Reading/Re-viewing Chemmeen the great Indian Film

THESE FACTS ARE well known: Chemmeen, the novel by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, became an instant classic from 1956, the year it was first published. It won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award the same year itself. Apart from leaving a meteoric trail in Malayalam publishing, it was also widely translated into many Indian languages, as well as into English, Russian, German, Italian and French. Its success was only rivaled by Chmmeen: the film produced by Babu under the banner of Kanmani Films, directed by Ramu Kariat .ind first released in 1965. It was soon recognized as a techni­cally and artistically brilliant cinema, incidentally, one of the lirst Malayalam movies in colour. The film also became a popular classic and won the Indian President's Gold Medal lor the Best Film in the very year of its first release. It is todate widely appreciated by foreign audiences, even without subtitles.

Chemmeen, as novel and as film, may have to a great extent shaped arguably, not only wlwt Malayalam novel or film is, luil also the industries involved therein. But one is also struck by the number and nature of "translations" involved in the production (writing/filming or reading/viewing) of these two texts. Translations that are seemingly transparent or are never acknowledged as such by/in either of these texts! It is almost as if these two texts yield to further translations, are amenable to future quick translations because they "contain" translatability, close off any chance of contamination. But translatability, as we know, is an openness, always-already-ness, that leaves indelible traces of/as resistance. Hence, in reading these two texts under the rubric of translation, speci­fically inter-semiotic translation, in that these two texts trans­late across sign-systems but within the same culture, even to the extent of producing a sense of such sameness, one could bring the insights of inter-lingual translation into play without the baggage of translation as cannibal celebration, as decapitation or domestication, or as straddling between source and target languages/cultures. A re-examination of these two Chemmeens from the perspective of translation as trope and/ or trope as translation, of their trans-l-actions and trans-actions, of their textual remains, may very well prove instructive.

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Walter Benjamin had drawn our attention to a contradiction of sorts in the way we juggled and balanced the traditional pre-requisites, of fidelity and freedom, in good inter-lingual translations. The freedom was only a license and hence con­ditional in that it was to be in the service of faithful repro­duction of the original (78). Given such contradictory co­herence, a contemporary translator's object, according to Benjamin, should be to reproduce in the translation that which is untranslatable in the original. Even if what the translator attempts to do is to recapture an original in the spatio-temporality of another language/culture, it is necessarily more than a mere repetition. A translation therefore marks the stage of a work's continued life and springs not so much from a work's life as from its "afterlife" (72). Translation, though it purports to repeat the original, i Iocs not, however, strive for a likeness to the original, since in its afterlife the original also has undergone a transformation and a renewal (73). In other words, the original was always-.i I ready in translation, if not a translation (some originals, notes Benjamin, cry out, more than others, for translation) and the translation, in turn, assumes an aura of originality. For illustration, Benjamin uses the following example: "While (on tent and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds" (76). The language of the translation remains unsuited to its purpose, overpowering and alien, but ironically, the translation also "transplants the original into a more defi­nitive linguistic realm since it can no longer be displaced by a secondary rendering" (76). Thereby, translations "prove to be untranslatable not because of any inherent difficulty, but because of the looseness with which meaning attaches to them" (81).

The (creative) effort is "never directed at the language as such, at its totality, but solely and immediately at specific linguistic contextual aspects" (77). And hence, Benjamin goes on to add, it is the kinship of languages that manifests itself in translations. No single language can attain the intention of that language but must be supplemented by the totality of the intentions of all the other languages (74). This notion of a "pure" or "true language" (77) underscores all translation, being "only a somewhat provincial way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages" (75). Hence, in a trans­lation that attempts to re-produce the echo of the original in another language, "the great motif of integrating many tongues into one true language is at work" (77). This true or pure language makes all the real languages impure, foregrounding the foreign races ever present in them, thereby making the original/translation "as fragments of a greater language" (79).

