Found in translation

C. Radhakrishnan is a prolific, award-winning novelist but not many may be aware that he was once a journalist with premier English publications in the big cities. He has drawn from his considerable experience to pen his voluminous and realistic novels. Now, one of his important works that he published in 1994 has been translated into English as Now for a Tearful Smile.

In the late 60s, Radhakrishnan was an assistant editor with Patriot in Delhi and volunteered to go on a two-week assignment to live with the Naxalites of West Bengal. Two weeks got extended to four and he succeeded in infiltrating the ranks of the Naxals. But when it was time to leave, the extremists did not let him go as the cops were hot on their heels. He ended up living and travelling with them for about six months before they were all captured.

“There was a Tamil officer who believed me when I told him that I was a journalist and was able to get away,” says Radha-krishnan. At the height of the Punjab extremism, he was sent as an ‘expert’ to cover the ethnic trouble in that state. He came back to write the book called Karal Pilarum Kalam (When heart breaks into two) based on his experiences. Now for a Tearful Smile covers the post-Emergency period when Indira Gandhi, and later her son, ruled India, their assassinations and the political intrigues associated with that era.

Even as he narrates the love between Arjun, the ‘terrorist’, who leads a double life as Sidharth Thapa, the journalist, and a tribal girl he saves from a village ravaged by an upper class landlord, he also chronicles the social and political history of the country by bringing out the power struggle in the capital. Those who know history will recognise the characters; Virendra Brahmachari is clearly Dheerendra Brahmachari and Surya Swami is none other than Chandra Swami. As for the prime ministers, he has not even bothered to substitute them with false names, reiterating his intention to record history through fiction.

The only problem being, the modern reader is a bit baffled sometimes about where fiction ends and facts begin. What might have been an explosive book, lost its firepower because it was written in a regional language. The book gets its second chance now through Kairali Narayanan’s translation.