THE MOLE IN IOWA CITY
The late Ashokamitran, a legend in contemporary Tamil literature, writes about being an insider—and an outsider—in a writing program in the United States in the seventies.
In the fall of 1973, not long after the first few professionally qualified Indians had begun emigrating to America from India, a Tamil writer traveled to Iowa City for a writing program at the University of Iowa. While the book he wrote about it is described as a fictional work, it’s obvious that all the incidents are rooted in the writer’s experiences in Iowa. As the translator N. Kalyan Raman tells us in the foreword, “a seven-month-long residential programme for international writers, conducted by the University of Iowa from Fall 1973 to Spring 1974, provides the backdrop for the book’s narrative.”
Born in 1931 in Tamil Nadu, the late Ashokamitran (whose real name was J. Thyagarajan) wrote over 200 short stories, 20 novellas, and several novels in Tamil over a career that spanned more than five decades. While I knew little about this illustrious writer before I picked up this book, now that I’ve read Mole!, I’m curious to read his other work. This author’s writing is both subdued and unpretentious. In several passages of this work, the author’s brevity and elegance took my breath away. The lines below (culled out from A. R. Venkatachalapathy’s afterword) convey the nature of Ashokamitran’s voice.
Ashokamitran consciously, or perhaps by second nature, avoids the dramatic and the spectacular. Often the incidents strike one as absurd. This element of the absurd, coupled with prose stripped bare, apparently carelessly written, with no striking images, metaphors or similes, make it possible to miss his true import. Precisely the aesthetic that makes him such an extraordinary writer. The overtly striking aspect of his writing is the wry, understated humour—a quality never absent, whether it is a story, novel, essay or columnar comment. It is to Ashokamitran’s credit that he has lent to Tamil one of modern prose’s subtle gifts.
Nearly all the experiences described in Mole! take place in the American Midwest. At the airport en route to the United States, Ashokamitran reflects on the gargantuan back of a hulk of a man at the immigration counter. This would be his personal introduction to the height and build of Caucasians. That was exactly my feeling when I first landed in America, that, on average, those from the Indian subcontinent were much shorter and slighter than Caucasians. This feeling about race and size would return when I birthed my two children, too.
The European standing ahead of me had a massive body. I could have neatly sketched a map of the world on his back. The woman with him was also large.
Naturally, no sooner had I begun this book than I was chuckling or laughing out loud because my own initiation to both Americans and to the American life was not that much different even though I arrived a whole decade after the author.
Given my scrawny brown form (yes, I was 118 pounds once), the average Caucasian seemed Amazonian until, four decades later, my girth changed to what it is today. This evolution of a human being is expressed in a quotable passage by Ashokamitran after he stares at his passport photograph taken seven years before. How do we not tear up as we read this illuminating passage about the scars on one’s soul bubbling up into the face?
Seven years is a very long period in a person’s life—so much happens in that time, and every kind of event, too. As a man grows older, you can see a lot more on his face than just his features. Those who had known and left him, his relationships, losses, love, anger, death, fear, disease, enmity, the loss of a job, the gain of a job, uncertainties, childbirth, the myriad new responsibilities that come along with the child, problems, nightmares, expectations, disappointments, humiliations, calamities affecting the entire city, cyclone, flood, loss of ration card, neck sprain, murder in a neighboring street, elections, police firing…all these are visible.
I’ve pondered this over the years as I began to add on the frown lines and the gray hair. Observations like this make this book at once accessible and poignant. The focus on the everyday banality of one’s life resonated with me, too. Nothing much happens during these six months except for a couple of dramatic events upon his arrival. His encounter with snow and his absolute unpreparedness for the weather is funny, sad and relatable for I’ve heard many similar tale from friends who arrived to pursue higher studies in universities set in areas with unforgiving winters.
Yet, what the author suggests is that even as nothing quite life-altering happens to us all, we are often altered in some profound way by the people who become our associates for a certain period of time. That is precisely what we discover in this collection of reflections about six months in America.
