The Storyteller

  ​— By Arulnambi K.

A recent trip to Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram) rekindled some of my fondest memories of my mother from my childhood days. When I was barely ten years old, and my brother was even younger, Amma started reading some of her favorite Tamil historical fiction to us. Earlier in our childhood, she had narrated the Indian epics - The Ramayana and The Mahabharatha - to us as bedtime stories. Thambi and I had voracious appetites for stories, and Amma’s narration of these epic tales filled us with imagination and wonder, and we would listen with rapt attention as she effortlessly adapted those complex stories for our young minds, highlighting the virtues of the characters while doing justice to the action and intrigue that captivated us more than the human drama. So when she started reading Kalki Krishnamurthy’s Ponniyin Selvan (பொன்னியின் செல்வன்) and Sivagamiyin Sapatham (சிவகாமியின் சபதம்) to us, we knew we were in for a treat.  

Kalki’s masterful novels were rich in historical details, with colorful characters, action, and political intrigue. Thambi and I loved the stories, and when Amma read them to us in bed, we would lie on either side of her so we could see the vivid pictures drawn by Kalki’s illustrator, Maniam. We would keep asking her to stop reading and show us the pictures on the pages so we could feed them to our own imaginations as those stories took life in our minds. The language used by Kalki was classical Tamil, and not always easy to comprehend. Amma would explain the words and phrases that we did not understand. Each of the novels had multiple parts, and eventually, I got tired of waiting for Amma to come home from work and read the next chapter to us, and started reading the books myself even if I did not always understand the language well. This eventually motivated Thambi to start reading the books by himself too, as he did not want to wait either. Besides Ponniyin Selvan and Sivagamiyin Sapatham, Amma also helped us discover Kalki’s Parthiban Kanavu (பார்த்திபன் கனவு) and Akilan’s Vengaiyin Maindhan (வேங்கையின் மைந்தன்). The local lending library was our source for all these books besides our usual diet of English comics and novels. Eventually, Amma helped us collect many of these novels as they came out in serialized form in the Kalki Tamil weekly magazine and created bound volumes for our collection.  

​I could just say that I inherited Amma’s taste for Tamil, history and stories, but my memories of her taking the time and putting the effort to share those interests with her children and helping us cultivate them ourselves, are what made her such a special and precious mother. That is why, when I visit the Five Rathas in Mamallapuram, I am not only thinking of the Pandavas, the Pallavas and Narasimhavarman, but also of Sivagami, Paranjothi and Naganandhi, and of course, Amma, reading it all to us and taking us on a journey through those worlds of wonder.