Susheela M.A. - Novelette by Kalki in English (part 1 of 3)

 

Novelette by Kalki Krishnamurthy. This story was published in 1948 in Ananda Vikatan’s Deepavali special edition. It’s a social satire from a time when satire was an unknown art form in Tamil prose. My English Translation.

Chapter 1

Our story starts circa 1941. I feel the need to explicitly call it a story. These days, it’s hard to convince people that real news is real. It’s even harder to convince them that fiction is fiction.

It was in that year that Ms. Susheela graduated as a Master of Arts with distinction. She had received her B.A in 1939. Not content with that accomplishment, she decided to pursue an M.A degree. Incidentally, the leadership of the University of Madras had introduced a new specialization for M.A - culinary arts. The new program had been introduced in response to public outcry -  people had protested that the university education was unsuitable for preparing young women for family duties. 

Susheela picked that new discipline as her major. The University had employed a European woman as a lecturer, at the expense of Rs. 950 per month. The salary proved that the ministers from the Congress Party could not sway the University from its extravagant ways.

Susheela spent two hectic years conducting research and experiments under this lecturer’s supervision. She was too busy to think about anything else during that time. Occasionally, her mind would wander towards Balasundaram, her fiancé, who had gone abroad to study electrical engineering. Soon, the thoughts would be drowned by more immediate concerns, such as whether it was appropriate to add salt to tomato appam. 

She was making excellent progress with her research on culinary history. She wrote a hundred-page article, addressing various questions; for example: when the Thirunelveli Dosa was invented, when it changed its shape from square to a circle, when chili powder emerged as its accompaniment etc. In the same vein, she wrote hundreds of pages on subjects such as Coimbatore jalebi, Tanjore sambar, Mysore rasam and Calcutta rasgulla.

She also traveled to Mohenjo-Daro, researched five thousand year old artifacts to unearth vital facts on ancient culinary arts. She used that research to prove that kozhukattai, the popular food in the Tamil region, was only three hundred years old. People were shocked when she was able to prove it by showing them archaeological evidence from five thousand years ago. They were cured of their infatuation on kozhukattai.

Susheela didn’t stop with just research. She conducted practical trials. An entire corridor in the women’s hostel was set aside for her trials. 

In the early days, the other residents in the women’s hostel were eager to help her with her work by tasting the new dishes that she invented. Their enthusiasm seemed to wane as time went by. The watershed event was her invention of ‘chloroform raita’. All the girls who tasted the raita were drowsy for three days. They were drowsy when they attended classes, drowsy as they studied, and drowsy when they slept. After this episode, the girls stopped visiting her makeshift laboratory. So Susheela had to be the sole test subject for her inventions.

The final examinations rolled around. That year, Susheela was the only student who appeared for the culinary art examinations. But there were nine examiners. The examiners examined her research work, and awarded her a score of 90%. Then they examined the meals she had created, smelt them from a distance, and awarded her 110%. 

Thus, Susheela stood first in the entire state in the M.A examinations. The University Syndicate also decided to award an honorary doctorate in recognition of her exceptional research work.

It must be mentioned that Susheela paid a dear price for winning such laurels. Sampling her own inventions had wrecked her digestive system!

Chapter 2

Greetings poured in after the results were published. She received several invitations for tea parties and dinners. This wasn’t surprising as she was the first woman to be ranked first in the M.A. examinations. Ladies’ clubs hosted a lunch in her honor. The municipality of Tirunelveli honored her with a special dinner. The teaching staff at the University gave her a banquet for the honors she brought to the University. The Brave Tamil Women Society, not wanting to be left behind, gave her lunch as well. She had to accept dining invitations from known, unknown, and semi-known people. On some days, she had to accept two, or even three invitations.

If you thought she would get away pretending to eat on these occasions, you’d be mistaken. If she picked at her food, people would say, ‘You may not like this food. You’re an expert in cooking - your standards must be higher!’. She had to eat decent portions to avoid hurting people’s sentiments.

You may have heard of ‘Neo-vanchak Lunch Home’, a well known restaurant in Chennai. The owner of this restaurant, a marketing-savvy man, wanted Susheela to grace the annual day celebrations of his restaurant. He persuaded her to participate with strong recommendations. That set a precedent. All restaurants in Chennai started inviting Susheela for public events. An enterprising restaurateur changed the name of his establishment to ‘Susheela Lunch Home’.

Susheela concluded it was no longer safe to stay in the city, and decided to return to Tirunelveli.

