Unconventional, searing and brutally honest

Kuzhali Manickavel's latest offering is a tiny gem in Blaft's excellent collection

January 25, 2012 09:29 pm | Updated October 18, 2016 12:41 pm IST

Title: Eating Sugar, Telling Lies

Author: Kuzhali Manickavel

Publisher: Blaft

You know you have a hard task ahead of you when you have to write a review that's probably half as long as the story you're reviewing. Kuzhali Manickavel's Eating Sugar, Telling Lies is very, very short. And as for being sweet, don't let the title or the images of sugarcane on the ebook's cover fool you. This searing little story of class relations is nothing short of brutal.

The three

Three people (siblings? relatives? Manickavel doesn't make this easy on the reader) — The Family Cataract, GorgeousGeorge and an unnamed narrator — return to their house only to find the domestic help missing.

An unfinished pile of washing is the only indication of her having been in the house, and as the three wait for her return, their characters begin to unfold — The Family Cataract's domineering, vicious streak; GorgeousGeorge's selfish, languid callousness; and the narrator's participation in their cruelty despite seeing the injustice of it.

Eating Sugar, Telling Lies opens with the brief sentence: “The Thieving WhoreQueen was missing”. The moniker Thieving WhoreQueen, used for the domestic help, is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the woman's identity as an individual, let alone as an equal. With the same cold-blooded approach to the maid as to the hapless cockroach she crushes before killing, The Family Cataract's obnoxious intolerance is terrifying, and yet a reflection of the attitudes of her class. The maid is not meant to transgress the clearly-defined space in which she is allowed to be herself, and with her attempts to assert her presence in the household — be it with a picture of Mary in the kitchen or a row of pebbles on a window sill — foiled, she ultimately has the last word in a conversation she is not allowed to participate in.

Portrayal of attitudes

Interjections in the story, as if from a manual on the keeping of servants, are outrageous and exaggerated in their supposed exposition of the attitudes of the narrator's class towards domestic help: “Servants will steal anything. They will steal milk, sugar, eggs, meat .... water bottles, flashlights, children, the elderly.”

However, there is an undeniable element of truth in the portrayal of these attitudes that is deeply disturbing. The vulnerability of the domestic help to sexual exploitation is also explored, even as the other characters in the story seem to be incapable of redeeming themselves. The story is extremely dark, going only from bad to worse, grappling with questions of humanity.

Kuzhali Manickavel's writing is exciting and fresh; unconventional to say the least.

Interrogating society's attitudes as much as it does the self, her work is whimsical and playful, with a bludgeoning honesty. Following her superb collection of short stories, Insects are Just Like Us Except Some of Them Have Wings , her latest offering is a tiny gem in Blaft's excellent collection.

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