The Gypsy Goddess Read online

  The Gypsy Goddess

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Atlantic Books,

  an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Meena Kandasamy, 2014

  The moral right of Meena Kandasamy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78239 178 4

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 179 1

  Printed in Great Britain

  Map © Jamie Whyte

  Atlantic Books

  An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.atlantic-books.co.uk

  For Amma, Appa and Thenral

  For holding me together

  Contents

  Prologue

  part one

  Background

  1.

  Notes on Storytelling

  2.

  The Title Misdeed

  part two

  Breeding Ground

  3.

  The Cutthroat Comrades

  4.

  Seasons of Violence

  5.

  Marxist Party Pamphlet

  6.

  Oath of Loyalty

  7.

  A Walking Corpse

  part three

  Battleground

  8.

  Expression of Countenance

  9.

  A Minor Witness

  10.

  Mischief by Fire

  11.

  In Police Custody

  12.

  Some Humanitarian Gestures

  part four

  Burial Ground

  13.

  A Survival Guide

  14.

  What Happened Afterwards

  Epilogue

  Slaughter and terror did not stop them. How can you

  frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own

  cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of

  his children? You can’t scare him – he has known

  a fear beyond every other.

  JOHN STEINBECK, THE GRAPES OF WRATH

  The Gypsy Goddess

  PROLOGUE

  Long Live Agriculture! Agriculture is National Service!!

  We Will Increase Paddy Production!

  We Will Eradicate Famine!!

  PADDY PRODUCERS’ ASSOCIATION,

  NAGAPATTINAM TALUK

  42/2, Mahatma Gandhi Salai, Nagapattinam, Tanjore District

  MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED TO THE HONOURABLE

  CHIEF MINISTER OF MADRAS SEEKING

  IMMEDIATE REDRESSAL OF THE GRIEVANCES

  OF PADDY CULTIVATORS

  Greetings!

  It is with a heavy heart that this petitioner begs to bring to the kind attention of your Honourable Self, some of the sufferings undergone by the paddy cultivators of Nagapattinam as a consequence of the mischievous politics and misconceived propaganda that has gripped the coolies.

  For the past ten years, agricultural coolies have been constantly demanding an increase in their daily wages, and whenever it has been denied to them, they have organized strikes and paralysed life in our district. Self-styled Communist leaders, who are themselves comfortably well off, are also responsible for illegal encroachment on other people’s lands. Not merely do they disregard the rights of the landowners, but they do so like militant Naxalites, by instigating the labourers to commence farming on these encroached lands. It suffices to state that, in practice, they harvest other people’s fields and take away the agricultural produce, a major share of which is given to their leaders.

  The increasing agony faced by the landowning mirasdars has forced us to create the Paddy Producers Association, and the aim of our organization is twofold: to liberate the agricultural coolies from the wicked company of these dubious leaders; and to create a relationship of mutual goodwill and understanding between the landowners, tenant farmers and the agricultural coolies who play a crucial role in rice cultivation.

  The Communist leaders merely keep coming up with a list of demands and inciting their followers to go on strike. When their unreasonable demands are not acceded to, they approach the government, which holds talks between the warring landowners and the labourers, and a temporary settlement is then reached. This petitioner, like other cultivators, is of the opinion that every meeting has extended the privileges of the agricultural coolies and this has empowered and emboldened the Communist leaders, who seek to create famine in order to make this land a fertile breeding ground for Maoism.

  This petitioner wishes to point out that in order to keep creating new agreements, the agricultural coolies keep protesting. All these agreements have been a threat to peace and law and order. Whenever the government officials have decided to hold tripartite talks, these leaders appear with a list of impossible demands. This petitioner, as a landlord from Irinjiyur and being the representative of the mirasdars, has remained stubborn and refused to entertain any of these demands, saying that implementation of these demands was impractical, displaying the same tenacity exhibited by the intractable leaders of the opponents. As a consequence of this petitioner’s uncompromising stance and his determination not to be held to ransom by a bunch of blackmailing Communists, he has been considered their foremost enemy. They have taken it upon themselves to cause irreparable damage and hardship, and, on several occasions, they have threatened to finish off this petitioner and his relatives. Moreover, these verbal threats have often sought to be fructified by carrying out violent agitations outside the petitioner’s home. By following his instinct of self-preservation and maintaining a high degree of tolerance to their provocations, the petitioner has managed to safeguard himself from physical harm. However, their immature acts and political tricks have not been successful in shaking either the petitioner’s determination or his ideology, and, consequently, the desperate Communists have embarked on another shocking and dangerous strategy.

