3 days ago
Pride and prejudice: A Kanyakumari love story:
In 1964, the novel 'Puththam Veedu' sent ripples through Tamil literary circles. First, it was written by a woman; second, it focused on the Nadar community, who were then considered part of the depressed classes; and third, it centred on a love affair that defied social norms.
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Written in the distinctive Kanyakumari dialect, a terrain few writers of that time ventured into, the book also questioned patriarchy and raised a voice for women.
Those were the times when the Tamil literary world was beginning to draw boundaries between "serious literature" and "commercial writing". While the former found space in niche literary magazines, the latter was nurtured by mainstream publications.
Amidst this emerged Hephzibah Jesudasan, an English lecturer at the govt College for Women in Trivandrum. 'Puththam Veedu' was her debut novel, and she wrote it in just 15 days.
It was writer Sundara Ramasamy, founder of Kalachuvadu magazine, who recommended the manuscript to Tamil Puthakalayam, which first published it. Since 2009, the book has been published by Nagercoil-based Kalachuvadu Publications.
Born on April 9, 1925, at Pulipunam in Kanyakumari district, Hephzibah completed her early education in Burma (now Myanmar).
After World War II, her family returned to Tamil Nadu. She began writing poems in English at the age of eight. Later, she married Jesudasan, a Tamil professor who encouraged her to write and translate in Tamil. Though she wrote only four novels in Tamil and 11 books in English, Hephzibah, in her centenary year, is not as recognised as she should be considering her debut book has been in print for more than 70 years.
Set in Panaivilai, a fictional village in Nagercoil, Kanyakumari district, the story centres on 'puththam veedu' (new house), once a symbol of wealth and pride.
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Over the years, due to poor management of the household, the Nadar Christian family that owned it slipped into poverty. Though no longer affluent, the family still commanded respect in the village because of the palm trees they owned. The head of the household was Kannappachi, an ageing patriarch whose word was law.
His elder son was an alcoholic, and the younger one was struggling in business. Despite all the ups and downs, it was Lissy, the only daughter of the elder son, who held everything together.
Lissy was not like her grandmother and mother, whose lives were confined to the kitchen, nor was she like her niece Lilly, who completed her SSLC and represented a new generation. She stood between two worlds. When she fell in love with her childhood friend Thangaraj, a Nadar palm climber, it sent shockwaves through the household. The family tried to break the relationship, while Lissy tried to hold on to both her love and her loyalty to family and tradition.
Whether she succeeded or failed, and what she gained or lost along the way, forms the heart of the story.
'Puththam Veedu' was, in many ways, a first-of-its-kind Tamil novel. One of its earliest reviews came from C S Chellappa, editor of the literary magazine Ezhuthu and author of the acclaimed novella 'Vadivasal'. Chellappa reviewed the book at the Tamil Writers Association's Novel Festival in Chennai in 1966, and later published his speech in his magazine, calling 'Puththam Veedu' the first Tamil novel to depict the lives of palm climbers, the first to centre on a Christian family and community, and the first to bring the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border region into Tamil literary fiction.
The novel also revealed a rarely discussed fault line within the Panayeri Nadar community: while some owned palm trees, others worked as palm climbers. This class divide was the main issue in Lissy and Thangaraj's troubled romance. Peppered with details about the festive Margazhi season (Dec to Jan), which was also the season for toddy-tapping, the prime economic activity here, to how it was often the only time women wore new sarees and cooked kilathi fish (leather jacket fish), the book also highlighted the limited understanding of Christianity among the community, with many churchgoers knowing little beyond the basics — that Christmas marked Christ's birth and Good Friday his death.
At a time when Christianity was slowly spreading into southern Tamil Nadu, the novel also served as a social and ethnographic study.
"In Kanyakumari district, CSI churches brought women into schools and made education more accessible. It gave them access to jobs, it gave them freedom. The novel details those aspects," says Tamil journalist Arul Ezhilan, who interviewed Hephzibah for a commercial magazine in the 1990s.
He just bought his first camera, and Hephzibah was the first person he photographed, one of the few images of her available in Tamil literary circles today.
"The novel was published in the 1960s, when education was slowly beginning to reach Nadar Christian women. It captures that shift," says Ezhilan.
Hephzibah went on to write two more novels — 'Dr Chellappa' (1967) and 'Anaadhai' (1977). Though these works revisited characters from her debut novel and were also set in the fictional village of Panaivilai, they were not as popular.
One reason was that the books were out of print for many years. They were recently republished by Chennai-based 'Her Stories', a publication known for publishing women's writings. Her Stories also organised a centenary celebration for Hephzibah.
"Panaivilai was her native place Pulipunam. Another reason her later novels didn't grab attention was perhaps the dialect she used," says Nivedita Louis, publisher, Her Stories.
"With her first novel, readers were drawn to the dialect. But when she used the same language in later works, the novelty wore off. Also, it's unclear how well those books were promoted. The later novels explored male psychology, and they were ahead of their time, which could be why she was largely unrecognised.
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Hephzibah stopped writing Tamil fiction after four novels and shifted her focus to English non-fiction, believing that writing on history was a divine calling.
"She was not just a writer," says Niveditha. "She wore many hats of translator, poet, children's author, publisher (she ran Emerald Press), educationist (she founded Thangakan Memorial Ideal English School) and historian (she authored a four-volume history of Tamil literature with her husband)."
Hephzibah remained unknown beyond her debut novel because she didn't write in magazines, says R Prema, researcher and former Tamil professor at Ethiraj College, Chennai.
"Back then, writers gained recognition mainly through magazines. They published short stories or serialised their novels. Hephzibah entered the literary space directly, which is why there was little awareness about her," says Prema.
'Puththam Veedu' was translated into Malayalam and later into English as 'Lissy's Legacy'. Now, under a collaboration between the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation and Rupa Publications, 'Putham House', a new English translation by G Geetha, has been released.
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