This is an English translation of “Mazhaiyin Kural thanimai”, a short novel written by Ba. Venkatesan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
Part 1 (Page 20 to 24)
Paramasivam and Chinthamani got off the coaches separately from their respective ages as soon as the coach stopped in front of the rain house. The rain also stopped as though it was aware of their arrival. When the coaches that brought them had disappeared from the sight, the rain rose up suddenly from the opposite direction, announcing its mammoth volume. Both stood astounded for some while at seeing the stone logs deftly stacked up one above the other standing against the skyline, the colours diffusing in all eight directions, offering a new meaning to the afternoon light on the dexterously smoothened stones and the garden that lay sprawled as long as one’s eyes could see. Chinthamani couldn’t believe that the stuff was made of hard stones. Even Paramasivam Pillai’s professional acumen was also startled at the fact how the softness and the lightness of sponge could have been infused into the stones without compromising their strength. The way the belvedere was built—elongated, smoothened, extending outside to the point after judging the expanse of the sky that could be seen in the rear—had in fact added the sky as a part of the house. At the very moment he saw the outer wall, Paramasivam Pillai understood that it would absorb any colour, be it orange or blue, or pale green or red or yellow or dark blue, emitted by the cycle of the day, and adapt its colour accordingly. The collective warbling of birds—flying from the façade of the house to the group of trees that were found sprawled in the front, and thus making a magic bridge between them—was offering an exquisite language to the complete surrounding as if to fix the defect of that spectacle possessing no mouth. The varieties of vines with small pearl-like leaves, grown considerably abundant on the upper floor, crept over the parapet, slunk outside, and were descending fast towards the ground. The building assumed the appearance of a big ancient tree as the wall hid behind its denseness. The fear and hesitations of the birds were completely absent as the arcs, cones, and bunds—fixed intermittently here and there along the slant of the outer wall without overtly affecting its appeal—had amiably merged with the expanse of the green stretch. The sandpipers picking the ticks from the gaps of leaves by holding the cones with their claws, the parrots swinging in the vines, the sparrows that made their nests in the arcs they found hiding inside, the owls that returned to the arcs to sleep so as to get rid of their fatigue from wandering all through the night, the minas that were flying restlessly intending to sit nowhere and looking at everything suspiciously, and in addition to all these, were found cuckoos and varieties of squirrels and the rain that was falling as though cuddling everything—all these made that area an unknown spectacle from another world. When the horses that drew the coach stamped their front feet on the ground to relax themselves a little after being relieved of the load with the passengers getting off the coach, hundreds of feathers spread across as if the sounds of hooves, though negligible, caused a huge mishap in the tranquility that had filled in front of the house and disturbed the complete spell of harmony. The building rose in the air with its mammoth proportion like a cursed giant. The stones from the bottom to the top shook along with various vines. They yelled out, expressing their fear and dissatisfaction. The house expressed its displeasure by shedding the leaves. Both stood stunned, expecting the building that stood before their eyes to fly away and disappear. The fear and inauspicious omen made their face look pale for a second. ( There were hands to comfort Pillai. But Chinatamani, who came alone, had to comfort herself. They were waiting patiently until the building completed its show in front of them. That bizarre beast became restless and had been unable to reconcile with the uncertainty of its existence until the echo of the horse hooves’ sound disappeared and tranquility returned. After that, it settled itself in its earlier state, meekly gesticulating that the disquiet had somehow been calmed down and turned to normalcy. When Paramasivam Pillai and Chintamani moved out of their respective times to walk through the path lying between the outer wall and the house to reach the doorway, the trees obstructed the rain, petered it out, formed an umbrella over their heads, and led them in. The banana trees and festoons tied at the entrance welcomed them, easing off their anxiety. The huge front hall lying immediately after opening the main door and the square-shaped yard located at the other end of the passage that extended from the front room opposite to the doorway were filled with visuals. One could see the rain and light flooding the house through the opening above that had the size of the square below. It resembled a brilliantly washed, hanging muslin fibre-net. At the very first sight, Paramasivam Pillai understood that the total structure of the house had been designed by keeping the square in the centre. It was a healthy, archaic architectural design of buildings. After the arrival of the British, there were some changes in the general construction of the building that made the design of the front hall deciding the