My review of 'Eve in the Land of Kali'

 

Eve in the Land of Kali

Prema Raghavan’s book of 12 short stories is seductively titled to announce its faithful focus on women who are constantly struggling to find their own space between the extremes of the venerated mother goddess Kali on one hand, and Eve, the mere companion of the first male on earth (and worse still, the person to blame for human sins) on the other. While the women are Indian and span the spectrum of geographical, economic and social divisions in Indian society, each of them has a certain universality that every reader can relate to. Speaking of titles, the title of each story by itself is intriguing and requires a close reading of the story to understand why she chose it.

True to the book’s name, most of the 12 stories set the tone by announcing the main  (woman) character in the very first line (Sapna watched… Mridula got on her knees… Madhavi furiously pedalled her way up… etc.). If there are men whose mention is imperative, they remain at the periphery. Prema ensures that unlike in the world outside her book, they never take centerstage in any story.

What is most delicious in the book are the vivid descriptions she affords to everything – the characters, the settings, the innermost feelings of the main actors. Her clever use of word-imagery is by itself worth going to the book for. The descriptions are so intricate and intimate that they come alive for the reader (sometimes distractingly*). For example, in the last story, these lines: “His birth was a quick, abrupt, unwelcome intrusion in the struggle for survival. Before the stalk of his umbilical cord shrivelled and fell off, the mother was at work splitting granite for the roads …” (p. 140)

In many ways, Prema bares herself through her diverse characters the reader sees through her sharp gaze. The reader can never miss the pet subjects of the author herself – gardens, birds, nostalgic trips, the feelings of inferiority created by people’s false notions of beauty and skin colour. She also uses with great aplomb motifs that create an immediate connect and bring the reader to the ‘here and now’ – Pond’s talcum powder, Johnson’s baby products etc. Among the stories, ‘Mothers and Daughters’ and ‘The Homecoming’ come across as particularly autobiographical.

Prema takes the reader on a journey to witness a slice of each of her women’s lives at a dramatic moment in life and creates a calm empathy for the character irrespective of the reader’s own moral compass which may be at odds with that of the character. She also doesn’t feel particularly compelled to bring a sense of closure to the stories. Often the reader is left with several possibilities to conjure up for themselves.

I highly recommend the stories for the clever wordplay in the descriptions, for the wide variety of women characters in what could be called a Kali-Eve kaleidoscope, and for the brilliant perspective it gives to the feelings and situations of the women around us, which, owing to our patriarchal systems, we often tend to miss.

In many ways the book is a feminist nudge to put the woman where she rightfully belongs – the centre of the universe, everyone’s universes.

(Disclaimer: The author was my teacher at college, and I am particularly fond of her for her ready warmth and affectionate nature. What I write here could be deemed to be mildly coloured by the affection one has for a care-giver, but that would be grossly unfair to her and her book.)

*Prema doesn’t sacrifice her urge to bring to life aspects of the scene which may not add value to the movement of the plot. Some authors would have omitted such details but Prema chooses to retain them for the reader to get a more vivid picture.