It's time blurb writers were recruited from some field other than advertising. The inside front jacket blurb of this most excellent volume of reminiscences says: “Ending the silence of centuries comes this startling murmur….” We all know Lalitambika Antharjanam's brilliant, bitter stories began to appear almost 80 years ago. The blurb's fatuous claim does a disservice to both writers.
However, Lalitambika wrote fiction, and what Nilayamgode does is provide a background for her. That is not her intention. Told in straightforward Malayalam, and translated without flourish, this is not a memoir but a collection of memories, whose publication in book and article form in the last eight years won critical and popular praise. It is important not only to the reader of fiction who has been seeking the underlying structure of Lalitambika's stories, but to any modern reader who wants to know how her grandparents lived. Indeed, Nilayamgode's Note states that she began writing at the insistence of her grandson. I wish more grandchildren would insist.
Social change
Indian society has changed so utterly since the 1930s that the past is not merely foreign, but without signposts. Particularly in the State Vivekananda called “a madhouse of castes”, no one under 70 will know how ritual, tradition and conformity ruled Kerala then. Naturally, the upper castes were the last to change. Nilayamgode, born in 1928, had the good fortune to be married into a progressive family at 15, and by 20 was active and prominent in the Namboodiri reform group.
It's the memories of her childhood, though, that are featured here. The simplicity of the language sets off the poignancy of the stories she tells. Contrary to popular belief, the interior of the Namboodiri illam was not some kind of zenana where the antharjanams whiled away their time in luxurious ease. Denied education, modern medicine, clean clothing, the caresses of their parents, even a sight of the world, between puberty and marriage — of which they were told a day or two before the event — the Namboodiri woman's life was usually one of spiritual darkness if it was not the literal night of some widows.
But it wasn't all darkness, as J. Devika points out in her comprehensive Introduction. There were “spaces to protest in”, at least by the 30s. Besides, there are always moments of magic in a child's world, and that Nilayamgode retails them so sweetly is proof of her reasoned, tolerant attitude. This is not a feminist polemic. Even the historic Thaatri adultery case of 1905 is presented judicially. There is no doubt that Thaatri was exploited; but Nilayamgode leaves an open question how much mischief she, too, made.
Gender issues set aside — which is difficult to do — the book is made delightful by its vignettes and sidelights. (The stylised illustrations of Namboodiri, familiar to readers of the Weekly — that is, the Mathrubhoomi magazine — add much to the delight.) Nilayamgode describes the first machines that were used to reclaim lands for paddy, the awe and fascination they evoked in children. The few buses on the roads used charcoal. Namboodiri adults, like another sort of Indian, were not expected to display any emotion. A carpenter's presence was not polluting if he carried his rule. At the Onam Kaikkottikali dances, Nair women wanted men in the audience — for “glamour” — while the antharjanams were forbidden that pleasure, so they went home on the last day. China jars large enough to hold 2,000 pickled mangoes were cleaned once a year by lowering little girls into them on ropes. And most delicious is how cockroaches were used to clean the antharjanams ' jewellery, a tale you'll hardly credit.
Courage in bondage
The lasting impression, though, is of a small community of women in a form of bondage which, though not dignified by the term “slavery”, at least spiritually amounted to that. It is of the courage of the women and their brothers and sons who fought to change their destinies. It is of the photograph of a serene Nilayamgode on the back flap. And always to one who has read her comes Lalitambika's ghost, asking questions. “Today,” Nilayamgode ends, “there is no sorrow specific to a Namboodiri family.” Yes indeed: Gender and social questions, the whole issue of what reform is, are all part of Kerala's own burden.
As it happens, when this book came to me I was reading, with great distaste, Patrick French's biography of Naipaul. Naipaul sits in England at his leisure and makes his little quips about women writers. In all his acclaimed studies of societies, has he cared to ask where women are given the space and time to express themselves? Has he looked within and seen the expression of his patriarchal vigour in the way he has treated women? No, Mr. Naipaul, you may delude yourself that you have suffered, but this — and stories like this — are really what it's all about.
