SHORT STORIES
All for status quo
C.K. MEENA
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Most of the stories do nothing to question standard `virtues' like chastity and purity.
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A more alarming tendency is the disgust that the middle-class heroines show towards the lower classes
The Betrayal and Other Stories; Sivasankari, EastWest Books, Rs. 150.
THE folly of judging a book by its cover would swiftly come home to the reader of modern fiction who picks up Tamil author Sivasankari's anthology The Betrayal and Other Stories after seeing Thotaa Tharani's illustration. The cover of the book (transcreated in English by Meera Rajagopal and Rekha Shetty and re-printed this year) shows female hands leading a reluctant bull by a rope tied through its nose. Woman on top? No such luck. The image, taken from the title story, is quite reactionary when seen in context.
Only a small wave
The stories in this collection, which span three decades, could be misconstrued as representing some sort of Indian proto-feminism. But even as they seemingly rock the middle class boat, they do no more than create a smallish wave. The boat is safe and steady.
To get back to "The Betrayal" (published in 1978), Chandra, a wealthy woman, patiently puts up with her cheating husband for 25 years. She gets him married to his latest mistress before ordering him to leave her house. This is supposed to be an act of revenge. Young Nalini, we are told, will not only satisfy his carnal urges (he strays because he is over-sexed) but also keep him firmly in check — here's where the bull metaphor comes in.
In "The Imperceptible Slip", an earnest woman's libber named Kayalvizhi (even her name is intended to provoke mockery) barges into her former classmate Aruna's house on a Sunday morning and lectures her husband on feminism. Her visit disturbs the harmony of the household. Aruna accuses her husband of not lending a hand but quickly recants. She realises that her friend's "stupid talk" could have sparked off "something big". The husband, meanwhile, valiantly attempts to mix chapathi dough, makes a watery mess, and earns his wife's tender admonition: "Who asked you to do these things?" A similar message comes through in "The Big Fight": it is wiser for a woman to "adjust" than to quarrel with her husband over trivial matters.
Sivasankari's habit of beating you over the head with a message or a moral gets irksome after a while — maybe this is her social-activist self at work. "Me and Mine" ends with a sermon and "Stepney", with an explanation. Characters lack complexity and often turn into stereotypes: the selfish, complaining wife who treats her mother-in-law like dirt in "Thorn in the Bed", and the rich, busy mother who decides to stop working to spend time with her love-starved daughter in "Be with me Mommy".
Alarming tendency
A more alarming tendency is the disgust that the middle-class heroines show towards the lower classes in stories such as "First Sale" and "The Betrayal". All they can see, when encountering the less fortunate, are flies and dirt and half-naked kids with running noses.
When Chandra visits the squalid neighbourhood where Nalini lives, she covers her nose with a perfumed handkerchief. There is no irony in the description. In Chandra's triumphant final speech she says that Nalini is "crude" and "a bajaari", and tells her husband: "She has little breeding but that is not her fault... it is the fault of her birth." Wow.
Sivasankari at her best displays lively wit and keen observation. One wishes there were more stories such as "Sleepless on a Butterfly's Wing" and "Boredom", which reflect subtle moods and states of mind, or "The Flow and the Ebb", a slyly humorous tale of a well-meaning woman whose intentions of responding to a newspaper appeal for funds come to naught. "Madame Clean", a portrayal of an obsessively clean housewife whose servant quietly subverts her aims, is a riot.
Most of the stories in this anthology, however, ultimately endorse the status quo and do not question accepted middle class virtues such as purity, chastity, and good breeding.
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