An Experiment with ‘Indian Political Truth’

The English translation of renowned Malayalam author KR Meera’s Assassin narrates the ‘story’ of a middle-aged protagonist, a single woman based in Bangalore and working in a software company. It begins with an attempt on her life late one night by a gunman on a motorbike, at the end of a long day Satyapriya had spent standing in a queue in front of a bank. This reference to queues in front of banks following the sudden announcement of demonetization of five-hundred and thousand-rupee banknotes of the Mahatma Gandhi series is the second nod to a historical event on the very first page of the book. The first of course is the assassination attempt itself, alluding as it does to a similar (albeit successful) attempt on the life of a single, professional woman in the same city a few years ago. Thereafter, the narrative unfolds as Satyapriya travels back to her hometown in Kerala and investigates her own life, unpicking the warp of the family’s struggles in the weft of a patriarchal, casteist society, interpellated by several contemporary incidents.