Whenever I think of Georges Bataille’s story ‘Ma Mère’, I start pondering about the concept of sin. Most of what he wrote was autobiographical and was condemned during his time, as pornographic. Yet, the idea of sin runs like a thread through all his writing. Whereas, in India, which is considered by the west as a society that is obsessively moral, the culture of hedonism looms larger than life. 

Periyamma (my mother’s elder sister) reads and writes Tamil with much difficulty, and that’s about it. Her schooling stopped at the elementary level. However, there is no sense of guilt or sin in her perception of life. 

The concept of motherhood is revered as the holiest of all in India. Tamils take this far more seriously than North Indians. While everyone called former prime minister Indira Gandhi as Indiraji, Tamils called her Mother Indira. The same is true with language, too. Have you ever seen people worshipping language anywhere in the world? A ritual known as singing the ‘Mother Tamil Anthem’ is performed in almost every event here, except at death ceremonies and the one to celebrate the coming of age of a girl child. 

Typically, a young girl will come forward to sing this song in praise of Mother Tamil. Everyone stands with reverence, joining in, on the chorus. However, not a single person, singing with such devotion, would know how to write in Tamil. For a long time now, Tamil has been on its way to becoming a language that will exist only in the spoken form. This is why I mentioned that Tamils are necrophiliacs — they always beat something to death and then worship the corpse. 

At an event to launch the music album of a movie, various personalities – from the music composer to the actor and director – addressed the audience. Strangely, none of them could speak a single complete sentence in Tamil. Instead, everyone spoke in English, occasionally mixing in a word or two of Tamil. However, even in that ceremony, at the outset, everyone stood up and sang the chorus to greet Mother Tamil. It felt like an apology, as if they were saying, ‘Oh Tamil, we have raped and killed you. We don’t even know how to write in Tamil. We don’t even know how to speak in Tamil. That’s why we sing in chorus, praising you and asking for forgiveness.’ 

The Sanskrit tradition says Mata, Pita, Guru, Deivam. It is in this society where the mother is given precedence over everything else, that periyamma had a live-in relationship with her sister’s son and had two children. Even this was not considered exceptional, as periamma‘s husband would also visit that house once a month. I believe the physical part of their relationship had already ended. 

However, all of this was allowed within the structure of family here. Everyone was aware of it, but it remained unspoken. Only once did my cousin sister (periyamma’s daughter) tell me, ‘It’s terrible to have to go there and call my brother Dad.’ 

I asked her how she had come to know of this. “What annae, don’t you understand even this? In our hut, three people, at best, can sleep if we lay down in a neatly packed row. But we are four. Mother, ‘blood brother’, ‘father – brother ‘and I. That is why they must have started to have sex. How could I not know that? As long as he doesn’t climb onto me in the dark, I am ok,” she said. She must have been fifteen years old then. 

If I write that a cousin sister, at some point in time, started having sex with me and my brother, someone from the family will file a case against me. So I will not. I wrote about it all in my Tamil coming-of-age novel, “Existentialism and the Fancy T-shirt.” Maybe if someone decided to translate it in English, you would get the chance to know all this better. 

Although I am a descendant of the poet Tirunavukarasar, who in the seventh century composed a poem saying, “We are not citizens of any country, we dare even the god of death”, court cases scare me a bit. 

I will tell you why I dread these cases. Thirteen years ago, a samyar (monk) from a town, 350 kilometres from Chennai, filed multiple defamation lawsuits against me. Handling a civil case is a bit more manageable. As it was a criminal case, I had to attend court personally and stand before the honourable judge, like a criminal, from morning till evening to get bail. Fortunately, bail was obtainable after a day long wait, and the bail money was to be paid in court. I’ve been making the trip to that town once a month for the past thirteen years. 

The summons stopped coming during the pandemic. Now, the samyar has fled the country, but the cases he filed through his followers are still going on. 

Those cases are incidents that merit their own novel. 

How did I defame the samyar? He claimed to be God, and being a devout believer, I trusted him. Does that make me a fool? No, let me share my perspective. A fraudulent doctor can deceive by posing as a legitimate one, and fake police can easily pass as real law enforcement. But can someone genuinely declare himself as God? 

Another significant issue with me is that I tend to believe whatever I’m told. I believed the samyar to be God. However, suddenly, explicit clips of him performing oral sex and cunnilingus started to appear on the TV screens. I felt deceived and wrote a serialised story based on this for a weekly. He contacted me, saying, “Writer saar, don’t you know that all this is part of tantric yoga?” 

“Then you should have been open about it, like Osho.” 

I wrote the articles in great anger. After preaching celibacy to all his devotees, here he was, eating the ‘toad’ as if he were muching on an athirasam? (a sweet snack prepared by Tamils during the Deepavali festival). 

The newspaper editor and I roamed through the streets of the town where the samyar resided and had filed cases against us. We were searching for a lawyer to defend us. Surprisingly, no lawyer was available; it seemed the samyar had booked them all. Finally, one courageous young lawyer took on our case, and he’s still actively arguing in court for us.Some of the incidents that occurred while the court cases were ongoing, could become scenes in a thriller series.  One day, two stern-faced policemen from the town where the case was going on, arrived with an arrest warrant.  I had overlooked the court summons! 

By Charu Nivedita