The Gypsy Goddess

A novel by an Indian author to captivate me lately was Meena Kandasamy's The Gypsy Goddess (Kurathi Amman), which takes us to Kilavenmani in Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu where, on Christmas day in 1968, dalit, agricultural workers(a group of 44 women and children) were burnt to death by landlords. Kilvenmani massacre, as it is known, reinforce that "justice has nothing in common with law." 

The novel ends with the assassination of the landlord Gopalakrishna Naidu.

"Mudivu Kandachu. It has been completed. We have seen the end."   

"You watch the women sing of the landlord's perverse lust, his bloodthirst and this red harvest. You hear the men say with a sigh, 'Mudivu Kandachu,' which can be variously translated as 'It has been completed' or 'We have seen the end.' You join the people of Kilvenmani-on the village streets, in their paddy fields, in their toddy shops - as they rejoice in the revenge. You know, more than anyone else, how they have waited every day for this day."

(Still is it the end? As the author herself says life is linear as well as cyclical too. So the question is how many Kilvenmanis' should we endure!)

Unlike journalists' for whom Kilvenmani is a "season ticket to make a pilgrimage into people's memory, that writing an annual one-page article salves not only your conscience, but also everyone else's," the writer takes us on this pilgrimage for the purpose of re-living the horror, to remember....As Milan Kundera says, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” 

Gypsy Goddess, with its meandering narrative, sarcasm and wordplay, is a promising debut novel.

-------------------------------------------ends