Again, she was mistaken in thinking her troubles would be over with the move. Her father, Diwan Bahadur Gomathi Nathappar, was very well known in Tirunelveli. In addition to being a popular lawyer, he had an active public life. He was the president of the local ‘Egalitarian Cemetery Club’. He was also the secretary of the ‘Mandatory Widow Remarriage Society’. He was an active member of ‘The Society for Swearing in Pure Tamil’. You just had to look at his daughter to see how interested he was in societal causes.

We don’t know how Susheela thought she could get a break from her dining obligations with such a father. It must have been a spectacular brain fade. Be that as it may, Susheela reached Tirunelveli. There was a big crowd waiting to receive her at the train station. When she reached home, there was an elaborate lunch. Gomathi Nathappar was eager to introduce his distinguished daughter to all his friends. Twenty years prior, there had been this man, who’d received an M.A. There had been such a hue and cry about his achievement that he was renamed M.A. Mudaliar. Now, for the first time, a woman had received an M.A. She has beaten all men to stand first in the province. No wonder that the father was proud of such a daughter.

More dinner invitations followed. Invitations started pouring in from The Egalitarian Cemetery Club, ‘The Mandatory Widow Remarriage Society’, ‘The Lawyer’s Union’, ‘The Co-operative Union’, ‘The Learning Society for the Ignorant’, the City Club, and many friends and relatives. At the dining table, they all said, ‘You’re just picking on your food. Our humble food must be bland! Not surprising, you have all those medals on the Culinary art’, and things in such a vein.

All this made Susheela despise food. The thought of food made her nauseous. Any talk of food fell like molten lead in her ears. To add to her agony, she didn’t believe she could discuss her problem with anyone else. Not even her father! If a man who played both mother and father to her from a young age could not sense how she felt, what could she expect from others?

There was one person, however, who would understand her perfectly. He had boarded a ship. He would be home soon. The two of them could go somewhere remote where no one would talk about food and cooking!

That one person was Mr. Balasundaram, B.A., B.E. He was from a small town called Therinjkkadu near Thenkasi. After receiving his engineering degree in Chennai, he went abroad for higher studies. He had completed his studies creditably, and was returning home. He had been engaged to Susheela for a while. Gomathi Nathappar had said that they could get married after they both finished their studies.

Susheela had been looking forward to hearing that he had arrived in India. At long last, she received the news through a telegram. Susheela forgot all her distinct achievements and acted like the leading ladies we see in the talkies. She sang to herself, performed dance moves, powdered her face, adjusted the bindi on her forehead, admired herself in the mirror, and acted silly in several other ways. She couldn’t wait for the time they could go somewhere remote, where there was no threat of dinners and tea parties.

A letter from Balasundaram followed in a couple of days. He professed his endless love for Susheela. He said his heart was beating faster in anticipation of their reunion. He also said he would have to stay in Bombay a little longer to study the use of electricity in the city’s cotton mills and should be able to be with her within a month. In the end, he had added:

“I need to do this to prepare for the work I want to do in our province. If that wasn’t the case, I’d have come flying to be with you. You’re my world. I long to see you. It’s not just that. I’m dying to come home and taste dosa, idli, sambar and rasam again. It has been two years since I tasted good food. I’d gladly trade the entire city of Bombay for a dosa. If only I could get a crispy murukku now… Wait - what am I doing? Telling you, the culinary arts expert, about something as mundane as murukku! Forgive me. When I reach there, I’m eager to taste your novelties, like drumstick halwa, tamarind pudding, neem curry, grapefruit fry and the like.

Yours forever,

Balasundaram”.

Susheela went crazy with rage on reading this. She tore the letter into pieces. Then she joined the pieces to recover Balasundaram’s address. Then she wrote to him.

“I received your letter. I hate you. You make me sick to the stomach. I don’t want to set eyes on you.

Can’t you wretched people think of anything other than food and eating?

- Susheela, who used to love you.”

She sealed the letter in an envelope and sent it to be mailed. She collapsed on the sofa. The world seemed barren. ‘Why was I born, and why am I alive?’, she thought.

The servant brought a newspaper. She idly glanced at the headlines. A line in bold caught her eyes.

“Hitler Gurusamy on a fast unto death!”

 She sat bolt upright after reading this. She read on.

“Tamil Temples must belong to Tamil Gods”

“Aryan Gods’ Atrocity”

“Hunger Strike, Death and Then?”

It’s hard to describe Susheela’s emotions on reading these headlines. She read on with great enthusiasm.

(Art by Sujatha Anand)

Click here to read part 2 .

Kalki's works are in the public domain. Copyright for the translated version is with Anand Kannan.