Book Review | Reverse-Engineered ‘State-of-the-Nation’ Stories
This is not Anita Nair at her best, unfortunately. The stories are not tight, there’s a lot of meandering, which can make the reading tedious
Anita Nair has a clear brief in mind for her latest collection of six short stories set across the length and breadth of India, covering different income groups and communities, with a mix of modern and conservative characters. Her concept is to marry the personal with the political (what she calls ‘State-of-the-Nation’ stories), and present a picture of India over the last decade.
Her political themes cover the horrors of caste discrimination and atrocities (including the cruelty of some privileged students and professors towards “quota” students), shocking rapes and murders, evil and arrogant politicians, patriarchy and the humiliation it brings, cyber scams like digital arrests, the trauma of demonetisation, the #MeToo fallout, anti-CAA and farmers protests, the indifference of some Hindus to the citizenship rights of minorities, and more.
The first story, ‘Why I Killed My Husband’ (which is also the title of this book), is about a bad marriage, yet it is a rather good marriage of the personal and the political, and is very enjoyable — you may feel like clapping at the end. The rest of the stories are not so smooth, and in some the political element is a clumsy force fit. Think of Cinderella’s ugly step-sisters trying to force their fat feet into her elegant shoe.
Take ‘Twin Beds’, another story of a rocky marriage. The political element here is grim and horrific, but it’s treated like a throw away incident after it comes up in a conversation. This kind of callousness may not have been her intention at all, but it is exactly how it plays out to the reader.
This is not Anita Nair at her best, unfortunately. The stories are not tight, there’s a lot of meandering, which can make the reading tedious. There’s lack of freshness too — in many cases you recall media reports of several political incidents she narrates, and that overshadows the fiction she cloaks it in. The minute you read the word “Hathras” for example, you know what will follow. Many of the characters are grey: For example, there’s apparently a good man, a wealthy farmer, who is proud of his educated wife with strong opinions, but even so, he cuts her down to size to make her like his mother: “Soft spoken with no opinions of her own, content with her lot.” The same “good” man is reluctant to write a recommendation letter for a college scholarship for the daughter of one of his Dalit farmhands in case she gets above her station. This is an accurate depiction of India (which is what Nair set out to document), and while the premise of mixing the personal with the political is interesting, the narrative isn’t.
Why I Killed My Husband (And Other Such Stories)
By Anita Nair
Westland
pp. 274; Rs 699/-