"A real translation," according to Benjamin, "is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully" (79). The task of the translator is, hence, the emancipation of lan­guage from the sense of sense, to free languages of the con­straints and conditions of expression: "It is the task of the translator to release in [one] language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in [the] re-creation of that work" (80). Benjamin cites Rudolf Pannwitz:

Our translations, even the best ones, proceed from a wrong premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English.... The basic error of the translator is that he pre­serves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue.... He must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language, (cited 81)

Benjamin's own text, not surprisingly, has undergone further translations. Notably, Derrida and Niranjana added layers to Benjamin, opening the door to the problematic of trans­lation that authorizes and is authorized by certain classical notions of representation and reality. Derrida's central concern was to critique a metaphysics based on the notion of a "transcendental signified" that is formed "within the horizon of an absolutely pure, transparent, and unequivocal translatability." Reading translation as supplement and substitution, the Deconstructionists argued that "the trans­lation canonises, freezes, an original and shows in the original a mobility, an instability which at first one did hot notice."Derrida interpreted, probably within a European milieu, Benjamin's notion of "pure language" as writing and the logic of difference, whereby all languages were reduced to a state of not-yet-ness. Derrida's interpre-tation of Benjamin's pure language, as linguistic supplementarity whereby each translation is an attempt to reverberate a fragment of an original that is always-already fragmented, was interrupted, however, by Niranjana.

Derrida reads history as a teleological metaphysics of presence, "associated with a linear scheme of the unfolding of presence, where the line relates the final presence to the originary presence according to the straight line or the circle." On the other hand, Niranjana's reading of Benjamin's historical-materialist/translator emphasizes discontinuity and disrupts continuums. She disrobes Benjamin's "pure language" as a necessary fiction that nonetheless allows one to explore the various embeddings and historical sedimentations within languages with specific attention being paid to socio-political and cultural inequalities. Though she acknowledges that this problematic was opened up by the poststructuralist critique that makes translation always the "more," or the supplement, in Derrida's sense (Niranjana 8), she disagrees with the post-structuralist readings of Benjamin by de Man and Derrida. In a critical move that can be described as motivated by a postcolonial hindsight, she critiques de Man and Derrida for "translating" history out of Benjamin. She regards the Judaeo-theological or sacred metaphors, imagery and language used by Benjamin as actually directed towards a secular inter­pretation and a re-affirmation of history (Niranjana 115). Benjamin's "afterlife" of a work is recon-figured by her as history, as "a consciousness of the present that shatters the continuum of history" (Benjamin, cited by Niranjana 111). Translation, thereby, becomes what Spivak described as active transaction or transactional reading (cited by Niranjana 42) or transactive reading (Niranjana 89).

For Niranjana, hence, Benjamin's "pure language" is that which seeks to represent as well as to produce itself in the evolution of languages (Niranjana 135). She notes Derrida's recourse to the Babel story as exemplary in that "[The Babel] recounts, among other things, the origin of the confusion of tongues, the irreducible multiplicity of idioms, the necessary and impossible task of translation, its necessity as impo­ssibility" (cited, Niranjana 144). Babel, a city in Shinar (now thought to have been in Babylon), according to the Book of Genesis, denoted the construction of a heaven-reaching tower which was interrupted by divine intervention through the recourse of creating new tongues. The Babel myth now denotes babble, or a confusion of (meaningless) sounds, voices or languages, but also attests to the desire for an uncontami-nated and unitary language/presence. But, rather than a deconstructionist reading of the phono/logo/phallo-centrism of European thought from within, Niranjana advocates a contextual reading of "othering." Siting a parallel between the task of the historical materialist and that of the translator, Niranjana, citing Benjamin, states that the translator should "approach configurations of past and present on recognizing 'a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past,'" because such translations enable a specific age to be "'blasted' out of the homogeneous continuum of history so that it can live on" (148), so that the arbitrariness and constructed nature of what is presented as natural is shown up (153). "Trans­lation," thereby becomes more than just a carry-over, trans­ference or transportation, or simple disruption. It devolves as positive transformation, even disfiguration or dislocation; as the site of imperialism and its resistance, as "rewriting." Thus the original is torn from what is assumed as its native or natural context and is put in quotation marks, recited and re-inscribed in the present context which reconfigures the oppressed past out of a presently felt historical need.

