Do read the full transcript of a virtual interview that Mitrandir Journeys conducted with me about my “Bandilanka’s Forgotten Lives” (mitrandirjourneys.com/map-a-book-epi…)
#GoPlacesCreateStories
#MitrandirJourneys
South-Asian Women Detectives a la Jane Marple; teen books; young adult novels; south-asian short stories
Do read the full transcript of a virtual interview that Mitrandir Journeys conducted with me about my “Bandilanka’s Forgotten Lives” (mitrandirjourneys.com/map-a-book-epi…)
#GoPlacesCreateStories
#MitrandirJourneys
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Bandilanka, a fictional village in Southern India, personifies those villages across the Indian
subcontinent that are caught up in destructive customs and superstitions, and the abuse of “tradition.” My stories are a microcosm not only of India, but of the world!
What is the genesis of this collection of short stories? I pictured the many summers I spent as a child
in my maternal grandparents’ home in a remote village in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
What did I remember? Whom did I remember? My Brahmin grandfather remained remote in his ‘puja’ room, and I was cocooned by an overworked grandmother, and a bevy of aunts and female cousins. As a girl, I was also subjected to practices that were accepted as traditional, and remained unchallenged despite their harmful effects. But what of those who were at the periphery of my childhood memory, those who slaved for us, and starved, and slipped through the cracks? What about their voices?
Re-reading R.K. Narayan’s “Malgudi Days” inspired me to write my own collection of stories about a fictional village called Bandilanka. “Bandilanka’s Forgotten Lives” makes those forgotten lives visible again, allows them to voice their concerns.
My stories will hopefully attract those of you who are not only interested in learning about other cultures, but also willing to critique their own. As I said, the characters in Bandilanka’s Forgotten Lives suffer from some form of injustice or loss because of the social group to which they belong: widows, washer-men and -women, night-soil workers, vegetable vendors, child laborers, domestic workers, and the LGBTQ+ community.
The stories highlight the inherent worth and dignity of the lives of these disenfranchised groups, thus challenging socially constructed divides and inequalities of caste, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and age.
I’d love to give you, my captive audience, a brief glimpse into the stories. Do go to YouTube to hear me tell you about “A widow reborn,” a story that my paternal aunt Lalitha inspired. She was widowed at the young age of 18, left with a baby daughter. But instead of wearing a widow’s garb (white in India) and being banished to the backwaters of the household, she was sent by her loving parents for further schooling! She graduated in 1943 as the first woman electrical engineer in India!
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They have done it again, my courageous sleuths! The two cousins have been approached for purposes of dramatisation! Just imagine being able to see the two seventy+ Asian women appearing on Netflix! Well – cross your fingers and toes! They are unstoppable!
And now they appear again in “Murders in the Ivory Tower”!!! Just published by Pegasus in Great Britain. Here is a link to the book:
https://pegasuspublishers.com/books/kamakshi-murti/murders-in-the-ivory-tower
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Lalli, our indomitable eleven-year-old, never allows anything to stop her from trying something new and exciting! What if her left leg is a prosthetic, what if she can’t run like others in the school? She can play the piano, and she does that with passion! Good for you, Lalli, good for you!
When Lalli the piano did play
Such talent the gal did display
Her fingers would bound
O’er the keys’ wondrous sound.
Beethoven did hold such a sway!
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These forgotten people in my collection – they experience joy and pain. And they have NAMES, IDENTITIES!
The cleaning woman whose name remains unknown, whose shadow does not fall on her employers: her name is Raasamma. We buy vegetables from a vendor, but never address her by name: Sundari. And those widows, young and old, who await death on the banks of the Ganges? They had names once upon a time, they had lives that society now denies them. When we complain about clogged toilets, we don’t notice th Kaavanna and Kondamma who are condemned to removing night soil. And list goes on and on – so many lives discredited and dishonored. I just want to make them visible so that they may regain their dignity, so that my readers may challenge these socially constructed divides!
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What happens to those in our communities who have been silenced? “She belongs to a lower caste!” or “He cleans sewers!” or perhaps “They don’t even know whether they are men or women! Disgusting!” Such comments, hateful as they are, diminish our humanity. Bandilanka, my fictional village in South India, is no exception! As a child, I spent many summers in my maternal grandparents’ home in a village much like Bandilanka, and never never questioned how hard life was for the washerman, the sweeper, the cook, the coal-miner, the Hijra, the vegetable vendor, … Now, almost seven decades later, I attempt to honor these lives and return some semblance of dignity to them.
Here is one of the stories from my collection:
Small-pox was ravaging Bandilanka. The grounds were covered with bodies waiting to be cremated.
“Send the untreatable cases home!” the local doctor directed the two nurses on call. “There is no room for them here.”
Venkateshwara Rao whispered:
“Just one glimpse – one glimpse of our daughter!”
Gayatri shook her head.
“The doctor says it is too dangerous – the infection.”
Venkateshwara Rao tried to nod. The sores were rapidly closing his eyes. He could make out the faint form of his wife.
“From the door, perhaps?” he whispered again, every word hurting his throat.
Gayatri ran into the next room and returned with a tiny bundle in her arms.
