Pompi 1

Waves by Sundara Ramaswamy

The short story "Waves" is part of the collection titled "Waves", which is a collection of English translated
short stories by the Tamil author Sundara Ramaswamy. The author is a famous novelist, poet and literary
critic in the field of Tamil literature who is known for his highly rhetorical writing style which were
predominantly political satires or reflective pieces on society. The version we are reading was translated
from Tamil by Rajaram Brammarajan.
The story centers around the character of a young man who has been arrested by the police for violating the
restriction on entering the forbidden area of the beach Rock of Death which he reached by swimming across
the sea. This biased treatment shocks him as the double standard is exposed. In the police station he tries
to reason with the officers how he did not violate any law but his arguments fall into deaf ears. Ironically,
a godman is praised for doing the same act and it became a news headline too. He had to be in the lockup
for a while although it wasn't a crime per se. This incident is an example of the many from the Indian
Emergency times when the government imposed a ban on any form of social gathering and penalised many
innocents despite not being responsible for any criminal act. Common masses do not have the freedom to
live their lives without being controlled or monitored by the system or the government.

This excessive control resembles the Emergency Period in India in 1975, under the political reign of Indira
Gandhi. This period in the political history of India is marked by the iron rule Gandhi exercised. Calling
this period as marked by multiple threats to the government, Gandhi amassed many powers under her and
heavily punished any who went against her. Due to this draconian rule, this period was considered as the
darkest phase of India.

There are some symbols used in the text. For example, waves symbolise the temporality of one's life which
can also be associated with the suicidal thoughts the protagonist goes through. In the politically chaotic
Indian Emergency period, the common masses, like our protagonist, felt suffocated in the presence of the
draconian rule which controlled their lives with an iron hand. There was no freedom to live one's life
according to one's will. The protagonist suffers from suicidal, nihilistic thoughts since he cannot bear to go
on living in such a suffocated times.

The darkest phase in Indira's tenure as PM: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-

nation/democracy-interrupted-some-lesser-known-facts-about-emergency-1975-
77/emergency/slideshow/69940337.cms?from=mdr