  Presently, their leaders have sent away one of their dutiful henchmen named Chinnapillai to some undisclosed location, and they have submitted a complaint that this petitioner killed that man and destroyed all evidence of such a murder. It is reliably learnt that this has been filed as a ‘Missing Persons Report’ at the Keevalur police station, Nagapattinam, on 15th March 1968 or thereabouts, and this hoax is currently under investigation by the police. At this juncture, it becomes necessary to point out that three years before, a similar conspiracy was hatched to implicate the petitioner. A man named Sannasi went to a village near Karaikkal, and immediately a story started doing the rounds that this man was killed by the landlords. But before this rumour could take the shape of a malicious complaint, it came to be known that Sannasi had died of intoxication from drinking bootleg arrack in that village. The aforementioned complaint exposes the mala fide intention of the Communist leaders, who doggedly seek to imprison this petitioner because he presents the greatest threat to their nefarious activities.


  Not only have they filed such a complaint, but they have also held public meetings to demand the immediate arrest of this petitioner. Incapable of achieving the expected results in spite of their best efforts, these leaders have changed their plan of attack. As a part of this new strategy, they organize marches close to the petitioner’s residence, chant provocative slogans and condemn the petitioner in the most disparaging manner possible. They have rained down curses on him with the secret motive of making him step out of his home so that he could be dealt with in any manner they deemed fit. In such excruciating circumstances, the petitioner cautiously stayed behind bolted doors and saved himself from a miserable fate.

  Without a shred of doubt, the petitioner believes that the Communists have identified him as a target of their agitations and that they will succeed in their objective. If the Communists are not made to restrain themselves, and permanent legal measures are not taken to solve this problem, no landlord can remain safe. The petitioner feels that unless this nuisance is nipped in the bud, Nagapattinam is bound to face unprecedented law and order problems.

  Although the Communist leaders and the gullible workers who follow them have trespassed on our lands, illegally harvested our crops and caused us immense suffering, we, as the members of the Paddy Producers Association, are committed to a policy of staunch non-violent opposition. To protect ourselves from such routine blackmail and misguided attacks in the future, it has become incumbent upon this petitioner to appeal to your Honourable Self to deliver justice. East Tanjore district is in dire need of protection in order to sustain its honour and tradition of being the granary and rice bowl of the entire land. If the Communists are allowed a free rein, famine is imminent, and it will prove to be calamitous to the people.

  In your exemplary book, Thee Paravattum, your Honourable Self has written about the fire of reason destroying the dogma of superstitions. Now the time has come to destroy the dogma of communism that has divided the people into classes and set them against each other. If left unchecked, these weeds in our society will choke the hope of any future harvest.

  It is respectfully prayed that as the Honourable Chief Minister, Your Excellency shall interfere in this grave matter at the earliest and take necessary steps to restore the lost confidence of the terror-stricken landowners who are living in a constant state of fear, and thereby liberate Nagapattinam from the clutches of Communists in order to prevent violence and bloodshed.

  I have the honour of being, Sir,

  Your most humble and obedient servant,

  Date: 1st May 1968

  Station: Irinjiyur

  GOPALAKRISHNA NAIDU

  President

  part one

  BACKGROUND

  1. Notes on Storytelling

  It is difficult to write a novel living in a land where despotic bards ensured that for more than a thousand years, literature existed only in the form of poetry – alliteration under the armpit, algebra around the rhyming feet. Meter was all that mattered. But every language put forth its own share of Bacons and banyans and so, Tamil prose was born. A child actor, it made an odd public appearance here and there, every now and then, but the absence of reality TV in those times made a recluse out of this little rebel, who soon refused to speak or sing, and instead opted for solitary confinement. Years later, the first signs of a moustache and breasts began to show, hair sprouted in downward spirals, and prose attained puberty without much fanfare. Riddled with teenage angst and burdened with an androgynous voice, it did not take long for this youngster to realize that poetry could never be replaced. Emerging from a bat-ridden library, the self-sentenced one broke into the system deviously, under the pretext of praise. Copious critical notes of the works of the afore-referred tyrannical poets came to be written, and, what’s worse, read. Poetry was the multiversal megastar; prose began its humble career as a dubious philological commentator. Betrayal and backstabbing belonged to another day, close at hand but hidden away. Centuries later, dedestructionists would study this phenomenon and tweet their findings – Poetry: fucked up by flattery and falsehood; Prose: proved talk is not cheap, turned purple, never got rid of its inclination to comment.

  Back to this novel: Tamil in taste, English on the tongue, free of all poetry and prosody, dished out in dandy prose. Forgive this text its nagging tendency to try and explain, its disposition to tag its opinion at every turn of phrase. Please understand that staying verbose is a part of the process of prose. And also, please kindly understand that such underselling is clear evidence of my commitment to a supreme mission of self-sabotage.

