Ronnie Govender’s debut novel, Song of the Atman (Jacana), is a family saga spanning five generations rooted in South African soil. It is a “novelised biography” of Chin Govender, the author’s uncle, who goes into voluntary exile from his home in Cato Manor, returns to his estranged family in the late 1940s after almost two decades, then participates in an arranged marriage and leaves again for District Six in Cape Town.
The novel charts geographical and cultural displacements wrought by apartheid and family strife. Chin Govender is the favoured son of Amurtham, a hard-working market-gardener and respected matriarch, devoted to her large brood, always fervently praying in the little temple in the garden of her home. There is a warmly compelling sense of simple township life, lived in Tamil, though rendered in English.
The shifting family intimacies, set against the tapestry of dire poverty, unemployment, race relations, liberation politics and cultural imperatives, are often subtly caught — especially in the earlier part of the book. Most captivating is the description of simple peri-urban South African Indian township life during the early years of the apartheid state.
Govender had to rely heavily on oral family history and his reminiscences of growing up in Cato Manor. Salman Rushdie remarked that the shards of the broken glass of nostalgia are not simply a mark of loss; reassembled, they can become a useful tool for the novelist to portray the fractured condition, the heap of broken images that also sums up contemporary life itself. Besides, the remains of the past are also frequently assembled by the imagination to form a new and kaleidoscopic design, one which, in Homi Bhabha’s words, “does not merely recall the past as social cause or aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present”.
Both Cato Manor and District Six are important places in the political landscape of South Africa and they are woven interestingly into the numerous journeys of Song of the Atman. Cato Manor enjoys the same “tyranny of place” in Govender’s stories and plays, in a way akin to Firosha Baag in Rohinton Mistry’s works, Malgudi in RK Narayan’s stories, and Marabastad in Es’kia Mphahlele’s writings.
Govender opens our eyes and hearts to the rich, complex patterns of life in Cato Manor. There is a tone of gentle compassion for seemingly insignificant lives. Govender’s joyful notation of both Cato Manor and District Six reminds us that description is one of fiction’s first and gravest tasks and he does it exceptionally well. The novel is both the portrait of the Govender family and a contemporary story of one of their sons, who makes it big in the world outside with his hotels, American cars, white/black women (although he eventually succumbs to the arranged marriage with a “good Tamil girl”), Stetson hat and European mannerisms.
Chin has in many ways broken with the family tradition, but still remains tied to it through the “song of the atman”, the tie that binds with his mother and family. Their religious fervour and his Hindu cultural norms draw him back. His identity does become a centre of mystery for his family, an intricate mystery that unfolds throughout this compelling novel and creates both intrigue and suspense as it unfolds in Chin’s quest for his true self.
There is a strong musical motif (Carnatic music, with a refrain from DK Patamal) that complements the storyline appropriately. Govender uses the timeless essence of Carnatic music, sliding through the senses, through the mind, through the soul (the “atman” of the title), in tune with the rhythms of the universe — constantly reinforcing the urge to live the melody.
Govender’s South-Indianness remains an essential aspect of his sense of self. As a writer, he has been partly formed by the presence, in his memory, of that other music of his childhood home — the rhythms, patterns and habits of thought and metaphor of his mother tongue, Tamil.
The question of religious faith is clearly important when we speak of a people as bursting with devotions as Indians. Amurtham is moved by deep faith and this influences her children so strongly that the cardinal tie binding mother and son is essentially this faith. Govender has profound knowledge of the soul of Hinduism; he has deeply spiritual concerns and his need to engage with these concerns is actually to make a reckoning with his own religious self. Reading Song of the Atman, one asks: At what point does a biography of one’s family (even a “novelised” one) enter the realm of autobiography?
There is a strong feminist line in this novel, with key figures being the grandmother (Amurtham), stereotypical scheming Indian daughter-in-law (Archee), mother (Chellamma), partners (Greta and Grace), wife (Mogie) and Mrs Reddy, the gentle, unassuming older woman who journeys from Port Elizabeth to join Chin in Cape Town and replace the lost mother of Durban. It is Mrs Reddy who gives him refuge when he lands at his first destination after running away from home, and she becomes his benefactor in Cape Town. Of course, this causes trouble with his wife.
The theme of rivalry, family discord (brothers, wives, illegitimate children) and Chin’s loyalty to Mrs Reddy (at odds with convention) are explored with consummate grace and skill by Govender.
A fascinating aspect of this narrative, that holds a mirror (albeit broken) to South African township life in the heyday of apartheid, is not just the subject matter but the concern with form — and it is not surprising that in this novel by the author of 14 plays there is a dramatic construction.
Song of the Atman is a splendid debut novel, worthy of homage. Govender’s originality is timeless. Witty observations of everyday life are webbed here with genius. The narrative is one not to be missed by anyone who cares for real good South African stories.
Professor Rajendra Chetty recently published Indias Abroad: The Diaspora Writes Back (STE)