Kannae Kanmaniyae

The first Ramani Chandran Novel that I read. I don’t think I can ever forget it, back at home most of January was holiday for us and I was just simply bored. After lunch my mother would take an afternoon nap and brothers would go out to play cricket leaving me all alone. It was during these few hours that I learned to sew, make handcrafts, learned to bake and most important of all started reading novels. My aunt had been a fan of Ramani amma and she had left behind Kannae Kanmaiyae from her previous visit, I picked the book up out of pure boredom. I didn’t like reading till that day and I only picked up the book because there was NOTHING else for me to do. The first chapter really didn’t capture me, the only that kept me going was the fact that her brother lost all his money gambling. I distinctly remember this because I had seen my eldest brother taking money from my father’s shirt pocket that day, and I had several theories to why he took the money (ranging from going to the movies with his friends to him eloping with someone only to be caught by my father around the street corner). So this book gave me one more theory that he can be gambling and I can be the one to tell my father this. This was the mere reason that kept me reading at that point, but soon afterwards I was so absorbed into the book I couldn’t put it down. After I finished that book I just had to read more books and I was addicted. I started asking my friends and they managed to give me some books. So this is the story of I got bitten by the book bug. (oh yea it turned out that I was partly right out my brother, he took the money to buy a gift for his girlfriend)
Most of my friends had to read books in secret as they were forbidden by their parents, but I was sure that wouldn’t be the case for me as my father loves to read and had his own small library in the storage room. My father had seen me read ramani amma’s books a couple of time and about a month after I started reading my mother told me my father wanted to talk to me and he was waiting for me on the back veranda. The back veranda doesn’t usually correspond to a lot of pampering so I knew it was not going to be good. We had a long talk and he showed me how separate reality from fiction. I am sure if I hadn’t had that talk with him, I would not be who I am today. He told me that there is no man that can be perfect as how they are portrayed in the books and how the struggles that I will have to face in life are much larger than the ones in the books. He explained that life is not a calm river running along smoothly to reach its lifelong ambition of joining the ocean but a fierce river that has many rocks and falls along the way. I understood that day that I cannot expect my life to be like the ones in the books which was really important at that age as I started to think my life was going to similar to that of the protagonists in Ramani amma’s books.
I fully understood the importance of my fathers talk 8 years later, when my best friend took her own life away. She had been a fan of Ramani amma, she was so absorbed in the books that it was really hard for her to realize what was reality and what was fiction. She fell in love just like in the books and afterwords she just couldn’t overcome the real obstacles of life. I wish I had been around her at those hard times but in her last letter to me she had said “life is not as how it is in Ramani amma’s books but much more complex…” I know a lot of young girls are reading Ramani amma’s books nowadays and I just want them to keep in my mind that reality is nothing like what it seems in the books, but much more adventurous and complex. Nevertheless I am still a HUGE fan of Ramani amma and her writing mesmerizes me and I will be updating on her books when I get the time.

Mithra