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Chemmeen the novel was celebrated and promoted from 1956 onwards by the progressive Malayalee intelligentsia"; likewise Chemmeen the movie from 1965 onwards. They both were commercially successful (the fate of the fishes is, of course, beside the point!). In this connection, one is reminded of Ramanan, Changanpuzha Krishna Pilla (1914-1948)'s immensely popular romantic, dramatic poem, written when he was a mere twenty-year-old, as well as its 1967 black-and-white celluloid avatar, directed by D.N. Pottakkadu. Chemmeen, the novel, like Ramanan, was definitely popula­rized by various local dramatizations, katluiprasangams and the like. Even so, it is possible that when the movies, Ramannan as well as Otemmeen, were released, not many were actually familiar with the poem/novel. However, this gap has widened so much that, in a complete reversal, it is the movies that now determine the literary texts. The poem Ramanan and the novel Chemmeen are hardly read these days, except maybe by students of Malayalam literature. But even scholars find it difficult to have a first, "pure" reading of-Chemmeen, the novel, primarily because Palani, Karutthamma, Pareekkutty and Chembankunju are inevitably Satyan, Sheela, Madhu and Kottarakkara, (the actors who enacted these characters in the film —ed.), etc. for us.

Are these Chetnmeens an instance of inter-semiotic translation, or even of translation? Does the film version try and succeed, against odds, to recreate or repeat the success of the novel in another sign-system? If so, how do we under­stand the reverse process? Or does the inter-semiotic transfer help camouflage, if not cover up, their implied translatability? If so, what is the nature and scope of translatability that can be redeemed from these texts? In short, what ends are served by these texts-in-translations and what can be gained by focusing on the odds and ends of translation that litter these texts? These two texts of Chetnmeens, that symbiotically borrowed from and bolstered each other, within a short span and within the same cultural space, without footnotes or subtitles, calls for a review and reconsideration of the odds and ends of translation.

The storyline of Chemmeen is all too familiar to need recounting. Both the novel and the film open with love, laughter and loss of sleep. Pareekkutty, one-of-its-kind good-Muslim-character, runs a dry fish shop on the sea coast and is desperately in love with his childhood playmate Karu-tthamma (Sheela, the heroine). He wanders around the sea coast of Neerkunnathu singing songs full of sadness and love. It is interesting that the song is already a leitmotif within the novel, almost as if Thakazhi foresaw its translatability, full realization and utilization in the movie. The song and Madhu the actor's face has coalesced in the Malayalee mind to such an extent that Pareekkutty has become Madhu. But how do we remember him? Is he hapless or helpless? A heroic-victim or an innocent villain? The very undecidability or indeter minateness of his character suggests that he is a character-in-translation, combining both the roles of the hero and the villain. The same applies also to Palani (played by Satyan and billed as the hero), the fisherman who dawns late on the horizon one fine day (he first appears in the movie in the 49th minute) and impresses Karutthamma's father and weds her on another not-so-fine day.

Chembankunju, Karutthamma's father, is fascinated by modernity and desperately tries to translate himself into its success. He would marry his daughter to a seemingly eman­cipated and hard-working "lower" caste Palani of unknown antecedents rather than to a seemingly rich and emaciated Muslim of known origins. Chembankunju is also a hardy worker and dreams that one day he will lead an easy life, will emulate the "upper" caste landlord from whom he buys a boat. He dreams of owning boats of his own, a house of his own with servants and of transforming his wife Chakki into a plump and beautiful Pappikunju the landlord's wife. To this end, he slaves and saves every paise he can in order to accumulate capital. Obsessed by this desire, he ends up becoming almost inhuman in his relations. Chakki fights with their good neighbour, the childless Acchankunju and Nalla-pennu. Acchankunju, in turn, is goaded by his wife to emu­late Chembankunju; but he soon returns to the old pattern of life: fishing, drinking, playing cards and beating his wife. This failure accentuates Chembankunju's effort and determination.

