Sivagimiyin Sabatham – review

/*Contains spoilers*/

It was four years back that I read Ponniyin Selvan. I remember the way I could just not put it down and the ecstatic experience of being transported to the rich, beautiful land of ancient tamil nadu. When I started SS, I was scared of being disappointed, scared that I may have matured a bit for the magic of the writing to touch me the same way again. But all these fears were broken down and the ride through the book was compelling and ecstatic. Kalki’s writing is addictive. He often uses simple language and clear narration. He does not plant unwanted hooks to sustain the readers’ interest. The story and the characters simply live in you imagination and grow into full fledged people and beyond a point, one is left empathising with each character, through the emotions, fears and dreams the characters go through. Sivagami in all her innocence, in all her anger, in all her fickelity of mind, in all her love, in all her stubborness is the most admirable character in the novel. Mahendra pallavar is admirable for his tactics in avoiding the war and his disuises, but I started hating him at one point when he keeps plotting against Sivagami claiming it to be for the dynasty’s good (He even suggests in his deathbed that he was planning to marry her to prevent Narasimhavarman from marryin her)! Moreover though he is wise in protecting the people rather than his ego and avoiding war, his plan of marrying Narasimhavarman to the Pandya princess just for their support makes
us lose the respect we had for him. Narasimhavarman, the hero of the story, is the victim caught between his father and the stubborn Sivagami. He is valiant and aggressive. Naganandhi, the monk who is obsessed with Sivagami is the perfect villain who it is difficult to fully hate or fully like. His love for Sivagmi is overwhelming and maybe even more than what Narasimha had for her! Pulikesi is the aggressive, disgusting villain who does not even follow the dharma of war (like not killing innocent people/women etc). Paranjothi (who resembles our Vanthiyadevan from PS in few aspects) is a brave man, coming from humble background, who is always the pragmatic person and serves to mitigate Narasimma’s aggression. He sees the futility of the war and once the war completes, resigns from the
Commandar post and becomes a Sivanadiyar. He has great admiration and respect for Mahendra whom he meets when  Mahendra is disguised as Vajrabahu.

The one sabatham or challenge that Sivagami takes leads to a bloody war and lot of loss innocent lives. The last  part shows the futility of war and Sivagami’s quest for revenge fades away on seeing how revenge could never bring peace. But it is too late and Narasimma varman fulfills the challenge to its very end and Sivagami is thrown into guilt. But her final heartbreak comes only after she returns home, when she learns that Narasimmavarman had married the Pandya princess. Our heart reaches out to Sivagami. I think the descriptions in the love scenes in the first two parts must be among the best words ever written about love! Our hearts too dance in bliss as we read through the selfless and innocent love that Narasimmavarman and Sivagami share. Till the very end of the novel, I kept hoping  that Narasimmavarman will marry her. It is hinted that his father had many wives – so why not him! But I guess that would have spoilt the beauty of the love they share and I guess sad endings leave a more profound impact on the reader than happy ones. .
Despite its sheer beauty, there were things I did not like in the novel:

*Sivagami trusts Naganandi almost till the end. Mahendra told her about the monk trying to kill Narasimma. Then why
would she trust or respect the monk. I got irritated whenever she addressed him as ‘Swami’! (Maybe she did not trust
Mahendra as he had plotted to seperate her from Narasimma)

*Sivagami after seeing the people quickly forget the past and move on, realises the futility of her sabatham – she could have easily given it up in the nine years since the sabatham. It seems overwhelming that she did nothing for those nine years! (But then we’d have missed a great kaaviyam if she had done so:) )

*the ending as I said already is too sad though expected.

When I was reading the first two parts, I thought I liked SS even more than PS. Still, I think Sivagami’s love and dance will forever haunt the readers because of the ending. Like PS, this story is an experience. To sum  up, I want to quote some thing from one of its chapters (translated):
“Sivagami delayed opening the quills and reading their contents like a small kid who has a box of sweets but is afraid that the pleasure will get over if he opens and eats. “
With both PS and SS, I felt so bad when the story ended, that I could no longer go back to that golden era, to those wonderful people and places.

p.s.:  I have started reading ‘Paarthiban Kanavu’ which has many characters from SS and takes place few years after the time frame of SS. Will post my review as soon as I finish:)

The Stand – Review

I have wanted to read this novel for quite some time. I had read reviews that said this was the best novel written
by Stephen King so far. King has been one of my favourite authors and I wanted to know what his best would be like.
Moreover, this novel was rated in many top 100 novels lists(Randomhouse:http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html, Best 100 novels: http://www.thebest100lists.com/best100novels/), especially the lists where people got to vote instead of some stupid snobs who would not accept any work other than those literary 1000 page novels without plot and with
highly ornate 1000 word descriptions of how the leaves fell from the tree to the ground on one fine day. There are such literary classics that, maybe, are too good. But rejecting popular fiction merely because it is understood and appreciated by all instead of an elite group is nothing short of ignorant snobbery. Some great man said “The true test of greatness of art is its ability to be understood by the masses”. I have hated some of the novels he wrote like Gerald’s game or Cujo (I threw the former before I was half-way through). I generally don’t like his ‘situational horror’ novels in which the narration seems to be in realtime as the characters get stuck in a horrific sitation (Gerald’s game- The protaganist is hand cuffed to the bed, in a room with her dead husband, killed by a reflexive blow during their foreplay. Cujo- A woman who has committed adultery gets stuck with her baby inside a car for 3 days and a rabid(haunted) dog waits for her to open the door). There is intense pyschological depth in his characters and narration. My favourites from him are ‘Riding the bullet’(a novella), The Green Mile (adapted into a beautiful movie with Tom Hanks playing the protaganist) and now ‘The Stand’. He is accused often of
being too wordy and the older version that I read had 720 pages. He released it again in 90s with the initially cut portions included which I read was around 1200 pages long. But I thought it was an enjoyable read and did not get stagnant or boring anywhere along though it definitely not the ‘thriller’ types.

Though it starts off with most of the population dying from a accidental flu virus outbreak which was being developed as a biological weapon, it is mostly about humans, especially Americans, and about human behaviour. The survivors of the apocalypse split into two groups of evil and good and the story is the the epical tale of the struggle between the two forces, sometimes both inside the same individual. Though there are too many characters in the story, each of them are so well portrayed and towards the end of the novel, it feels like we’ve lived with the characters and miss them. For me, characters are more important than even the plot and the ones in this novel are alive and human and real. They make real follies and are real heroes or real villains. I think only few master story tellers like King bring out the characters to life so perfectly and effortlessly. Next comes the descriptions which are on par with the characterization though I felt most of the references to places, people, culture, music are esoteric and could be appreciated more by Americans. But he is an American author and probably wrote for American readers alone at that time. So the descriptions of the geography and culture of the different states, though rich, were things I could not relate to.

King is infinitely insightful of human behaviour and the way the characters respond and progress through the story is realistic and serves perfectly to move the story ahead. In the final few chapters we feel the pain and the loss and more importantly the greatness that an ordinary human being can achieve. He shows that the people in the ‘evil’  group aren’t fully evil. Towards the climax, the characters ripen completely and we see them raise to glory, each in his own way(Especially the ‘evil’ group characters like Trachcan, Lloyd and the ‘good’ ones like Larry, Stu, Ralph, Glen).  We end up sympathising with all the characters which is the highest achievement for a novel. This is a novel that deserves its place up there on the top 100. Do read it. I will lend it to you if you want (though it’s a tattered second hand copy ).