https://solvanam.com/2021/11/28/%e0%ae%aa%e0%af%81%e0%ae%a3%e0%af%8d%e0%ae%a3%e0%ae%bf%e0%ae%af%e0%ae%ae%e0%af%8d/
Set against the backdrop of the sufferings of teachers on account of pay cuts and job losses in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak, this story, titled ‘Punyam,’ is about an uncomplaining language teacher who has started working as an archaka in a temple to earn some extra income, and the support he receives from a trading community which lives in an apple-pie world, comforting but limiting, with black-and-white notions about papam and punyam, and a furniture merchant for whom helping the poverty-stricken teacher was a means of gaining some punyam.
The story has unwittingly thrown up a yathaartham issue. Soon after its publication in a US-based – or, so I believe – webzine last month, one of the members of the editorial team was so candid as to share with me the discussion the team had had on the story as part of their selection procedures. It appears that a team member had felt that the encouragement for Hindu ritualistic practices the story presented was against the reality (“yathaartham”) of what he believed to be the increasing denigration of such practices in our times. In other words, what he/she meant was that my story presents a fictionalized and romanticized view of a benevolence which is rather anachronistic.
I’m afraid this assumption is ill-informed. Many retail outlets in places like Vijayawada are owned by people from traditional trading communities. A priest visiting these business premises in the evenings to perform a pooja is something quite common. In some, especially big shops, this takes place every day, while, in others, it is done on Fridays. A priest visits a corporate hospital in my neighbourhood and does pooja; this takes place on a daily basis. And the hospital is by no means an exception.
As a teacher educator, I am associated with a number of schools, colleges and universities in this country, and, sometime ago, I did a survey of the conditions of private school teachers, who had been rendered jobless within months of the Coronavirus outbreak. They were doing all kinds of odd jobs, not excluding online teaching on a part-time basis, to earn a living. Among them was a group of language teachers, well up in Sanskrit and Telugu. Given their home backgrounds, which had led to their initiation into Sanskrit and anushtanam in their childhood, it was possible for them to carry out priestly functions after some training and work in temples also as archakas or poojaris. One of those teachers, who seemed to be doing this with the utmost competence, claimed that his monthly income was five times the amount his school had been paying him. Not all language teachers were so lucky, of course; many of them fell by the wayside for want of competence. But those who were good at Sanskrit quickly acquired the stock-in-trade necessary for successful functioning in this field and were doing well. This is true even of Tamil Nadu where traditional Hindu religious practices have not been overridden by “secular” and anti-Hindu – not anti-religious, I must hasten to add! – movements and the overt or covert encouragement they draw from public intellectuals. In other words, traditional Hindu religious practices and the denigration of those practices co-exist, and the “support” they draw from each other is indeed paradoxical.
This, in my perception, is the contemporary reality which, I must point out, is a complex mixture. From within this reality, one can choose the kind of yathaartham one wants depending upon one’s purpose, and express a sensibility one wants one’s readers to experience. I believe that there is no such thing as hard yathaartham or soft yathaartham in literary representation; those who insist on a particular kind of yathaartham are only pontificating, using easy, dismissive, push-button expressions. When the yathaartham question was brought to my notice, I felt like asking, ‘Which yathaartham? And whose yathaartham?’ I believe that what is important is what a writer does with the yathaartham s/he has chosen.
What have I done with my choice? To a superficial reader or listener, my story, set against the backdrop of the sufferings of teachers on account of pay cuts and job losses in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak, is about an uncomplaining teacher who has started working as an archaka in a temple to earn some extra income, and the support he receives from a trading community and a furniture merchant for whom helping the poverty-stricken teacher was a means of gaining some punyam. But a careful reader will find that the businessman with a simplistic view of papam and punyam is subjected to an ironical treatment and that his uncharacteristic act of benevolence is treated with some complexity. So is the trading community which pays a measly Rs 10,000 for an entire month of work in the temple, though the teacher thinks that it was a magnanimous gesture. If one looks at the title (“புண்ணியம்”) in the light of all this, one will find it suggestive. At first, I chose a literary catchword for the title but rejected it on second thoughts, and settled for the simple ‘புண்ணியம் ('punyam'), hoping that the reader would reflect on its appropriateness. On a lighter note, considering that reading – or listening – has by and large become a casual affair, one may even insist that free-and-easy reading is the yathaartham, and that literature should be conducive to that kind of reading!
P.S.: One of the problems with a teacher-writer is that s/he often becomes a virtual bhashyakaar (भाष्यकार) of his/her own creations; the temptation is irresistable. Interestingly, one of the names of Sri Ramanuja, founder of the Vishishtadvaitic thought, after whom I am named, is Bhashyakaara.
