There is something fascinating in reading about things of an era that you may have had some experience with; in places that you have not visited. For a townie, life in a village seems charming. The blurb of The Little Book of Goodbyes refers to memories of childhood in Kerala and immediately my mind went to Life with Grandfather by Shankar Pillai. Was this going to be a book like that?
For those who have spent a lot of time with grandparents, most treasured memories relate to conversations about their lives in times that feel prehistoric for a seven- or ten-year-old; even everyday incidents seem romantic and exciting. Did it happen like this at all? And to these grey- and white-haired oldies?
I opened the book and plunged into the story of Fang, the dog named after White Fang, who saves the life of his protector by taking on himself the knife meant for the author’s autocratic grandfather. The story ends with the author’s own experience of his own ‘Fang’ leaping on him, pushing him away from the road, saving him from a speeding car while losing her own life. When she is rushed to the vet and her belly is shaved, they find a scar like a knife cut. Oops!
The collection of stories is like that: affectionate memories, nostalgia with a touch of the surreal. There is Ramaswamy who appears from under a bridge and becomes his grandfather’s cherished batman who displays medical knowledge in a veterinary emergency, is a fount of astronomy and speaks with a mild British accent; turns out to be a paediatrician who has preferred to walk away from home. There is the piece about his great-grandfather who converted to Christianity, and the one about his grandfather breaking age-old taboos to enter a Hindu temple. An interesting one titled ‘Shhh’ is about his grandmother who handed him a spiky shell before she died. She, the wife of one of the native officers in the Malabar Special Police, along with her small daughter, had gone out of curiosity to see Gandhiji. There were milling crowds but all he did was to raise his finger to his lips, and everyone went silent. The soldier who was on guard came and stood in front of the lady at which the crowd felt disturbed. She bent down and picked up something. Gandhiji caught her eye and signalled that she should leave. The crowd parted and she went home. On the way, her daughter noticed drops of blood on her palm: from the spiky shell that she had picked up and held tight, ready to hurl at Gandhiji if anyone had dared to hurt her small daughter.
It is incidents like these that really liven up the book. The nuances, the niceties, the not-so-nice people getting their comeuppance. It makes it all feel so real, the way the narration is in the first person, which it is throughout the book. Literally every episode is a closure of sorts, whether it is Ramaswamy walking away or the last ride on the Muthassi Express driven by his mother. The last story in the collection leaves you a bit shivery. It is about a person, a teller of Sufi tales, who has at last won the game of cards. But then follow the adorable dialogues between the atheist and the Sufi with deep philosophy as the parting shot; my favourite being the Sufi staring at the water and saying that he might be bored staring at his reflection in the water, but the reflection was never bored of staring back at him!
What Etteth does with ease in many places is to start in the present, hitch-hike into the past and glide back into the present. On the surface, the beginnings are all plausible, and then there is a slow float into a statement that shakes you awake making you feel, ‘oh really?’ Which is when one begins to wonder where reality ends and where fiction begins. Khasak of course is key. It is generally a smooth transition. Experiences that seem so plausible, and yet there is something, some little thing that makes you wonder, sometimes a bit, sometimes quite a lot. And full of departures and no see-you-laters.
‘You have the calm of someone who has said all his goodbyes,’ says the person he met in Dresden. But has Etteth really done so? Surely there are many more stories waiting to be written up. Can we look forward to a second little book of goodbyes?
Ahana Lakshmi has been writing from a young age, especially on environmental issues. She has also translated from Tamil to English. Her translation of stories by Dalit women writers titled The Stomach that Chewed Hunger and Other Stories was published by Zubaan.