If you look closely, no life is ordinary. The geopolitics of the past, the social upheavals that took place, the pointing finger of chance that choose this or that person, all these mark each life as unique. By the same token, each life contains traces of their times, and one person could potentially reflect the history of a period. Literary fiction writers have used this technique for long.
But Ayya’s Accounts, by Anand Pandian and M P Mariappan, uses this approach to tell a real life story. Mariappan, the ‘Ayya’ of the title, is Anand’s grandfather, and in this book, the grandson and the grandfather alternating narration, takes us through a tumultuous life lived in tumultuous times.
From a poor childhood in rural Tamil Nadu, Mariappan travels to Burma with his father, who is settled in a town near Rangoon. He eventually starts up a store business there and begins to prosper. These are good times for Indians in British-controlled Burma.
However, with World War II looming, most of them are forced to travel back to India by road—a harrowing journey of 1,700 miles, through jungles and barely-there roads. He arrives at Pudur in TN and struggles to reclaim his life, eventually getting married, moving to Madurai, and starting a fruit business.
Mariappan becomes secure only after this business prospers. However, as each of his children gets settled in life and inevitably moves away with better job prospects, he finds himself dealing with a new globalised world where one’s family is no more contained in a village or town. The lessons learned through his life stand him in good stead and he is the guiding light for the younger folks.
Put blandly, this could be every man’s story. But that’s the point the joint authors are making—that even a normal life has drama in it. In one way or another, every reader will see something of himself or his family in this book. Mariappan’s story stands also for the growth of a nation.
Most of us Indians who are now successful in life owe it to much poorer parents and grandparents who struggled to improve their lot. Where building your own home was once the biggest worry for couples in the years before liberalisation, now the stories related to emigration and time zones occupy mind space.
Mariappan never claims to be extraordinary in any way, or does his grandson. He admits to bits of cheating in his business dealings. He admits that he wasn’t home enough for his children, and even that he isn’t as educated or as smart as he’d like to be. But, he says, this is the way of the world he lived in. He is proving himself to be a ‘normal’ man.
The book comes off as slightly confused at points—just when you are settling into the autobiographical narrative, it shifts to detailed anthropological analysis. And then back. Most readers may prefer one or the other. Let this not detract you from reading this book, however, both views are interesting.