other parts of the house. It must be weakening the inherent equitable balance that every beam of the house must possess in them, cooperation and weight. The wooden beams set above the corridor built along the four sides of the square in the rain house were positioned in such a way that they were offering support to the interior pillars of eight rooms, two on each side around the square. The wooden pillars erected in rows on the outer edge of the corridor along the square were standing on the other edge so as to counterbalance the weight the pillars inside the room were carrying. Under the shining tranquility, they were standing with their dark brown hue, in imperturbable penance in the collective space where the rain and light were coalescing. There shone in their existence a disposition and responsibility that decided not only the structure of the rooms but also a minute disturbance in the rooms. The rooms were hiding in the gentle darkness that offered a warmth from the balminess of the tiled roof that covered the upper part of the corridor. The long passageways that extended from the curved walls and the branches that ran on the right and left led them to other rooms. (Chintamani was not allowed to enter the bedroom). The reflection of the square came along the passage with the pleasant warmth that didn’t intimidate one’s mind and shadow. The moist mist, generated by the rain when it hit the black stone floor, had filled the entire house like a layer of spongy mattress. The windows on the room walls had been very carefully designed so that not a corner in the house could escape the rain during rainy season. The curves in the passageways were constructed with specific designs such that they turned blunt suddenly at some places and took a ‘U’ turn at some places to allow only the required amount of rain that the temperature in the interior rooms could bear by way of controlling the rush of rainfall even if there was a torrential downpour. So, be it rain or sunlight, the danger of their assault and hurt upon the inherent coziness of the house due to their hasty fall on the square and getting distracted with the same speed had thus been avoided. While every nerve of the lower floor had been joined with the main part of the square located at the centre of the house, every direction of the upper floor was left to stand with its innate appeal contradicting and equalising the former. Since the main dual-layered wall that decided the life of the house, located in the lower and upper floors, and the point at which it had to settle in order to counter the gravitational force were designed in such a manner that they were both focusing and leaving the centre at the same time, the tautness at the layer that connected both floors possessed a very delicate balance. The life of the house would last more than several hundred years, Paramasivam Pillai said to himself. Like the lower floor, which manifested the niceties of the architecture in their fullest, the upper floor had attained the completeness of the aesthetics of who imagined it. It was the villagers who had named the rain house its name. There was no nameboard hanging on the outer wall carrying that name. But Chintamani could witness things from the upper floor that proved the house deserving of that name. The rain that fell in the open space descended through the evenly made slopes, ran through the watercourse set a little below, got collected, and then finally entered the holes arranged a couple of feet away from each other and dropped down straight outside the upper floor like a curtain. As it fell onto the tin panes sticking out at the bottom of the upper floor, it got further filtered into a thin screen through the holes fixed two inches away and reached the ground like a mild film of mist surrounding the house on all four sides. Its free flow had been facilitated through the canals that ran gradually longer with the regular stroke of the shovel amidst the grasses on the ground to get it merged with the greenery on both edges of the canals. The four masculine Yalis standing on the corners of the protection wall of the open terrace were staring towards the town’s direction, arching forward as much as they could. (They carried a bearing that they were ready to swallow up someone dug out from everyone.) There was a big stone pouch hanging on their back. During rain, they collected the water in that stone bag. As the water filled in the pouch, it trickled out through the hole in the centre of the pouch, reached the wide-open mouth of Yalis, spurted with full speed from there, and fell onto the ground twenty feet away like a huge water pillar. It was rumoured that Navabashanam, medicinal leaves, rare nuts, and barks must have been buried in Yalis’ bodies. The saliva of the Yalis radiated a mind-intoxicating aroma around the town during rainy days. The children that were born inhaling that aroma possessed strength without physical defects and immaculate charm. The nights of those times had the scent of jasmine and blue colour that enhanced the desire for coition. The rain house kept continuously transforming the profusion of the rain into light, scent, and state of mind—with the permission of the rain. When they mingled with the indispensable air of Hosur, they had become a permanent storyteller for ages who would tell the story of the rain house to the new visitors coming to that house.
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