DECCAN CHRONICLE
DECCAN HERALD
Ties
that bind & gag
By Vani Mahesh
The title Kith and Kin, Chronicles of a Clan tells you at the very onset that the stories here are snugly interlinked to one another and you will see characters carry over from one story to another. This is quite comforting.
If you, as a reader, are not yet ready to part with a character, no need to despair — there is a good chance he or she will make an appearance again in someone’s thought, or as someone’s someone.
Through the 230-odd pages of the book, you will live with the eccentricities and quirks of a prestigious matriarchal family, the Melekats from Kerala. At the head of the family is Ammini Amma, and the stories cover characters up to the present day — till Ammini’s grandchildren. The author does not take the rather boring and tiresome route of narrating the stories in a genealogical order, but weaves them in seemingly no particular sequence. However, given the easy flow of the stories, one can imagine the shuffling she must have done in lining them up.
The collection grabs your attention from the very first story, which briefly introduces you to the matriarch and to the clan, but mostly to Mon Repos, the matriarchal home. Young and thriving architect Sumanth gets a call from his childhood friend Suvarna out of the blue. Suvarna, Ammini’s granddaughter, has now inherited Mon Repos, and she calls Sumanth to know if he wants to buy the place from her.
Through Sumanth, who lived in a rented house next to Mon Repos as a child, the author paints a picture of the grandiose mansion and its uppity dwellers. The stories that follow are almost like a soap opera plot!
There is Raman, Ammini’s widowed brother, who laments having to live with his son’s family as an old man. Then there is Rajan, Ammini’s unmarried brother, who lives on his own, but goes through an intense loneliness that slowly pushes him towards insanity. You will dread old age after gulping these two stories down.
While elders in the clan get you down a little, with their sufferings and insecurities, the younger generation garners your admiration for their resilience. Take Beena, Ammini’s granddaughter. After being forcefully indoctrinated into the “boy seeing” ritual, this is the sentence that sums her thought — “Would they force her to marry that insufferable man? Well, if they did, she would embark on an affair with the brother!”
Or Avinash, the matriarch’s grandson. He is subjected to a silent trauma all through his growing years having to bear with his embittered and embattled parents. The troubled youngster finally decides to move far away from them to Baltimore — “He knew his father would be pragmatic about the move, his mother would be devastated, but it had to be done. Let them sort their lives out, I really cannot be the sole crutch any longer.”
In this compulsively readable collection of short stories, the author’s handling of the main character, Ammini, is subtle but strong. Ammini appears in every story, as someone’s mother, grandmother or sister, but not with a story of her own. So, all along as a reader, you make up your mind about what kind of a person she is.
Just when you think she is a cold-blooded mother, who never cared for her daughter, a grandchild shows you how erudite Ammini really was. While one brother loathes her dominance and control, another loves her for being calm and dignified. So, who is this mystery woman? What happens to her at the end? And how do these stories end? You read on, because I don’t want the review to be flagged for spoilers!
EXCERPTS FROM THE HINDU LITERARY REVIEW
Patchwork
mosaic
September 2, 2012
September 2, 2012
SUNEETHA
BALAKRISHNAN
Sit back and figure out the role of the protagonists as they
come on stage and narrate their stories.
The first thing
that strikes the reader about Sheila Kumar’s Kith and Kin: Chronicles
of a Clan is the multitude of characters in the 237 pages of the
novel. The author actually has a page devoted to a rather intimidating list of
the 35 habiting her story, and briefly sketches their relationships to each other.
And this, across generations and geographies.
The list is a
well-intentioned guide since the book is a loose weave of stories around the
Melekat family, a Malabar landed gentry. Their residence is named rather
unusually, Mon Repos, and is typical of the landlord folk of Malabar, complete
with sprawling grounds, cowsheds and ponds and mango trees. It’s occupied by
its matriarch Ammini Amma and her descendants.
Larger picture
Not all of the
tribe is resident. As the story unfolds, they narrate from their current
locations. The reader just needs to sit back and figure out the role of the
protagonists as they come on stage and tell their part of the tale. The picture
is large, to say the least, and the mosaic is not easily definable. The
characters point to a couple of skeletons in the closet as well. The women of
this matrilineal clan are infamously given to tantrums and the men are insipid
by comparison. The reader also gets to know that the Melekats are also good
looking; and they are by nature, well, clannish.