But even he cannot succeed. As a quick alternative, Chemban­kunju decides to borrow money from Pareekkutty. The other choice would be to borrow money from Ouseph, who is sure to leech everything out of them by way of interest. Paree­kkutty willingly gives his stock of dry fish and money, many times, to help Chembankunju, though Chembankunju does not show any inclination of repaying the debt either in cash or in fish. An uncanny, if unintended, parallel to the manner in which the cultural capital of western modernity was built on an unacknowledged borrowing from various Islamic sources!

Chembankunju and, more so, Chakki are acutely aware that they are doing something against tradition, for it is not for the likes of them to aspire for upward mobility. If they go against established norms, so does Pareekkutty, who not only does not take any interest in work or commerce but seems to work towards his own destruction.When Chakki and Karutthamma express their anguish at Chembankunju's behaviour, Pareekkutty says that none of them owe him money, let alone any interest, since he had given his stock and money because Karutthamma asked for it. It looks as if he didn't even mean to influence Chembankunju! A marriage between Karutthamma and Pareekkutty was never on the cards; it appears as if it was not even a remote possibility either for the author/director.

On borrowed capital, Chembankunju rises, buys boats, plans on employing Palani as head boatman and later as son-in-law. But at the marriage ceremony he is again thwarted by tradition. When the village headman notes that the groom's side did not have any women, an indication of Palani's orphanhood and net worth, and quotes a high amount for the marriage, Palani's companions walk away. The marriage is conducted on Chakki's insistence, even as she lies battling for life, and Karutthamma is forced by Chakki to walk away with her husband. Chembankunju thereafter spurns Karu­tthamma. After Chakki's death, he remarries Pappikunju, a landlord's widow with a grownup son. But soon the step­son and mother cheat Chembankunju of his money. Chem­bankunju, when he comes to know of this, goes berserk, literally, and seeks asylum in the other side of modern-rationality and wanders about the sea coast, very much like Pareekkutty.

What was the reason behind Chembankunju's opposition to the Karutthamma-Pareekkutty marriage? Unlike Karuttham­ma who loves Pareekkutty, as if forever, and Chakki who, even if it is for the sake of winning a heated argument, declares they will convert to Islam, Chembankunju has his own reasons. He exemplifies the upwardly mobile casteist nature of Indian modernity which will foster orphans whose only capital is a work ethic. When Chakki and Chemban­kunju are discussing Palani, the prospective groom for their daughter, Chakki asks: what is his jati? and Chembankunju replies: He is a human being, a worker of the sea. Unlike a Pareekkutty, a trader and a Muslim!

Palani is an orphan and his darkish muscular body is his sole asset. After the chnkara and the marriage, he returns to his native place. If he used to sleep wherever night found him, now he starts dreaming of a hut of his own. But he is soon confronted with the ghost of Pareekkutty. Sightings of Pareekkutty near Karutthamma's house are reported and people laugh at Palani. The other fishermen soon refuse to take Palani on board for fishing because he seems to be beyond himself, brooding about the everyday taunts about (but also about) his all-too-beautiful wife's fidelity and, finally about an avaricious father-in-law. Palani seems to be still competing with Chembankunju, for, as if possessed, he tries to row beyond the horizon, endangering the boat. Since fisher-folk also believe that a fishermen's safe return is guaranteed by the wife's purity, they consider Palani a double risk. Caught between social strictures and his love for Karutthamma, he goes fishing alone on stolen boats. When Pareekkutty, who had already sworn to a dying Chakki to be henceforth a real brother to Karutthamma, comes over again — this time without any apparent reason; the very first time was also at night but only to inform of Chakki's death — her love for him is rekindled. She walks out of her hut and life, leaving a child and a sister behind. Meanwhile, Palani battling a lone shark is dragged to his death. The last we hear of him is an anguished cry, for even as he is dragged into the whirlpool, he calls out "Karutthamma!" The body of the shark and of Karutthamma and Palani are washed ashore the next day.

