Pankaja

 “This novel wrote itself. I only provided the ink”, writes the author Vasanth Kannabiran about her book ‘Pankaja’, one that paints a vivid picture of the lives of upper caste women of Tamil society in the early 20th century. Chaste and dutiful wives, child brides, women widowed even before they attained puberty or knew their husband’s touch are under focus here. Through the life story of the eponymous character, stories of women related to her by blood and through her marriage, the author keenly gazes at loneliness, ennui in marriage, sexuality, desire, vulnerabilities of men and women. Pankaja is at the center of this world whittled down to about 200 pages, a world we are familiar with, a world which has & hasn't changed much over decades.

The book opens with these lines - “Relaxing in her easy chair in the front yard, Pankaja gazed at the pattern that the morning sun filtering in through the neem leaves cast at her feet”. Pankaja’s life is a landscape of contrasting emotions - joy, grief, love, loss, trust, betrayal - quite like the neem tree that’s known for its bitter fruit, serrated leaves, thick bark and also for its delicate blossoms & healing power.

The above lines (in quotes) reminded me of T Janakiraman’s Wooden Cow, translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Kannan, where the sunlight scattered in luminous dots on the floor, sometimes appearing like the hide of a dappled deer, at other times like that of a leopard to the female protagonist, Ammani hints at how complex our lives are. Both the books - Pankaja and Wooden Cow, fuelled by atrocities faced by widows in the Tamil Brahmin community, have women characters of great strength and resilience who defy social conventions and brave resentment from family and social censure.

Rendered as a bunch of disconnected anecdotes & brimming with characters (which gets tad cumbersome at times), Pankaja throws ample light on a heavily patriarchal and caste-ist society, one where widows are heavily ostracized, where a woman outside the safe, sacrosanct institution of marriage is an easy prey, where bigamy isn’t illegal and men had a wife to manage home and married an educated widow to flaunt their magnanimity. An unflinchingly honest narrative, this feels like dots of a ‘kolam’ (seen on the book cover), waiting to be joined and discerned by us readers. 

I have read Vasanth Kannabiran's translation (from Telugu to English) - Softly Dies a Lake by Akkineni Kutumbarao, a fine instance of an eco-memoir. With this new release by Speaking Tiger publishers, I had a lovely chance to read a work of fiction by the author. Many thanks to the publishers for providing me with a copy of the book.