Wilderness Untamed

‘Like a lion in the first flush of its golden-maned youth, the forest of giant golden-stemmed bamboos stalked towards them. Why not burn it down? Green shoots and all?’ Thrumming with cicadas and honeybees, bristling with bamboo and tamarind, and redolent of heady illuppai blossoms, here comes a saga of the life-and-death struggle of a lush South Indian jungle. The agent of change is a man who has nothing to lose. Uprooted from the human jungle of caste, clan, and kinship, Singapore-returned Chidambaram hacks, and finally burns his way into the untamed wilderness to make way for sugarcane plantations and a sugar factory. Tamil literature has from the earliest times been infused with an awareness of the natural world. Saaya Vanam, along with this English avataar, vividly reminds us that Tamil itself–like any human speech–is an outgrowth of nature. Says the translator, Vasantha Surya: ‘It has been my endeavour to show how languages are inseparably intertwined, and derive their nourishment from a shared ground of human experience and imagination.’