THE FATAL RUMOUR: a NINETEENTH-CENTURY INDIAN NOVEL By B.R. Rajam Aiyar, Oxford, Rs 295 This is the translation of one of the earliest and best loved novels in Tamil. Its author, B.R. Rajam Aiyar, who had come to Madras from Vatalakundu, a small village near Madurai, was only 21 when he started to write it. The Fatal Rumour was serialized from 1893 to 1895 in the journal Vivekacintamani and was published in book form a year later, in 1896. Unlike the historical romances and social novels that were the principle form long prose narratives in the vernacular took in those days, The Fatal Rumour is a gentle satire set in a small village, Sirukulam. It steers clear of social criticism. In fact, Lakshmi, the daughter of Muttuswami Aiyar, the novel?s chief protagonist, is married off at the age of 10 and the author goes to considerable lengths to show how happy and full of conjugal bliss the marriage was. The novel however is unmerciful in its criticism of Brahmins. Despite being one of the earliest products in the genre, The Fatal Rumour presents a happy synthesis of the foreign form and the native sensibility. The plot is fairly unremarkable. Muttuswami Aiyar, rich, virtuous and god fearing, is ruined by malicious rumour-mongering by the women of Sirukulam, in particular, his envious sister in law, Ponammal. After a lot of travails, when he believes, a la Harishchandra, that he has lost his son, wife and all his wealth, he recovers them through the good offices of Satcitananda Swami, a sadhu, Peyandi Tevan, the reformed thief, and Ammiyappa Pillai the poetaster and scholar. The question that seems to preoccupy Rajam Aiyar, and progressively makes the tone of the novel sombre after the sunny irreverence of the earlier half, is how to attain happiness. It is obviously not enough to be virtuous and rich. If anything, the combination often leads to pride which rouses envy in others. For instance, Muttuswami?s wife, the good Kamalambal, attracts the malicious attention of the gossipmongers led by the redoubtable Suppu primarily because she remains aloof from gossip. Further, despite knowing Suppu to be a mischief maker Kamalambal succumbs to her blandishments. Thus to be happy one must always keep a constant watch over evil and be able to recognize its many wiles. The novel makes enjoyable reading even a century after it was written for the sharpness of its satirical vision and its assured characterization. The youthful exuberance with which Rajam Aiyar captures the urgency of even the smallest happenings in the village comes through even in translation. However, the sharp edge of his satire is at all times tempered with a knowledge of human follies. Despite all the pain Suppu occasions, Rajam Aiyar does not come down heavily on her. The gossip circle might in its effect lead to a lot of evil, but it is always looked at indulgently. Stuart Blackburn?s lucid translation makes for easy reading and manages to retain much of the flavour of the original. However, Blackburn trips up when it comes to language which is the principle device Rajam Aiyar uses throughout the novel to differentiate between characters and as a ploy by which readers can recognize whether a character is good or bad. For example, Vaitti, Ponammal?s nephew who is the one unqualified villain in the novel is frowned upon because he peppers his speech with Urdu. Suppu, speaks in a strange tongue which consists mainly of the syllable ?ya?. The emptiness of Ammiyappa Pillai?s scholarship is best shown by the way he proves the annam metaphor used frequently in Tamil literature refers to rice. Also Blackburn deletes an entire chapter given to the spiritual visions of Muttuswami which obviously are not essential to the development of the story. Finally, at a time publishers seem interested only in English novels of unproven literary merit by Indian authors, such a translation, tapping into the vast resources of the literatures in the many Indian languages, deserves to be specially commended.