But not Palani's body. If Palani was ushered into modernity, he was not at all at home in it. If Pareekkutty represents the perpetual outside of secular modernity, Palani exemplifies its internal contradictions. It is significant that throughout this drama Palani and Pareekkutty never come face to face, as if each is the other's ghost. Pareekkutty sings and wanders about the two sea-shores and Palani over the sea. Inciden­tally, the central male protagonists make up a ghastly trio! For soon Chembankunju also wanders around Neerkunnathu coast, talking to himself. But whenever Pareekkutty saw Chembankunju coming in his direction, he would slink away. Maybe because of a lingering sense of guilt, for isn't he also guilty? If not why does he continue to haunt the beaches? Why doesn't he go back to where he came from, since his business has absolutely collapsed? Why does he wander around and live off petty brokerages? But one day he is not able to evade Chembankunju, who comes up against him. This figure in front of him was "not the old Chemban kunju; nor his ghost" (my translation, 247); probably neither was he a familiar figure for Chembankunju. old Chemban kunju has just sold his boat and he waves the money in Pareekkutty's face. The amount is not equal to wlnit he Owes Pareekkutty, even without the interest. Yet when Pareekkutty stands as if guilty as charged, Chembankunju shouts: "Do you realize the harm you have done? ... You don't realize it How would you realize it? You are the devil himself" (Narayana Menon's translation, 193). Even as Pareekkutty takes on the burden of guilt and acknowledges to himself that he did like a vile worm gnaw at the history of Chem­bankunju's family, Chembankunju continues: "I have only one more obligation in life. Your money. The money you gave me so as to ruin me and my daughter. Here it is" (Narayana Menon's translation, 194). Even as Pareekkutty, like a dog, accepts the money thrust at him that he thought was not his, and stands paralyzed, Chembankunju has sought solace under the boat which was once owned by him. His devilish laughter echoes, like his last words: "That is all I have. I don't remember how much it was. Only my Chakki knew. If it is less than what I owe you, what can I do now?" (Narayana Menon's translation, 194). That indeed is a significant statement. The accounts are kept and settled by the women. Only Chakki and Karutthamma would know the accounts. The second wife also knew accounts, but her own. It is interesting to wonder whether Karutthamma would have betrayed her husband and left her child and walked away with her lover to her death if her father had not, even if partially, settled the account. The agency of Chembankunju, Pareekkutty and Palani seemed to be determined by material transactions whose logic defies them. But Karutthamma kept her accounts. After Chemban-kunju becomes insane, Karutthamma's sister starts living with Karutthamma. Her presence creates tension in the house. Karutthamma cannot ask about her father or Pareekkutty because she fears Palani. But her sister's presence reminds her of everything back home. Once, when Palani goes outside, they whisper to each other. Her sister briefs Karutthamma about the plight of their father, how their mother died, what people thought of Karutthamma and more importantly about the destitute and partly mad Pareekkutty. Palani overhears the last part of the conversation as he returns. But Karutthamma, who earlier used to talk and convince Palani of her love and fidelity, this time tries to appeal merely to his intellect. Then Palani only asks: did you love him? Gathering a courage that she never had, she acknowledges, yes, I loved him. In the novel, both the question and the answer are in the past tense (261). Thereafter, Palani leaves for fishing and his death, even as Karutthamma yields to Pareekkutty. This is a moment which actually doesn't make sense in the novel/film. Karutthamma has just told her sister that they have only each other; moreover she has a small daughter and has just declared to Palani that she is going home to take care of her father. Yet she decides for the first time to embrace Pareekkutty in the dark even if it would lead to their suicide. It is significant that the movie version tries to make Karutthamma's agentiveness more realistic. In the film, a Palani infuriated by continuing taunts about his wife and the parentage of his daughter confronts Karuttham­ma and demands whether she loves Pareekkutty; she ans­wers affirmatively and in the present tense.