“May God bless and keep you, my daughter,” he murmured. His eyes closed. The room became very still. Gayatri bent her head as her tears bathed the tiny body of daughter Sarada.
“Come, daughter!” Her father’s voice softly brought her back to the unforgiving path of the living. Your mother-in-law wants to see you.”
She drew back. What would the in-laws think? That it was her fault? That it was because of her sins from a previous birth? She felt the baby in her arms – sound asleep. Would they, would she want to take her child away?
She stepped into the drawing room, followed by her father. The father-in-law was sitting in the most comfortable armchair. His wife stood behind him like a sentinel.
“Brother-in-law,” she heard him address her father, “Once the cremation is over, we will return to Guntur – with our daughter-in-law.”
The mother-in-law stepped out from behind the armchair.
“You need not bring anything for yourself. Just get the child’s clothes and anything else you need for her.”
“Yes, Atha,” Gayatri murmured, keeping her eyes lowered to the floor. Why doesn’t she look at my child, at her granddaughter? Does she think this innocent child is responsible for her father’s death? Baby Sarada opened her eyes as if sensing her mother’s distress. She pushed her mouth against her mother’s breast, and made loud sucking sounds.
“If you will excuse me, Atha, I have to …”
“Yes, yes,” the mother-in-law said impatiently. “Go!”
She sat on the cot, released the buttons on her wet blouse, and felt her child’s mouth unerringly find the nipple. The tears from her eyes mingled with the milk that fed Sarada. A little later she lovingly placed the sleeping child in the cradle. As she straightened up, she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder.
“Gayatri! Listen to me, daughter!”
“Nanna! What if … what if … “
“That is what I have come to tell you. I will not allow them to take you away, Gayatri. We, your mother and I, have decided …”
She said, disbelief tingeing her voice:
“Can you do that? Can you really do that?”
“Tradition might dictate otherwise, daughter. But a tradition that tells us that a daughter is less important than a son needs to be questioned.”
Gayatri stared at her father. He never ceased to astonish her.
“What if the in-laws create trouble? I don’t want to …”
Her father sat down and sighed.
“And here I thought you wanted to study, to educate yourself, to make something of
yourself. Of course, if you wish to go to Guntur and live the life of a widow, we cannot prevent …”
“No, no, Nanna!” she interrupted. “Of course not! My husband – your son – and I talked about it often. He wanted me to go back to college.”
“Well then, we will only be following his wishes.”
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Lalli is at it again! Here she is with her third limerick, heralding chapter three of “Lalli’s Window”:
There was an old woman called Steave
She moved with a walker
Her old house she never did leave
When she died, there were just two to grieve.
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“Yasemin and Nirmala: A Tale of Two Teens” tells the story of Yasemin McGinty-Mahsud, a fifteen-year-old Pakistani-American teen who loses her right arm in an accident, and that of fifteen-year-old Nirmala Rao-Sumatzkuku, a South-Asian/Native-American teen who is confined to a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy. The story begins with the celebration of Yasemin’s fifteenth birthday, a celebration marred by her own ‘navel-gazing’, as her BFF Natalie Riccardo reminds her. Her self-hatred increases when the school plans to stage “Seussical Musical” as the end-of-the-school-year event. She assumes that her ‘unfinished’ body will automatically exclude her from participating in the play – her father’s mention of Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of Richard III, and the king’s “deform’d, unfinish’d” body haunts her as she indulges in even greater self-pity.
The arrival in school of Nirmala Rao-Sumatzkuku, girl challenged by cerebral palsy, transforms Yasemin’s limited perspective of the world around her. Nirmala’s South-Asian father Mahesh Rao, and Hopi mother Chu’si Sumatzkuku have home-schooled her all these years. But her strength of purpose, positive attitude towards life, and irrepressible whimsy encourage them to send her to a brick-and-mortar school. Although her cerebral palsy limits her speech and movements, Nirmala’s buoyancy of spirit immediately wins over many of her classmates. The same spirit intrigues Yasemin, who is at first suspicious of Nirmala’s lust for life. Suspicion very soon changes to gratitude and admiration as Nirmala asks for her help in writing a musical entitled “My soul for a Jelly Donut.”
Yasemin’s neighbor, an old Jewish man called Jakob Cohen, is yet another source of inspiration and comfort. Yasemin senses the depth of grief the old man feels at the loss of his wife. She discovers a new awareness of life around her, of neighbors she had hitherto ignored or was unaware of. She hears Mr. Cohen play the violin. Her own passion for singing forges an unusual bond between the two. He accompanies her on his Steinway. Mr. Cohen’s grandson Jeremy joins him on his viola, and love is in the air!
Much to Yasemin’s mixed emotions of delight and anxiety, Nirmala gives her a prominent role in the musical. Cast opposite to Ravi Beresford, a line-backer who has stolen many a heart, she has many a ‘What ifs?’. What if he rejected her? What if he were to sneer at her missing arm? These doubts are cast aside when old Mr. Cohen sends her a beautiful dress that had belonged to his wife, and Yasemin’s mother says: “Perfection is in the eyes of the beholder.”
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