“This is my story- a story spanning ten years. A story of my blood; my tears. I was thirty-three when it all began. I was forty-three when it ended. This is not my story alone. It is also Kamala’s. And, I feel as if I’ve just woken up and the dream has drifted away.”
With these opening words, the narrator of ‘She & I’ pulls you into his story of victimhood and obsession. He is, a 33-year-old man from a family that is neither too rich, nor entirely poor. He believes he is too educated to work in the fields like the rest of his family, yet is unwilling or unable to get a job befitting his perceived stature.
So he spends his day “eating thrice a day, sitting in empty places, getting money from my parents on the pretext of applying for jobs, smoking.” While he is manning his cousin’s telephone booth, he sees Kamala for the first time and falls in lust with her.
Kamala, is a beautiful, self-possessed and fiercely independent widow with twin daughters who has been offered a clerk’s job on compassionate grounds after the death of her husband. For the next ten years, the narrator remains obsessed with Kamala. He is always around; doing odd jobs for her, eating the food she prepares for him, making demands on her time, never spending any money on her, but complaining that she doesn’t give her anything in return for his loyalty. They gradually get into a physical relationship, but neither of them initiates anything more permanent.
While the narrator is a wastrel who clearly runs away from a commitment of any kind (he even refuses to get married giving the most flimsy reasons for not doing so), Kamala comes across as someone true to her name. Like the lotus after which she is named, she thrives even in muddy water and doesn’t let any of the muck stick to her.
She has a full time job, she brings up her daughters single-handedly, she manages a estates of her parents and parents-in-law and is a source of support to the women in the village, particularly those who do not have any other support. Since the story is told from his perspective- you do not really question what she sees in him and why she remains in a relationship with him- surely it is not because he runs errands for her?!
Things change for the pair when Kamala gets transferred to the district headquarters. There are many more people in her life now. The narrator suspects her of having an affair, though she denies it. He is torn apart by jealousy and insecurity, and when he sees that she is unaffected by his hurtful words, his love turns into obsession. He stops eating, he stops talking to people, and lets himself be consumed by the imaginary wrongs she did to her.
Here, we are offered a very accurate portrait of society. Since he is male, and therefore can do no wrong, his mother and sisters are quick to blame Kamala for his moods, to the point of accusing her of bewitching him. Without pausing to think of why Kamala may not want to formalise a relationship which gives her very little, they put the blame on the fact that she is of a higher caste and that she will have to give up her widow’s pension if she remarries.
Imayam is one of the finest Tamil writers today and his books normally bring out the startling inequities of society. The scope of this book is less panaromic than that of the others, but it is still a stunning portrait of patriarchy works to create entitled men who expect their women to perform exactly as they expect them to, and of the constraints within which society expects women to behave. While the end was slightly predictable, what cannot be denied is that the book is a brilliant study into the mind of an obsessed man, and of how the intersectionality of caste and gender work at the individual level. The book is unsettling, but so is the message it conveys.
The story is set in Tamil Nadu, but the emotions are universal. If you like stories set in small town India, if you like reading stories that have strong emotions, and if you enjoy stories told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, this book is for you. The book reminded me of Vivek Shanbhag’s ‘Sakina’s Kiss’, which too was told from a perspective of a man who considers himself a victim, even though he is not one.
I received an ARC of the book. The views expressed in this review are my own. This book has been published by Speaking Tiger. You can follow them on YKA here.