The novel Karisal, written by veteran Tamil writer Ponneelan, was published in 1976. In five years, it will reach its golden jubilee year. In these forty-five years, it has seen many reprints. For a novel to remain in the public sphere even many years after its publication, it should fulfil two fundamental requirements. One is that it must have archival value and the other is that it should have literary value.
The field of the novel, the qualities of that region, the people who live there, the food, the dressing sense and other cultural elements, and the language give the novel archival value. The customs, habits and events also acquire archival value. One cannot say that a present-time reader would read a novel merely for its archival value. Only historians and sociologists may approach such a novel for their own specific needs. Its various editions may lie on library shelves gathering dust. It may be printed for the use of libraries and rare readers.
A novel cannot only have literary merit either. It can have less archival value and more of literary merit. In such novels, the details about the field would be fewer and psychological aspects and existential complexities would be in greater detail. It may even pass over important details. Modern readers like such novels to an extent. Historians and researchers do not take such novels into serious consideration.
A rare novel is that which has both archival value and literary merit in equal measure or judiciously mixed. Such novels retain the period and contextual details of that period only to the extent that is needed for the central theme of the novel. The intention of such a novel would be not to pack the novel with details but use details according to the requirement of the novel, and this can be clearly seen. Such a novel would be accepted by all and would stand the test of time and remain in the public sphere. It would be a novel that would be published again and again and read with interest all the time.
Karisal is a novel that has both archival value and literary merit in equal measure. Some of the details the novel records make one wonder. The picture of a village in the Karisal region fifty years ago is a pitiful one. There is only one solid house and all the rest are huts. They are literally 'mud walls' with their roofs ripped off and broken walls. People live in those houses-they run their households in them. When we compare this to present times, one wonders if our earlier generation lived such a life. One feels tongue-tied to speak about what they ate as food. It is doubtful they even ate. Only kanji is mentioned as food throughout the novel. Sometimes, one is shocked to see that people don't even get that and remain hungry for two or three days. Life everywhere is filled with hunger and poverty.
Some 'thinkers' today debate endlessly about stopping freebies offered by the government. There is a scene in this novel that seems to be a very casual one a new teacher comes to a village school that has not been shut down for a long time. The students arrive when they come to know a teacher has arrived. They arrive not eager to study but to eat the kanji that would be served for lunch. They ask with craving: 'Ayya, Ayya, will kanji be served today?' This question comes in the novel casually, with no build-up. But the ripples this question creates is not a simple one. I see this as an important historical record. I also feel this scene is an experience that shatters one's mind. This novel has several such scenes.
Early Tamil novels have recorded several instances of child marriage. They talk about customs in the upper castes of society. This novel, written after about a hundred years, speaks about such a practice in agricultural castes. A young boy is married off to a person who is his maternal aunt in terms of relationship. The person who tries to have a relationship with her is actually the young boy's father. Edgar Thurston, in his book Castes and Tribes of Southern India, has recorded such details: '. ... a young boy is often married to a grown-up woman, and it is admitted that, in such cases, the boy's father takes upon himself the duties of a husband until his son has reached maturity..." Karisal provides evidence that such a custom existed even fifty years ago.
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