Kalki's Heroines..

I am almost at the end of 'Alai Osai'. What I see is the amazing common ground between this and 'Ponniyin Selvan'. Before that, one of the things that I like in Kalki's writings is the way he portrays his women. In all his novels, there are as many varieties of women as the flavors of ice creams. Invariably, all his heroines are of the tragic varieties who have an unrequited love or some tragic incident in their life. I cannot but compare Tharini with Nandini. Or Seetha with Vanathy. Although Seetha and Vanathy are not comparable after some initial coincidences.

But Tharini is amazingly in the same mold as Nandini. Both have a mysterious birth secret. They love a person only to be pulled away from them by the mothers. Both of them are very courageous in facing up to life. What is more interesting about them is the way they see life. Nandini, even after knowing that Adithya Karigalan might be her brother, wants to have her revenge and gets it when he is killed. Sounds terrible but she has had so much tragedies in her life that she is totally bent on having her revenge. When he is killed, she has her revenge on Kunthavai (who might be her sister) also. So in spite of the cruelty of it, we end up pitying her. Tharini also falls in the same category. Although she is not thirsting for revenge, she becomes the indirect reason for the wrecking of her former lovers marriage. She regrets it but is more interested in the affairs of the nation than anything. Like Nandini, she spends a lot of time searching for her mother and trying to find whom her father is. Amazingly, like Nandini's mother, Tharini's mother is also a mysterious creature whose motives we don’t come to know till the very end.

In a way Vanathy's story is the reverse of Seetha's. Vanathy is very uncertain about the love of Arulmozhi and so was jealous of every girl near him. She makes her life miserable by not knowing about the love of Arulmozhi. She even hates Poonkuzhali for being close to him. She tries to grab his attention by fainting whenever he is near (!). She has her complete happiness when Arulmozhi reveals his love for her (after five big volumes of exhaustive romance!). Seetha's is the reverse of it. She and Raghavan fall in love immediately and get married immediately. Her miseries start after that. She learns about his past affair with Tharini and tries to grab his attention by becoming completely modern. But he is not impressed. So she leaves him and after much turmoil, leaves the world also.

Its kind of interesting to note that Kalki's heroines are almost the same person in some of the stories. Sivakami is not so different from the ones described above. She goes through a lot of troubles and takes her revenge on Pulikesi. She also loses her lover Narasimhavarman because of his father. May be Kalki had a reason for showing his heroines as tragic and revengeful. May be not. We may never know. What we do know is that we have a group of female characters who are sure to take our hearts and minds away.

Of course my favorite is Vanathy. She is the romantic heroine of all time. She is mysterious, charming, down-to-earth, utopist and all at once. That’s what makes her a unique character. Nandini and Poonkuzhali comes a close second. Especially the songs Kalki wrote for Poonkuzhali fits her character so much, when you read it you will think of it as a song from the past. Almost all his heroines are free-spirited females, who cannot be bent to do something they don’t want to do. They make their own decisions and act on it even if everyone is against it. Even after Vanthiyathevan urges Nandini to spare Adhityan, she goes ahead and sets the trap, which kills Adhityan. Seetha walks away from her husband. Tharini decides to leave Raghavan and all his pleading after that is in vain. Even the mentally unstable mother of Nandini and Razia begum has their agendas and is caught only when they wished so.

In Alai Osai, Kalki talks about the 'Sanadana Hindu Dharma’ that gives females the respect they deserve and demands back that they obey the rules of the life. It’s kind of hard to describe but most of his heroines are basically that only. They have a lot of self-respect and when they feel that their respect is getting threatened they turn against whoever the cause is. Kalki's characterization is certainly modern for the time period it was written. But it also should be noted that it was the freedom movement, which brought forth the women out of their confined spaces and start demanding for equal rights. I wouldn’t say that has happened even now but it is certainly an offshoot of the freedom movement. So Kalki was able to modernize his heroines as much as he wanted. It must also be noted that women had much more rights than they had in the 200 years of the British rule or the 500 years or Mogul rule. Definitely, the women-repressive nature of Moguls and the Victorian morality of the colonial times had an impact on the thinking of the country with respect to women.

Kalki's heroes as well as heroines are much more modern in thoughts than their time and Kalki definitely had some ideas about the freedoms of female. In fact he talks about it in almost every novel. But his views are more based on the Hindu Dharma he discusses and so need very careful analysis.

I haven't written about most of Kalki's heroines. A lot more details analysis is required to cover them as well. So probably I will continue some other time.