​Matrudharmam- The Song of a Mountain Rill

The two words ‘Signification’ and ‘Signifier’ come from the word ‘Sign.’  Man communicates his ideas not only with words but also with signs. Used appropriately, a sign conveys more powerfully than a whole library of words could. There are some inherent merits in a ‘sign’ like— conveying a message, its tone and tenor, timbre of emotion, animation, connotation, brevity, dramatization etc. It has been both the prop and sinew of culture, communication, expression of thought, religion, training, and the development of various arts, by smoothly and effectively trading intentions with its mystic touch. When that strength of the ‘sign’ is impregned with words, they assume importance as ‘literary forms.’ Suppose we are going on some urgent work by car or by bus and we see a small signboard by the road. There won’t be any letters on the board but just a picture of a boy running across with a school bag hanging by his shoulder. The picture does not merely convey some kid running across with his school bag. It conveys something more: that there is a school nearby and that the school children might be crossing the road or running across; it cautions the drivers to slow down and look around while crossing the area. There are many such signs we encounter in our daily lives. That was the quintessence of the theory proposed by the French literary theorist, semiotician, and philosopher Roland Gerard Barthes.

When we say to a child, ‘mind your words,’ we are cautioning him not merely about the words but also the way to deal with people and manage his affairs. When words become metaphors and symbols, it becomes poetry. Even when there are no words but just only gestures and physical movements, and when they could effectively deliver the emotions, they become a dance or a drama, and if the signs assume the form of colors and sound, they become art and music, respectively. All these things combined in appropriate proportion become independent narratives.

Everybody knew how dear Chaso to Sri Sri was. On many occasions he equated Chaso to Gorky, acclaimed Chaso was not so-so but shabash, and at other times he referred to Chaso merely as (Cha) Ganti (Soma)yajulu (punning that he drank the Cha (Tea) and Soma (elixir) in his name) and never ducked in openly appreciating Chaso. He might have liked the story ‘Matrudharmam’ way back in 1940. He wrote to Chaso: ‘Publish everything you have written except for the story of Kattera Pitta (Black Drongo).’ He expressed his intention to reserve the story for publication in his upcoming magazine ‘Asanti.’ The story reached Jalasutram Rukmininatha Sastry in 1942 under the name ‘Aada Kattera (Female Drongo).’ Chaso waited for the publication in ‘Asanti’ till 1946 and ultimately got it published in ‘Rupavani’ the same year.

Every word, every sentence, and every paragraph of that story has some signification. There is a point of view that such heaping up of metaphors would befit poetry (but not a short story). Just take note of the number of words, their variety, and the proper names running to hundreds. The names of insects, flowers, fruits, avifauna, emotions, agricultural tools, land use, day to day material one finds in a village- the endless list really blows off one’s mind.

We need words to express our intentions; each word conveys a meaning. In that sense, each word is a ‘sign.’ Sametime, we cannot assign them a permanent value or meaning. We use them out of habit. They convey the essence of our intentions. When we employ words as signs, signals, and signboards, they are elevated to a ‘technical’ status: to imply or stand for some meaning beyond. The meaning may not be exact or commensurate with our intentions sometimes. In fact, that zone of uncertainty is in itself a strength to the word as well as to the sign. ‘Depending upon the context,’ says Roland Barthes, ‘great writers employ the same word very powerfully in an epic in one way and in a drama in another way.’

When there are too many signboards, the amount of information gets cluttered and reduced. That’s why people employ pictures, colors, of diverse sizes and shades in signboards. It is common knowledge that the words used on the signboards change their color, taste, and scent according to the onlooker. Freud’s analysis of dreams says that ‘the words and events that appear in dreams stand to convey some extraneous meaning’ of their own. In the same vein, the established conventions of economics, and social theories, confer some specific meaning, connotation, to the words, behavior, and events. Post-modernists name such systems as mythologies. Myth – is a story woven by human intellect, a fiction- with a specific purpose in mind. Whether it is intention, intellect, or creativity, they all depend on words or symbols for the deliverance. What was expressed becomes a hint, an insinuation. It could be a picture, a word, a sound like a siren or an alarm bell. The action of the sign is ‘to signify.’  That is why it is a signifier. We understand that and we get used to it. Words employed in a sentence convey a complete meaning (than they could individually). Some words standout like signboards. The entire message or communication lies in those words. They are the ‘significant’ words. The surprising part of it is that words have an innate metaphoric trait. It is only with the words, man had achieved the rhetoric of satire, irony, and connotation. His penchant for satire is the driving force behind his urge to express himself. It is sometimes called sarcasm.