The narrator’s experience during his year in Iowa also reminded me of my own one month retreat in a village near Paris called Marnay-sur-Seine in 2017. I was one of about eight people in this sleepy French village and by the end of the month I’d discovered the quirks and the strengths of each of us. Thrown into a motley crowd with folks from different age groups, disciplines and cultures we often discover so much about ourselves. Our own insecurities and ignorance rise to the surface. I remember the evening someone in my group began talking about a certain “Drake” during dinner; my question to the group—“Who’s Drake?”—met with a lot of snickers and titters. Every dinner session at Marnay-sur-Seine made me painfully aware of how different I was compared to the rest of the group, despite my age, my travels and what I understood to be my perspicacity. It’s this discomfiture that I recognized in Ashokamitran’s writings about his stay in America, and I suppose that’s why Mole! resonated with me from start to finish.
What makes this memoir memorable are also the characters who tramp through the pages. Many of these illustrious literary personages are long dead now but we meet them in the flesh, thanks to Ashokamitran, and we begin to watch them at their most uncomfortable and their most insecure. One of the most unforgettable is an eccentric Ethiopian writer called Abie Gubegna who insists on getting a brand new suit custom-made for a king’s ransom that he then chooses to wear every day (after dousing it generously with perfume) of his stint in Iowa City. By the time this Ethiopian leaves Iowa, he and the author fall out, especially after Gugena punches him on the left shoulder after a particularly harsh exchange of words.
Among the most moving passages is the story about the Korean writer Choe who shares an apartment with the author in the early part of his stay. Day after day, the author is nettled by the smell of garlic invading all the pores of the apartment. His Brahmin orthodox tastebuds begin to taste garlic even in his morning coffee. Just as he’s exasperated by the incessant garlic fumes in his shared apartment and has several heated exchanges with his Korean apartment mate, Choe’s mother passes away in Korea. We watch the author’s humanity in a powerful moment of reconciliation.
Between him and his mother’s body lay a vast continent and a boundless ocean.
I sat down on the floor and held him in a close embrace. I held him so tight that he could scarcely breathe. He started to cry. I did not stop him for sobbing and crying. My shirt was completely drenched at the shoulder. After a long time—and only after he had experienced some release—I slackened my hold. He held me in turn and cried, “I’ll never forget you. I’ll never forget you.”
I haven’t forgotten how I had sat next to him in that apartment in Iowa City, ten thousand miles away from either of our countries holding him tightly in my embrace. Even then, a faint smell of garlic was coming off him.
As we reach the end of his term at the university, the author has become fast friends with several other writers and poets. We are with the author in the realization that despite the friction and disenchantment inside a relationship, parting is always bittersweet. On the day of the author’s departure to India these colleagues all too keenly aware that this may well be the last time they see one another.
Yei did not speak a word; nor did Zapinsky. Both had got into the car; they were keeping the door open for me. It only seemed right that these two were coming all the way to the airport to send me off. Burt started the engine. He had to take me away quickly from there for me to be able to catch my flight. Even so, he showed a sweet hesitancy. The morning hour was very beautiful. We were all silent and still for some time. Then I got into the car. After I was seated properly, Yatchik too squeezed himself into the seat beside me and shut the car door. For the last time, I saw the faces of those fifteen people lined up on the pavement. Faces that had grown on me; faces that reminded me of so much energy, hope and sharing; faces I could never again hope to see.
I loved the title of this book because it’s apropos in describing a writer who has burrowed his way into a writing residency and intends to observe his fellow writers quietly while living like them. In espionage jargon, a ‘mole’ is a long-term spy embedded in the target organization’s intelligence organizations with access to secret documents and codes. Our author is just that, after all, an all-seeing insider who will always remain an outsider.
As a Tamilian who can't read or write Tamil, I'm really looking forward to reading this book. Thank you!
Very nice.