The story opens and
closes with Sumant and Suvarna; their camaraderie tips us to the dramatic bend
of the author’s pen. But the rest of the story is about lives and routines, and
patterns of living, which ranges from traditional to hip and from the rustic to
high urban. The writing style is easy and flows well and most of the cast are
etched credibly: especially Padmini, the unfortunate one; the spinster lives of
Sarasa and Rohini, and the senior Menon men who are neurotically tormented and
have geriatric issues. The author is also eminently capable of creating the
mood of the moment and sucking the reader right in, as she does with Sudha’s
angst.
ON THE `FAMILY DYNAMICS`WEBSITE
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All in a family
“Kith And Kin is not formed on any family — no family has that many
dysfunctional people” — a really laconic outline of Sheila Kumar’s new book by
a author herself.
The cosy Cha Bar during Oxford Book Store was declare to a
launch of her anthology of brief stories recently. Noted author and playwright
Shreekumar Varma did a honours, while publisher and former vanguard of studies,
Asian College of Journalism, Bindu Bhaskar intent a author in a review about a
book, a stories, acharacters and, of course, her inspiration.
Departing from a tried-and-tested regulation of protagonists,
antagonists, heroes, heroines and villains, Sheila narrates a story of a
once-powerful gentle house by a eyes of a several members.
A “non-resident mallu” and an Army mother whose “heart belongs to Chennai”, her impulse
for a Melekats came from her believe of a several innate Nair clans of Malabar.
Melekat Ammini Amma, a mama and earlier ‘White Rose’ of a town, and a ancestral
home of a Melekats, Mon Repos, are literally a twin bulwarks on that any story
hinges. Straying spouses, waste uncles, manic-depressive mothers-in-law,
drifting immature men, groom-hunting immature women — all make an coming in 19
tranche de strive stories.
“The Melekats were only clamouring to be created about,” smiles
a author in between book signings. “With apologies to Tolkein, we wanted a ring
to connect them all.”
It took her 7 months to write, longer to find a publisher. “I
refused to change a format of a story to a novel instead of brief stories,” she
explained.
A touching story
Of all a stories, ‘On The Bench’ seemed to be a transparent favourite, closely
followed by ‘Colours’. The former narrates a touching story of an “intensely
lonely” aged male while a latter recounts a several attempts of a immature lady
embarking on her hunt for a suitable boy. Every story has a opposite lead
character, giving a reader a uninformed new viewpoint of a complexities of a
dynamics within a family.
It is, however, engaging to note that notwithstanding Melekat
Ammini Amma being a self-evident anchor of a story — even creation an coming in
a few narratives — there is not a singular story from her perspective.
We get copiousness of discernment into her impression yet — a
legendary beauty, a dauntless matriarch, an means manager of
finances, egos and lives, and, as her hermit rather uncharitably puts it, an
ice queen.
The characters pronounce English, with a smattering of Malayalam
difference thrown in. A glossary during a finish of any story takes caring of a
translation, while one during a commencement of a book describes any impression
that meanders by “in approach propinquity to Ammini Amma”.
Penning a chronicles of a house travelling 4 generations is not
easy, though Sheila accomplishes a charge with aplomb.
From reminiscing about a good aged days to confronting a
quandary of offered off their birthright square by piece, a family goes by it all.
Spoiler warning —while a really same characters who deliver us
to a Melekats move us to a final chapter, a turn during a finish creates for a
extraordinary climax. “The family had been decaying for too long, it was time
for them to review a essay on a wall, time to let go,” she explains.
A account of change
Sometimes witty, infrequently poignant, infrequently funny,
infrequently officious maudlin, Kith And Kin is not only a story of a family — it is a
account of change. Change in tradition, in lives, in culture, in society, in
people and in a approach they think, though not in a approach they feel.
(Kith And Kin -Sheila Kumar, (Rupa Publishers, Rs. 250) is
on sale at leading bookstores.)