When more and more words become signifiers, the text of a story assumes more poetic flavor and the content takes backseat. There are many signifiers in the short story Matrudharmam (Maternal Virtue). Yet, the refrain of the ‘Black Drongo’ couple in each para flows like an undercurrent. In fact, the story is all about the two birds. The rest of the things are mere embellishments. And the readers go through the story with that awareness.

There are about fifteen sentences that pertain to conventional human relations, panegyrizing of nature, with a succession of images superimposing on one another. But each of them has its importance in the narrative, which parallels the sound-effects and photomontage used in movies. These ‘sound pictures’ were employed to present the horrific ground reality and to create a Gothic environment. At places where the elite human passions like – ‘maternal virtue,’ ‘conjugal fidelity’ and some idealistic percepts were attributed to the ‘Black Drongo’ couple; and, where two successive tragic events bring the life of the female bird to a climax; or, where the lady bird, unlike the human counterpart, gets on to the windowsill, lays another egg, broods it to a chick, and gets overwhelmed with a feeling of fulfilment to her life when the chick makes its first call —  the narrative runs like an epic. This is the typical feature of the story. More than the storyline, one would go ecstatic about the ambience the narrative creates, along with the embedded narratives within the main theme. We will undergo a kind of poetic experience. And that confers the status of an epic to the story. It runs like a grand Greek tragedy. There is a subtle hint about his ecological responsibility, creativity, and duty to labor, beyond the realms of man’s moral and animal nature, by presenting the inherent beauty of fellow creatures and their biological instincts.

With a montage of over a hundred images, the story is a like a magnificent documentary in colors. By just not confining the visuals to the eyes within and without, Chaso linked up the human life to the inner consciousness; and by not limiting it to a poetic exercise, he subtly conveyed the underlying message by humanizing it. The intention behind the use of these words in the narrative, like- maternal virtue, conjugal fidelity, success, fruits of love, hailing the Indra, Sikh sepoys, violent frenzied laughter, blessed lives— and their significance in this context, becomes evident for that reason. With the poetic narrative and the message running as undercurrents, the story reaches the lofty heights of a great Puranic tale.

I must draw attention to a particular piece of Chaso’s craft. A story is basically meant to be told and ​a ​poem is meant to be sung. This is largely true. When we speak, we must have a speech-rhythm; and when we sing a lyric (coming from the word lyre, a Veena) the song must have a song-rhythm. You do not expect the rhythm of a song in poetry. Modern poetry can be defined essentially on the basis of its sonority. Despite using a slew of word pictures in his story as montage, Chaso never indulged in lyrical rhythm anywhere. On the contrary, he intentionally refrained from it. Even in places where such luxury is pardonable, say, like the happy reunion of the ‘Black Drongo’ couple after the rejection of initial overtures of the male bird by the female, he describes their singing thus: “Their song was the song of a highland rill. Prancing and dipping in the rocky, uneven landscape, it was the song of a mountain stream.”

Chaso’s ‘Matrudharmam’ also flows like a mountain rill. To sound more poetic, I would say, it looks as though the mountain rill itself was the narrator. Knowing what to write about is an imposing constraint even to the best of the writers. Sometimes, it is hard to demarcate where an epic begins or where it ends. A complex, intertwined, gripping narrative is characteristic of an epic. With all that, no matter how prolific a writer is, or how many times he might revise his draft, the freshness of a nascent thought that strikes the writer as he writes has its value in qualifying the work. And a discerning writer like Chaso, never puts his story on paper unless he deliberated it thoroughly within for long.

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(Courtesy: Vividha Sahitya Vedika- Monday, 29^th March 2021 Andhra Jyothy)