“Soil-Eating Maragatham” – Utharakosamangai Memories – 4
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('Thanks to ChatGPT for assisting in the English translation of my original Tamil creations.”)
(Illustration by Usha Bharathi – thanks)
He had never seen him actually eat soil. And his real name
wasn’t even Maragatham. Yet, this nickname had stuck so strongly that people
had almost forgotten his real name.
Some friends had given him that name saying that, as a
child, he used to eat soil, and that was why his stomach was always swollen. It
was true that his stomach was bloated—but anyone who saw him eat would guess
there might be other reasons too.
In the First North Street, about five or six houses away
from his own, at the corner stood Maragatham’s house. A tiled house with a
raised front platform. Every morning, he would go to the fields with his father
and return only in the evening. His schooling had stopped midway.
From evening until bedtime, he would sit on that front
platform and sing. He had a good voice. Mostly, he sang songs of T. M.
Soundararajan. From the nearby library, his singing could be heard clearly.
After studying, he would go and sit there just to listen to him sing.
Maragatham would bring out his collection of cinema song
booklets and show them. There would be stacks of them—films ranging from M. G.
Ramachandran and Sivaji Ganesan to Jaishankar and Ravichandran.
In those days, a song booklet cost five paise. The cover
would have a still from the movie. Inside, the first page would carry a short
summary of the story—ending with the teasing line: “Watch the rest on the
silver screen.”
They had seen white screens and worn-out screens in
theatres—but what was this “silver screen”? When asked, he would say, “New
movies release on Fridays, right? That’s why it’s called ‘silver’!”
Every word he spoke would end in “-ppu”—“vaappu, okkaarappu,
solluppu, sarippu.” That was his style.
From the Panchayat Board radio nearby, devotional songs
would play in the morning, followed by news, radio dramas, and film songs. That
was how he learned music.
During festival seasons, especially “Mulaikottu” and others,
temporary stages would be set up at street corners. Plays like Velan Vedan
Viruthan with songs of Sankaradas Swamigal would be performed by actors
from Madurai.
Even without loudspeakers, their bronze-like voices would
carry across all the streets. He remembered artists like T. R. Mahalingam and
M. M. Mariappa performing there.
Maragatham would listen intently, memorize everything, and
the very next day, his voice would echo those songs again from the front
platform—like “Kaayaatha Kaanagathe…”
The drama would begin at 10 PM and go on until 4 AM the next
morning—continuous songs and dialogues. Audience-requested film songs would
also be sung.
He would go early, sit on the ground, and listen. Sometimes,
he too would go and sit beside him. Sleep would overtake him halfway, and he
would return home, lie on the front platform, and fall asleep listening to the
distant songs.
The next evening after school, he would go to Maragatham’s
house, listen to the full story of the play, and hear all the songs again.
Maragatham had never been to a cinema. But he (the narrator)
had gone to Ramanathapuram with his father and watched films in Shanmuga
Theatre and Rajaram Theatre. He would buy a five-paise song booklet and narrate
the rest of the story—“what happened on the silver screen”—to Maragatham.
Maragatham would be overjoyed. A few weeks later, when the
radio broadcast the audio version of the same film, he would say, “You told the
story exactly right!”
One day, he had severe eye pain and had his eyes bandaged at
the local hospital. Even then, he continued singing the songs he had memorized,
tapping rhythm on the stacks of songbooks.
He especially loved songs from Aayirathil Oruvan,
particularly “Oodum Megangale…”
When he sang the line, “Among the slaves in this land, I
am one in a thousand,” tears would seep through his bandage along with the
medicine.
“My eyes are hurting…” he would say.
His eyes never opened again. Within days, he lost his vision
completely. But he never stopped singing from that front platform.
One day, when the narrator returned from out of town, they
told him:
“Soil-Eating Maragatham is gone…”
They added, “Stomach pain, they say… he never stopped eating
soil.”
He didn’t believe it. He had never once seen Maragatham eat
soil.
Among the memories of Utharakosamangai, “Soil-Eating
Maragatham” will always remain—
“one among a thousand…”
— Nagendra Bharathi
My Poems/Stories/Articles in Tamil and English
