Vaadivaasal (Arena)

CS Chellappa

Translated by N Kalyan Raman

Oxford, 120 pages, Rs175

Chellappa’s novella is set in the early twentieth century and describes a bull taming contest in a village near Madurai on a hot summer afternoon. Through his description of traditional rituals of bull taming, the author provides a masterful account of power relations in rural Tamil Nadu. When it was published in the late 1940s, Vaadivaasal was considered remarkable for introducing a centuries-old sport into modernist Tamil fiction, as well as for the writer’s ability to capture the speech and lifestyles of a subaltern caste.This edition is part of a new series of Indian novellas in English translation from the publisher.