  Now, allow me an auspicious start. Amen and Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim. And so on and so forth. And, six times for the sacred sake of my mother-sexed tongue, Murugamurugamurugamurugamurugamuruga.

  Once upon a time, in one tiny village, there lived an old woman.

  Writing in the summer of the Spring Revolution, I anticipate everybody to be let down by an opening line that does not contain one oblique reference to a grenade, or a crusade, or even the underplayed and taboofied favourite, genocide. Homemade as slave trade and clichéd as conveyed, this beginning is meant to disappoint and devalue the great importance placed on grand entrances.

  A first-generation woman novelist evidently working in a second language from that third-world country, literary critics may pooh-pooh and pin me down with prize-orange tartness after reading such a tame line, and prepare to expect nothing more than a domestic dramatic-traumatic tale. Let them jest in peace.

  Once upon a time, in another tiny village, there lived another old woman.

  This transplantation falls flat on its face, the fatal forehead first. Such a strategic shift of location and the introduction of a new population seems to have no effect on anybody’s perception of a story. My Facebook fans, who have flocked around me in eager expectation of the clinching first line, have already deserted me. My family seems ready to disown me, friends prepare to fly away, and former lovers disappear. It dawns on me that readers have no patience for over-familiar tales or shared experiences. And how can I go ahead with the story when the first line itself has not instantly received a hundred thousand Likes?

  Most people are tired of history, and also tired of history repeating itself, so I am constrained to try a new way to chart and plot my way past their boredom. Since fiction is all about reaching out to an anonymous audience, I shall try and drown my story in non-specificities for the first thousand and eight narrations.

  Once upon some time, in some village of some size, there lived an old woman.

  English, with its expertise of having administered the world, requires more efficiency. Not these breaks and starts. Perhaps the first line should frame the conflict and grip the reader with the revelation that this old woman eventually loses her extended family during a massacre. Or perhaps the first line should not bother about one old woman, and, instead, it should reflect on a universal issue: untouchability or class struggle. Or perhaps the first line should not concern itself with character or conflict, and instead talk about the land that fed the world but forgot to feed all of her own people.

  From what I have heard, place is always a good place to start. Nagapattinam, the theatre of the Old Woman’s teary, fiery story. Tharangambadi, the village of her birth, land of the singing waves. Kilvenmani, the village into which she married, the village that married itself to communism. To handle that kind of an overloaded opener, I need to dig up a lot of history.

  It is common knowledge that no land would ever be found interesting until a white man arrived, befriended some locals, tried the regional cuisine, asked a lot of impertinent questions, took copious notes in his Moleskine notebook and then went back home and wrote something about it.

  Ptolemy – part ethnic Greek, part Hellenized Egyptian – like other white men of dubious descent, took great pride in his knowledge of far-flung places, and, succumbing to the pressures of the publication industry and his own mounting bills, set out to write a Lonely Planet guidebook,
in which he made a passing, one-off reference to a Tamil port-city called Nigamos. Hurtled into history in this desperate fashion, Nagapattinam would patiently wait until a Tamil woman came along and decided to write a half-decent novel set in its surroundings.

  Between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries, Nagapattinam went from the very white hands of the Portuguese to the Dutch to the British. Even as she dallied with any of these varieties and every other walk-in vellaikkaaran, she kept intact her liaisons with the Arabs and the Chinese. Everyone stole her rice, and left religion as a souvenir. She lived with their gods, like old women often do. And because she managed to sink into their stories and make them her own, she rose above the other towns, metamorphosing from a sleepy port into a self-contained pilgrimage circuit.

  In this land abounding in legends, one temple promises that God will be the Ender of Death; at Sikkal, Murugan receives the spear from his mother before he sets out to battle oppressive demons; bathing at a temple pond in Thirunallaru saves anybody from Saturn’s seven-and-a-half-year itch. Religion reverses its role of divisive troublemaker: everybody flocks to the Nagore Sufi dargah; everybody with a desperate prayer walks on their knees to Our Lady of Velankanni. There is no accounting for taste, either: here, the usually bloodthirsty Kali is sated with sakkarai pongal, a sweet feast of rice cooked in jaggery, while the locals, a little distance away, will show you the exact place where the Buddha came with his lamp and sat under a tree and disappeared. Even St Anthony, who specializes in finding lost objects, came floating into their midst during a flood. Famed for its large chariot and its buxom devadasis, the temple at Tiruvarur once ensured that both gods and men are assured of a good ride. Then there’s the temple for the pubescent Neelayadakshi, the only Tamil goddess with blue eyes. Clearly, some in the steady stream of visiting white men had spilled their seed.