At its simplest level, Litanies of Dutch Battery is the story of a little girl with a big name, Edwina Theresa Irene Maria Anne Margarita Jessica. The people of Dutch Battery call her Jessica. She was born in 1951 and the novel covers 16 years of her life. She was born in a cowshed in one the many islands that dot the backwaters of Kochi. Three men drunk on toddy visit her home bearing gifts, a cake of Hammam soap, a bottle of hair oil and shampoo, all samples from the Tata factory where they work. Her father, Valia Mathaeus Asari, a carpenter and master boat maker, welcomes them to see the child. They leave without a word when they discover it is a girl child. Her mother, Mathilda, a much younger woman than her father, had hid in the cowshed to escape being vaccinated for small pox. This then is the story of Jessica’s birth, a grimly comic inversion of the tale of Nativity. It also sets the tone of a rich and complex work of literary fiction.
N.S. Madhavan’s Lanthan Batheriyile Luthiniyakal (Litanies of Dutch Battery) was published in Malayalam in 2003. Though this is his first full length work of fiction, his short stories and plays have established him as a major voice in contemporary Malayalam literature. The novel has gone into several reprints and this translation by Rajesh Rajamohan, published in 2010, brilliantly recreates for the non-Malayalam speaking readers the world that Madhavan has created, “the make-belief constructs of Kochi’s history and the inhabitant’s idiosyncratic yet disarmingly self-deprecating view of life, while sliding in layers of legends, fantasies myths, facts and images”.
On a map printed in the beginning of the book, the little island of Lantham Bathery can be found, with its Palace Jetty and the East and West Periyar river on either side flowing into the Vembanad backwaters. Long ago, the Dutch mounted five cannon on a promontory in this island and that is how it got its name.
On the shores of Lantham Bathery grow an abundance of fruit trees, guava, jackfruit cashew and pineapple. Jessica and her parents are part of a deeply religious community of Latin Catholics that live in Lanthem Bathery and it is the story of this community that is the focus of the novel. They have their own definition of the island, not bounded by water on all sides but a state of bridgelessness and on starlit nights when the last of the boats have gone, the river turns blue and island is on its own, unfastened from the rest of the world.
The people of Lantham Bathery are a motley group of ordinary folks. There is Edwin, husband of Jessica’s aunt Victoria, and Jessica’s godfather.
He cooks the best biryani in Kochi and tells the convoluted history of the dish affirming with great confidence that it was the Malayalam Muslims who must be given credit for this invention. And Santiagu, whose performance as a thespian in the toddy shop of Lantham Bathery “as white bottles of toddy migrated to their table as a flock of egrets, and then flew off”, is one of the most memorable sequences in the book. There is Father Pilathose who blesses the community, hears outrageous confessions and washes his hands as often as he can. Once when he spoke in Latin in church, his voice sounded to little Jessica like K.L. Saigal’s lullaby Soja Rajkumari soja. She fell asleep only to be woken up when everyone started to sing Hallelujah. There are many others in the novel sketched with gentle humour, including Jessica’s long-lost grandfather who comes back from the sea, after 40 years, wearing suit and bow tie, and carrying a white cane.
It is worth mentioning at this stage that Jessica is the narrator of Litanies of Dutch Battery. She embodies the collective memory of the island and its people. She is the keeper of its secret history, its heroic myths, how mighty Charlemagne becomes Karalman, how the stories of political events in distant Delhi are carried by the winds to Lantham Bathery and how they are transformed and retold. And Jessica has her own story to tell; each milestone leading to another — baptism, first communion, early confessions and, finally, her catastrophic encounter with the seemingly harmless mathematics teacher, Pushpangadan. In the light of the tragic sequence of events that follow, Jessica’s poignant recognition of her gender early in the book takes on a painful new meaning.
Litanies of Dutch Battery is an extraordinary work of fiction for its storytelling, lyricism and startling imagery.
Madhavan excels at his craft, subtly interweaving into his story an exposition of the art of narration — how fact gets transformed into fiction and stories grow. In his note the translator expresses his doubt whether he can do justice to the unique rhythm and cadence of the original Malayalam prose. This reviewer, a non-Malayalam speaker, finds that the English translation beautifully conveys the mirthful spirit of Madhavan’s prose. Jessica’s story is just one strand of the narration which has tragic undertones but the overall impression of the book is one of joyfulness. I have read very few good translations of Indian fiction into English. This is a rare exception, and it is unfortunate that the publisher has printed such an important work on poor quality paper. It deserved better.
Aloke Roy Chowdhury can be contacted at alokeroy@hotmail.com [1]
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