Second anthology of Tamil pulp fiction is thrills unlimited

The Blaft Anthology Of Tamil
Pulp Fiction Vol. II
Selected and translated by Pritham K Chakravarthy
Edited by Rakesh Khanna
Blaft Publications
520 pages, Rs495

Where the first volume had a mix of social drama, romance and humour, the second anthology of Tamil pulp fiction offers more of blood and gore and is an unabashed celebration of the thrills, raciness and horror that mark this genre, writes Aditi Seshadri.

When a book has a kitschy cover with a sketch of a beautiful woman drinking blood through a straw from a skull, there is a delicious feeling of anticipation. Yes, sometimes you do judge a book by its cover, especially if the said book is The Blaft Anthology Of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. II.

In 2008, an unusually titled book did the rounds of bookstores and reviewers. With eye-catching cover art, The Blaft Anthology Of Tamil Pulp Fiction was a collection of Tamil ‘pulp’ stories and novellas by best-selling authors, the kind that had lurid covers and lined the racks of neighbourhood tea stalls all over Tamil Nadu. The stories were selected for their sheer entertainment value, very deliberately excluding ‘meaningful literature’. The experiment worked; the book sold, and not just in Chennai. And so we now have a fatter, more dramatic, Volume II.

Like the first volume, this book unabashedly celebrates the drama (more melodrama), thrills, raciness and horror that make up Tamil pulp fiction, right from the 1960s, when the genre became popular, to now. There’s no attempt to tone it down to reach a larger audience or appeal to a high-brow readership. It is what it is. Whether it’s the dramatic combining of legends that surround deities in Tamil Nadu with the complex practices of local kingdoms in ‘The Palace Of Kottaipuram’, the exaggerated suspense in ‘The Hidden Hoard In The Cryptic Chamber’ borrowed from old Tamil cinema, or the supernatural horror of Hold On A Minute, I’m In The Middle Of A Murder.

Translator Pritham K Chakravarthy has also incorporated delightful doses of regional flavour. “Labak!” pounces a policeman on a thief; “pateer!” a man is punched in the face; “dumeel! dumeel!” come bullets speeding out of the darkness, “vinnn vinnn vinnn” throbs an aching head. Certain translated phrases are odd, sometimes amusing, but not entirely out of place: “She reacted as though he had jabbed sharp needles into her ears” and “Archana felt like there was a centipede crawling in her stomach” fit right into in a fantastical murder mystery involving debauched princes.

All the stories also have an undertone of sex. Lovers’ urges overwhelm them sometimes though they always “save something for marriage”. In the illustrated story ‘Highway 117’, readers get to see the uniquely named heroine, Karate Kavitha, thrashing her kidnappers with her breasts partly uncovered (one of the thugs conveniently rips open her shirt to “get a look at that beautiful virgin body”). And in ‘Hello, Good Dead Morning’, a girl wears a t-shirt with the slogan “We two, ours two”, and loves to watch “blue films” that heat up her body into a “steaming bowl of soup”.
But all this sexual openness is caged in stereotypes. The girl who likes blue films is called Nadia and gets her comeuppance. The good girls — the ones who ‘save’ themselves — are Tamil and Hindu. The women in some of the stories are smart and ‘modern’ (shown by their preference for jeans) but, of course, beautiful with hourglass figures; one’s looks even “reflect her high-class upbringing”.

The famous Tamil pride is also apparent in a couple of the stories. In one, the villain is a Punjabi-speaking North Indian. In another, the writer describes a girl wearing a sari as the “lone custodian of the great Tamil culture”; two other girls with her are wearing salwar kameez.

Comparisons with the first collection are inevitable and the main difference is in the selection of stories. Where the earlier edition had a mix of social drama, romance and humour, this one is all blood and gore; in fact, a bit too much. And, except for the first one, the stories work only as a collection; none of them would withstand independent scrutiny for suspense and mystery.

But the book does its job. It gives you a light-hearted, unapologetic glimpse into a generation, a culture and a genre. So let’s hope there’s a Volume III.