A Kind of Meat and Other Stories by Catherine Thankamma will chip away at your blissfully built idea of fairness of life, one story at a time. This book will not jolt you out of a stupor by its sensationalization of struggles of women, but it will hold a mirror to those aspects of women’s lives that have been unfortunately taken as a norm. The book is a praise for the sheer audacity that women have to go on with their lives despite what is thrown at them, be it something that violently draws their blood or something that silently breaks their heart.
Through simple yet relatable characters, both women and children, this book peels back the layers of our society that comfortably blanket the classist and casteist reality we always keep looking away from. This is done with the subtlety with which real life takes its course; women brave their life with silent resilience, and children slowly and inadvertently lose their innocence in the face of customs and prejudices that they are introduced to by their own families.
In ‘A Kind of Meat’, a child’s harmless urge to sound like a grownup leads her to agree to committing an act that lands her and her parents in trouble with the landlord. The manipulative tact with which her childlike trust is used against her makes one wonder how early do we teach our children the cunning of the human mind. In ‘Ellunda’, a young girl faces a hateful adult adamant on insulting her mother in front of her, and using the child’s mistake to do so. The child battles with guilt and fear, not knowing how a simple outing with a friend could be so wrong.
The story ‘Madhu’ touches upon a theme we all like to believe to be a thing of the past, untouchability. As much as all of us would like to believe that we have moved past this inhumane concept, reality hits us in the face with a woman and her cup that no one else touches. Madhu, a woman often filling her incompetent husband’s shoes, is allowed to take the trash out of all the houses, but no one feeds her in the same utensils as them. This story raises questions about the often praised strength of women: are women really strong, or is this strength just a way for the society to compensate for the indolent incompetence men are privileged to have?
‘Pieta’ is yet another intense story that boldly questions the idea of erasing the humanness of Mary, rendering her as a passive womb and not a woman with trembling limbs and a scratchy voice as she gives birth to a child. The story presents the version of Mary that moves away from the ‘virgin birth’ narrative and brings forth a version where she is seen as a normal young woman trying to cope with the events of her life; it breathes life back into her accepted insensate form. ‘The Road Home’ takes two conventional bonds that a woman develops in her life–the bond of a mother and a child, and the bond of a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law–and gives a spin that shatters the notions associated with them.
Each of these stories lays bare the unwanted fragments of lives of women that society has made redundant as routine, just so that they are not noticed and thus questioned. The actions of ordinary women in these stories are subtle revolutions that transform their lives. The silent resilience of women does not demand extraordinary circumstances; it is woven into their lives because of the society they live in.
The language of the book mirrors the simplicity of the characters and their lives; it is simple and eloquent in a way that does not require you to scramble around looking for the meaning of the words, but to sit with seemingly simple sentences and ponder over their depth. The translation has not taken away from the essence of the original text. Often, words have been retained and explained in a way that familiarizes readers with the vernacular culture and customs of south India.
This book will challenge you to accept that somewhere down the line all of us have accepted some unfairness towards women as routine, simply by not acknowledging it out of convenience.
We need to talk about the lesser noticed shackles we have placed on our women in the name of motherhood, love, piety, devotion and sacrifice; this book does just that.
Sunat works as an Editorial Assistant and Reviewer at the National Book Trust, India. She has done her Masters in Political Science from Jamia Millia Islamia. Her interests include understanding the intersection of politics and language.