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Such (tense) translations betwixt the novel and the film, being residual, also alerts one to other "shifts" that are, maybe, more visible "through" the film version.¹⁵' For example one wonders why Pareekkutty is always pictured as wearing .t bright coloured and chequered scarf (handken IimI. more likely) around his neck in the film. In fact, during the Innu merable appearances within the film, Madhu is seen without the handkerchief only about eight times, liven Ihm, one p'ts the impression that it has either slipped into his shirt or fallen down during the shoot! This is a feature which is basically developed from a scene in the novel where there is .i description of how Pareekkutty was introduced to the fisher community and the sea coast while he was still very young. A five-year-old Karutthamma saw Pareekkutty wearing "a yellow shirt, a silk scarf round his neck and a tasseled cap on his head" (Chemmeen, 7; Narayana Menon's translation, 6). Nowhere else in the novel is Pareekkutty's dress described. But in the movie it becomes a leitmotif, alongside the green, blue, pink and yellow tee-shirts, to stereotype him as a Muslim. The other Muslims in the film, like Pareekkutty's father and another rich merchant, have beards and wear dhotis in what is regarded as a typically Muslim style.

If the scarf was used as a shorthand for symbolic objecti-fication, very much like the mole on Karutthamma's lower abdomen, the first conversation between Chembankunju and Pareekkutty in the film helps to endow agency to Pareekkutty. If in the novel we are not privy to the conversation between them, in fact Karutthamma implies a sinister side to her father's transaction, in the movie it is Pareekkutty who suggests that Chembankunju visit him at night to collect the dry fish stacks. More significantly, if Chakki in the novel shouts back that her whole family will espouse Islam if the people turned against them and Karutthamma seriously considers conversion, if to the extent of planning to discuss it with Pareekkutty, in the film Chakki only anounces that she knows other ways of neutralizing the ill-feeling of the fisher-folk.

There is another discrepancy which relates to how modernity is imaged in the film. The once affluent "upper" caste person from whom Chembankunju buys the boat treats him like an equal, making him sit and take refreshments offered by his wife. Chembankunju is overtly submissive, as he was to Pareekkutty earlier, to the "upper" caste family, refusing to sit and requesting the wife to keep the glass of refreshments down so that he will not pollute them. Both the husband and wife treat him on equal terms. Obvisouly this is a progressive family, given to a carefree life — the son is easily allowed to go for a movie even though they are forced to sell the boat to make ends meet —but brought low because of their ease of life, the only goal that explains Chemabankunju's desire to become rich. While buying the boat amidst the economic ruin of a family that is modern, he is actually blessed by the landlord that at least he will come good and progress in life. Chembankunju still aspires for modernity. He himself seems to regard other humans as beyond caste and in purely economic terms, of course with the exception of Pareekkutty. But once he marries the once-rich "upper" caste person's widow, we hear her asking him whether he married her so that she could be insulted by mere fisher-caste women. True to his nature, he doesn't seem to understand the caste status involved here. In fact, he had chosen Palani disregarding his caste and his antecedents. To a Chakki who insits on return­ing Pareekutty's money and wonders aloud about a Palani who doesn't want dowry, Chembankunju shouts: if he doesn't want dowry, why should we bother with that.

It Chembankunju hollows himself out in pursuit of wealth and success, becomes inhuman, Pareekkutty seems to be in .111 eternal quest for humanity. It is as if his lovelorn songs, his roving eyes, the handkerchief which sits comfortably like ,i noose around his neck makes him embody an-other culture which passes understanding. One becomes hollow chasing capital, the other chases love to fill-out an in-born hollowness. This becomes evident in the movie when they confront each other. The conversation in the film is subtly different and amplified. In the film, Chembankunju returns the capital, throws the money at Pareekkutty who mechanically accepts it. Then Chembankunju blesses Pareekkutty, as the landlord had done for him, saying let this serve you better than it has served me. With the crucial difference that, unlike the landlord who was only welcoming _a new aspirant to modernity, Chembankunju, who believes that he was intentionally ruined by Pareekkutty, is blessing the more of what he got upon Pareekkutty. May you receive more of what you gave me and my family, is only a blessing in disguise. It is as if Indian modernity is declaring: it is either Chemban­kunju or Pareekkutty, but never the twain together!