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Back home with Kardamom Kisses

Shinie Antony was back in Kochi for the launch of her debut novel, `Kardamom Kisses'. She speaks to PREMA MANMADHAN about the book

DEBUT WITH A BANG Shinie Antony

Shinie Antony sees life, literature and love with tinted glasses when she writes. They are tinted with a humour so black that while enjoying the well crafted sentences and their freshness, you are in danger of missing the pathos lurking behind, if you do not read with concentration, the pages of her maiden novel, `Kardamom Kisses', brought out by Rupa (Rs 95).

No Ekta Kapoor fixation this, Shinie swears, for rechristening the spice thus with a `K'. The simple and stylish cover screams `Kerala' with the nanthiarvattom flowers strategically positioned above and below the title. The 289-page novel in three parts travels from Kerala to the North and then comes back to roost, in the South. The milieu is stark Malayali Namboodiri in the first part after which it turns bouncy Punjabi, and then loses the sharp identities to turn cosmopolitan in urban, amoral and consumerist pursuits.

Insecure childhood

Shinie's characters are well etched and human, their secret frailties and fears making great reading experiences. Insecure childhood, sex educational encounters and a huge breast fixation of the protagonists, Choti and Badi, are written in hilarious prose. Using the clock's hands to find similarities in mammary structures is indeed highly creative. The very lavish use of pure Malayalam words, without even the façade of punctuation marks, makes for bold writing and a newfound love of the native, albeit regional. Grammar is not sacrosanct in conversation, is it? Most of the coinages are totally fresh, like a tiny dental garage for, you guessed it, mouth.

And if you think you can skip a few pages on and off and finish the book, then you'll miss the story, for the author goes back and forth, telling you the tale as it comes. You are bound to wonder what happened to Mangala, Dasamma, Valliemmavan, Guddi Mousie or the Sambhar Pieces, if you do so. The author took four years to write it. Shinie Antony is a Kochiite who lives in Delhi. She has won two Commonwealth Prizes for her short stories. Her two collections of short stories are `Barefoot and Pregnant' (Rupa), and `Planet Polygamous: 36 Tales of Infidelity'.

Shinie Antony had a book reading session at Paico, Broadway, on Friday. Extracts of an interview:

Why did you select this ambience for the novel? An ambience of an old Namboodiri Illam that is alien to you?

On one hand, this ambience is alien to me. On the other hand, considering the secular nature of the entire nation, how alien really is Kerala itself to a Malayali compared to say Boston or Manhattan? The key lies in feeling a sense of belonging. My great-grandmother was a Namboodiri woman who eloped with my great-grandfather. Blinded by love she converted to Christianity, but brought with her several attitude rituals by default. Partly to explore her and partly because the Hindu culture in Kerala seems so distinct to me from the Hindu cultures anywhere else, I consciously delved into this ambience.

How long did you take to write it?

Four years. Actually I wrote Part 1 as a blind alley and left it there. I kind of knew what happened to everyone and where they were coming from but was too lazy to go into details.

Then a Maharashtrian friend read it on my PC and she was like `wow I did not know about the traditional Hindu family in Kerala' and what I thought mundane she found exotic. After that I sat and filled in the blanks.

How much of it is autobiographical? And how `period' is it?

None of it is autobiographical except Drupa's grown-up angst over her lack of looks. As a member of the Ugly Brigade I did wonder how much of this feminist stance is sour grapes. And the story is as period as I am old. The `age' is autobiographical.

There is a funny side to every situation, which you have captured, in sardonic humour at times. Is this your attitude in life too?

I am told I indulge in black humour. I think I try to be funny all the time. When someone laughs, it is easier to make him/her swallow bitter pills, which are large parts of my prose. So a joke is like a glass of water or a distraction pointed out to a bawling child. The humour makes it easier to carry the reader with you. Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don't, but a lack of humour will only antagonise the reader, like you are talking down to him. Everyone has a sense of what's funny, I employ mine when I am communicating. When I am alone though, I never see the funny side of anything!

One is reminded of O. V. Vijayan's rural settings and wry humour at times in the book. Has he influenced you?

No, unfortunately, I have never read O.V. Vijayan, though I'm flattered.

Why is there no glossary as you have used a lot of Malayalam words?

There was a movement after Rushdie when most Indian writers consciously wrote exotica and glossaries were deemed necessary. Now all the Indian stuff is `known', so any remaining sense of exotica is retained by not explaining, instead of over-explaining.

Why `Kardamon' with a 'K'?

It is because it is a child who spells it in the first part of the book and because I equate it to Kamasutra and Kathak (the two art forms that prostitution travels in) and it just kind of rhymed to change the `c' to `k'.

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