran are omitted. Even in terms of quantity, while the other states get about 80 pages each, Tamil Nadu, Sivasankari's home state, with eight authors, gets over 130 pages. It also has an extra survey of literature at the end.
Coming to the more difficult task of evaluating the selection, I must confess that it is not easy to do so unless one is familiar with the represented literatures. Even Khushwant Singh, in his foreword, concentrates on the selected authors and their backgrounds, rather than on the works. But what is perhaps most important for the non-specialist reader is how readable and informative the anthology is. On both these counts, Sivasankari's selection scores. The interviews are refreshing, candid, brief and utterly unpedantic. The stories and poems are, by and large, entertaining and enjoyable. If one takes the trouble also of reading the surveys, one is likely to get a very good idea of the literature from the south.
Yet, despite Sivasankari's herculean efforts to put together this book, the moot point remains. Does she succeed in her project to knit India through literature? I am not sure—the four states with their literatures, alas, seem to remain in four separate compartments. The threads that will knit them together must, willy-nilly, be spun by the readers themselves. Indeed, I can't help but be reminded of what U.R. Ananthamurthy once said: the beauty of India is that when you look for diversity, you see unity and when you look for unity, you see diversity. Perhaps, Sivasankari's project, in avowing the unity of India, falls prey to Ananthamurthy's maxim. In the end, it seems as if her knitting will not hold.
