I’ve often heard my friends speak about their fathers as if they were their die-hard enemies. Some even call their fathers bastards. Many of my friends are teetotallers. When asked why, the most common reply is- ‘My father often got drunk and abused my mother.’

Another friend once said, ‘That bastard’s lifeless body lay there. I circled around the body during the final rites. All I wanted to do was kick that asshole’s body.’

Shocked, I asked why. I was under the impression that such brutal scenes are to be seen only in the Mahabharata. It turned out that my friend’s mother had passed away after giving birth to him. The father married another woman and kept torturing his six-year-old son. He incited him to run away from home.

In the end, the boy went to his Periyappa’s (Father’s elder brother) house with no other choice. Another hell was waiting for him there. Periyappa’s sixteen-year-old son grabbed the boy’s hands and asked him to jerk him off. No matter how much soap he used that day, he felt he couldn’t wash his ‘stained’ hands. The smell of semen lingered on. The boy couldn’t eat. Nausea killed his appetite. This was the man who was resisting the impulse to kick his father’s corpse.

Another friend said that his father was the headmaster of a school in town, a much respected figure among the townsfolk. He would resolve all local disputes. He would help settle family conflicts. If a woman had a secret lover and the husband discovered it, he would come to my friend’s father with the complaint, who he felt had the ability to discern the truth. If he had reason to side with the husband, he would advise the woman, ‘What you are doing is not right; live with the man in a respectful manner.’ The woman, in such cases, often complied without argument. However, if he felt that the man’s behaviour was incorrigible and disgraceful, he might rebuke him and say, “Forget your wife and let her live peacefully with her paramour from now on.”

And this King Solomon of the town, when he came home, without any reason, would beat his son violently. I still don’t comprehend why he would subject his son to such brutality. The situation is puzzling, given how closely my friend resembles his father in appearance. So the commonest of all reasons for fathers to thrash their ‘sons’ in our town did not hold water in this case.

Another father needs to be mentioned here -my periyappa, (my periyamma’s husband). I will narrate that later. Every time I think about fathers, mothers, and sons, I always think of Georges Bataille again.

You would have read his novel “Ma Mère”. In the story, the son, Pierre, dislikes his alcoholic father, believing that he mistreats his mother. Pierre wishes for his father’s death, longing to remain in that state to love and protect his mother. Eventually, his father dies, fulfilling the son’s desire. The mother says to Pierre, “Everybody will think of us as a couple”… Finally, mother and son have a carnal relationship. The mother then commits suicide. It is this decision that matters.

Western thought and religion start from the point of sin. But the idea of sin is alien to Indian philosophy. Indian perception towards life was not framed by thoughts of sin. Well, let’s not get into a philosophical debate. This is the story of my life and this is the similarity between me and Georges Bataille.

Bataille once noted, ‘Nietzsche wrote ‘with his blood’; to criticise him, or better yet, to test him, one must bleed in turn.’ These words apply to Bataille as they do now to me. But in my writing, it is not just me who bleeds. The stories of so many- my Naina, my mothers, my sisters, friends, acquaintances and countless others- bleed into my narration. My text is a sacrifice irrigated by the blood of many. Concepts of sin, dharma and ethical conjectures make way for the art of the writer. This is what I mean when I say, ‘I walk on corpses for my writing’.

Let me end with an incident in which all this talk of blood and writing led to a hilarious mix-up. Twenty-five years ago, a fellow Tamil writer came to my house. I have always said that Tamil writers are far more conservative than the Tamil community itself.

At that time I had translated the novel ‘Story of the Eye’ by Georges Bataille into Tamil, a novel that was once condemned as purely pornographic. Interestingly, even this work by Bataille was not published under his real name but rather under a pseudonym. Furthermore, the novel ‘Ma Mère’ was released posthumously.

I translated ‘Story of the Eye’ without watering down the graphic elements. I gave the translation to the visiting writer. After reading just two pages, he abruptly left without uttering a word. He just ran away! He fled for his life on his hind legs. The country chicken gravy that Avantika had made for him was simmering on the stove. When she was done cooking, Avantika headed to the office. I couldn’t comprehend anything. If he didn’t like the story, why couldn’t he simply say it to me? Moreover, why did he dash for it as if he had seen a ghost? This perplexed me for a long time.

It wasn’t until I encountered him at a literary function that I got some sort of explanation for this bizarre behaviour ten years later. I asked him, ‘Why did you run like that?’ His reply was unbelievable! He thought that we were cooking some human ‘meat’ in the oven.

‘Hey, lavde ka baal’, I said angrily, ‘Do I look like a cannibal who never hurt an ant?’

He grinned awkwardly and said, ‘You gave me the story by Georges Bataille. What did he proclaim on the inaugural day of his secret society, Acéphale? In his infinite wisdom, he said one of its members’ head should be given. Isn’t it? And you and that guy Bataille live like you write. So, I thought someone’s head was being cooked with steamed rice in your kitchen and ran away. I had no intention of sampling that macabre culinary masterpiece!’

By Charu Nivedita