Book review: Gentlemen killers of Kilvenmani

The Gypsy Goddess

by Meena Kandasamy
Bloomsbury, Rs 499

On December 25, 1968, 42 people, men, women and children were burnt alive in the village of Kilvenmani in the east Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu. Meena Kandasamy’s debut novel, The Gypsy Goddess, is a fictionalised account of this tragedy that unfolded when a village refused to buckle down to a set of oppressive Naidu Mirasdars and stood firmly by the Marxist beliefs that were by then rooted in the village and the hearts of the dalit villagers.

The dalit agricultural workers stay away for a day to attend the funeral procession of a Communist leader, Sikkal Pakkiriswamy, after he is murdered. When the landlords try to bully the workers by putting forth a list of conditions demanding the village cut away from its Communist leanings or pay a fine of '250 or join the Paddy Producers Associates or face the consequences, the village refuses to comply.

“How not to expect militancy from men who wake up before sunrise, wear nothing more than a loincloth, walk in line every daybreak, wash their faces from any puddle of water, brush their teeth with red brick and are the colour of the earth they work?

How long will a people hold their patience when they earn their daily meal after sunset and have to hurry home to drop the handfuls of paddy into smouldering ash, wait forits wetness to waft away and then pound the grains and cook the dehusked rice into a formless congee that is never enough to douse their endless hunger?

All the village asked for is six measures of paddy because they needed food. And until their demand is met, they refuse to stop the ‘strike’.”

The stalemate comes to a horrifying conclusion with the massacre. The bodies are charred beyond recognition; everyone knows a terrible crime has been committed and yet most of the perpetuators walk away. Instead, some of the surviving villagers are imprisoned. Justice by law is a hollow phrase when the caste-class equation goes to work. But take heart for there is a resolution, a “mudiv kandachu” moment.

This isn’t exactly a book that you fall in love with on the first page. In fact, the first two chapters were hard work for me. The role of the writer-narrator who appears here is incomprehensible and, in fact, the smart-ass writer-narrator’s exercise in deconstruction (I wouldn’t know how else to describe the meanderings), at times verge on the facetious with an almost self-congratulatory “oh-I-am-so-cool” stance!

That’s until you arrive at Chapter 3. Thereon, to my total relief, the novel came into its own, living up to the promise of a poet like Meena. Written with an edge and an unflinching eye not frequently encountered in Indian writing in English, the storytelling begins to run neck and neck with the story.

The Gypsy Goddess doesn’t have a hero or a plot in the old fashioned sense. In fact, the technique is very similar to Robert Coover’s The Public Burning. (A novel based on the events leading to the execution in 1953 of two Americans for spying.) Meena uses multiple forms to take the narrative forward. From a letter sent by the Paddy Producers Associates to a Communist pamphlet to a tabulation of the remains of the victims of the massacre, each one of the chapters have an in-built rhythm that works brilliantly, reading like a poem at times and as reportage at others.

Mostly Meena is pitch-perfect. The voices are distinct and strong. Her prose is luminescent and visceral as it devastatingly evokes the horror of people being trampled merely because it is possible to do so. Amidst the recounting of the tragedy, Meena weaves in an occasional note of irreverent humour. No one is spared. From Lord Muruga to MGR, Meena’s scathing wit hones in on its target with perfect aim. One of my favourite bits is the one on an MGR film.

“In a strange ironic twist, on the night of the massacre, a touring talkies is playing an MGR film Vivasayi (farmer). ‘In the course of a two and a half hours, the hero milked motherhood out of Tamil women, tamed a lipstick-and-frock-wearing-English-speaking Tamil shrew, ran an agricultural research laboratory that contained innumerable varieties of grain, repaired tractors and settled disputes, handed over the surplus paddy from his farm to the government, prevented his father from switching to cash crops, saved the shrew’s honour by saving her from a field-hand ready to rape her, saved his father’s life, saved his father’s potential killer’s life, forgave his enemies and traitors, excelled in exhibiting his fighting prowess, and sang continuously about the importance of being a farmer.”

There is much to applaud about The Gypsy Goddess: Its structure, its language, its ability to marry lyricism into the most gruesome of events, thereby compounding the horror.  Meena is a novelist whose voice is distinct and sure. Even when it veers towards the polemic, there is certain sincerity. The writer’s anguish at the helplessness of the people of Kilvenmani is heart-felt. In fact, the lone false note in this novel for me was the first two chapters and its pointless rhetoric.

Anita Nair is the author of the bestselling novels The Better Man, Ladies’ Coupe, Mistress and most recently of Idris: The Keeper of Light. Her books have been translated into over 25 languages.