Book Review

Devi: The Boundless – A Daughter’s Inward Journey

Novel in Translation |
M A Susila (Tamil original) | Translated by V Kadambari
Emerald Publishers, Chennai | 2020 | ISBN 9789389080582 |  220 | pp 191
-Dr. Prakash Bhadury, Assistant Professor of English.
Brilliantly narrated, Devi: The Boundless displaysM A Susila’s gift of storytelling
that shuttles between the past and present,pre and post-independence period of time,
adversities and aspirations , setbacks and new hopes, and prejudices and assertion of identity
and that makes for seamless narrative of a brave woman’s distinct journey in modern India
whose life is at once shocking, yet reverential as she refused to be lost into the crowd of
ordinary, into the timid and docile.
Yadumagi, the  original  novel  in  Tamil,  is,  as  the  translatornotes:  ‘the  fictional
autobiography/Biography to recover the past and to pass on the lessons to the future’. The
author, M A Susila, a former professor of Tamil is well known translator and author of
Tamil literature; her short stories have been translated into various languages and bagged
her international honour. When the book is read, it takes a reader through the fragrance of
night queen at karaikudi to the unstoppable Ganga at Rishikesh via the tortuous journey of
life of Devi in between that marks her indomitable will to brave all the adversities against
women in our society andher recovery from the sordid past to glorious future that
reverberateswithin as a source of strengthfor whoever reads her story.
The translator, V. Kadambari, was a Professor of English, Ethiraj College, Chennai
and later, headed the Gender Studies in Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth
Development. As a noted translator already, through the present book, she has helped
disseminating the unparalleled richness of Tamil literature to the world by breaking the
linguistic boundary. The very first reading leaves the impression that she has unlocked the
thought processes of Tamil version and locked them into English making the translation
perfectly cultural and distinctively creative. The boundary between the two versions might
be too thin to be seen.
The story is narrated through Charu who observes her mother, Devi’s mysteriouslife
who would have been buried into oblivion, yet like the night queen, who blossomed without
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anybody’s knowledge; who shaped her personality and now it is the time to unfold the
petals of her frozen life, hence, Devi, the boundless.The story glides through skillfully
varied sequence of time, beginning from the description of Devi’s role as the headmistress
of a school, her home and flower garden at Karaikudi in 1967 in which the narrator makes
sense of her mother’s concealed emotions, mysterious moments of shocks and surprises
that lay frozen and that begins to unfold, to the bank of the Ganga at Rishikesh, in 2013
where Charu recalls Devi’s death due to heart attack and seventy-five years of her life’s
journey of recovered past.
Devi, the Tamil Brahmingirl was the victim of child marriage; she lost her husband
at the age of nine,even before knowing the meaning of marriage and was sent to the ice-
house, a shelter for widowed women where she continued in whitesari, tonsured head, dry
drab life of stoic suffering for absolutely no fault of hers.Her orthodox grandmother arranged
her marriage for the crude belief that a girl is someone’s else’s property hence, no need of
education! She missed two years of studies but with the support of her father and brother
she could continue her aim as she knew that education was her sword in her battle ahead.
She bore the brunt of such comment: “Are you going to make this widow a collector (p.90)?”
But in her inner core, she is a Vedanti and a pragmatist both at a time that shine through her
detachment to all that she does with the exception that she is attached to the noble cause for
others what engaged her helping the poor students in education, arranging meals for poor
girls, helping in getting jobs and supporting all whoever was around her, no matter she was
cheated or scorned on occasions during her intercourse of life.
Finally, at Rishikesh in a somber ambience, Charu recalls so many hidden facts of
Devi’s life known from her twin-like colleague, Sylvia who gave hints of seven decades of
Devi’s war against society, for her firmness of purpose, her iron will and indomitable spirit
to face all challenges. Devi’s war and victory is every woman’s war and victory; she would
ever shine in the firmament of all brave women who found life against all odds. She flows
without turning to look back. 

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