Poet, fiction writer, translator and activist, she has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms Militancy, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Gypsy Goddess. Her second novel, When I Hit You, short- listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018, deals with the raw material of domestic . SECTION SUMMARY

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MEENA KANDASAMY • 1984: she was born in Chennai (aka Madras), south , the daughter of a mixed- Tamil marriage. Her parents are both graduated teachers: their marriage was considered anti-caste and their involvement in the anti-caste struggle led Meena to work alongside the movement, a religious as well as socio- political movement which challenges the and promotes the rights of the , i.e. the people

belonging to the lowest caste, the “untouchables”. 4 The CASTE SYSTEM in India (1)  India’s caste system is among the world’s oldest forms of surviving social stratification, generally accepted to be more than 3,000 years old.

 The system divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based on  their karma (work)  their dharma (duty) with each group occupying a specific place and the upper and lower almost always living in segregated colonies.

5 The CASTE SYSTEM in India (2)

 Independent India’s constitution banned discrimination on the basis of caste in 1949 and the following year, in an attempt to correct historical injustices and provide a level playing field to the traditionally disadvantaged, the authorities announced quotas in government jobs and educational institutions for scheduled castes and tribes, the lowest in the caste hierarchy.

 In recent decades, with the spread of secular education and growing urbanisation, the influence of caste has somewhat declined especially in cities where different castes live side- by-side and inter-caste marriages are becoming more common though they are still a taboo for many, sparking violence and horrific crimes… 6 MEENA KANDASAMY  2002: she was the editor of The Dalit, a bimonthly “that provided a platform to record atrocities, condemn oppressive hierarchies and document the forgotten heritage.”

 2006: she made her debut on the literary scene with her first collection of poems, Touch, themed around caste and untouchability.

7 MEENA KANDASAMY  2010: her second collection, Ms Militancy, was published. It was an explosive, feminist retelling/reclaiming of Tamil and Hindu myths. When interviewed on her poetic works she said: “My poetry is naked, my poetry is in tears, my poetry screams in anger, my poetry writhes in pain. My poetry smells of blood, my poetry salutes sacrifice. My poetry speaks like my people,

my poetry speaks for my people.” 8 MEENA KANDASAMY  2011: she was married briefly – four months – to a man who subjected her to physical and psychological violence.  2013: she met her current partner, with whom she moved to the UK in 2016.  2014: her critically acclaimed first novel, The Gypsy Goddess, was published. It is a stunning and deeply faithful account of the of 44 low-caste labourers and their families in a Tamil village in 1968. The workers, striking for better pay and conditions, were locked in a hut and

burned alive. 9 MEENA KANDASAMY

 2017: her second novel, When I Hit You: Or, The Portrait of the Writer As A Young , was published. For this work she drew upon her own experience within her abusive marriage and for this reason it was largely received as a memoir. But it wasn’t.  2019: her third novel, Exquisite Cadavers, a work of experimental fiction, was written in part as a response to its predecessor. In it she dissects her own creative process revealing how her ideas are worked into fiction. 10 MEENA KANDASAMY  2020: at present she is exploring her non-fiction writing through an Arts Council, Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP), grant. This support enabled her to write two long-form essays (The Orders Were to You and The Poetry of Female Fighters) exploring female militancy in the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) liberation struggle

She currently lives in East London with her children and her partner but divides her time between Chennai and London. 11

WHEN I HIT YOU  In When I Hit You Kamasamy lifts the veil on the silence that surrounds the burning issue of and in modern India.  When interviewed the author made it clear that this is not a memoir: “It’s not what happened to me, it’s a representation of what happened to me” and of what still happens to so many women today.  According to the 2019 National Family Health Survey over 30 percent of women are physically, sexually or emotionally abused by their partners at some point. 13 From the book cover…

 When she was ready to publish her book, she asked her publisher not to give it a stereotypical cover design: “I don’t want hands with henna or disembodied parts of a woman. I want you to design a cover like you would design it for a 60-year-old white man.”

 The result was a book jacket which evoked khadi fabric bordered in saffron, in other words something that the socially beloved figure of the “good Indian girl” might wear. 14 …to the content.

 However, once you open the book, a voice emerges that expresses desire, feels pain and has steely courage. It screams from its demure outerwear, refusing to be silenced in its search for love.

 It is the voice of an unnamed woman, a choice – that of anonymising the narrator – made by Kamasamy in order to universalise the experience, transforming it into “a call- to-action to believe and support all women”.  This woman has already escaped from her abusive husband so the suspense is not whether she’ll survive or not, but

whether she’ll be allowed to tell her own story. 15

How her story starts…

 Her story has been told countless times by her mother to relatives, neighbours, and circles of friends, but focused on the physical signs of the woman’s abuse and escape: “That criminal had cut my daughter’s hair short, and it was in-fes-ted” and “Her heels were cracked and her soles were 25 shades darker than the rest of her.”

 But lest those four harrowing months of her life be whittled down to an anecdote, the narrator realizes that she can be the only one to tell us what happened. 17 … develops...  Thus her story leads us through her emotional journey, from confident college student, then published writer to “a woman whom no one wants to look at or, more accurately, whom no one even sees”.  The journey towards that assertion is a tough one which begins with a stripping of the narrator’s autonomy after her marriage to a university lecturer, Marxist and one-time revolutionary in south India, an educated cultured brute who uses communist ideas “as a cover for his own sadism”.  When she moves with him to an unfamiliar city, an assault on her tongue, mind and body begins… 18 … and deteriorates.  The language barrier ensures that in public she can only speak words of wifely domesticity, shopping for vegetables or cleaning products.  Her husband manipulates her into the surrender of her email accounts and the suspension of her Facebook page through emotional and psychological blackmail, for example by singeing himself until she gives in.  Beatings and follow, with everyday implements weaponised: the hose of the washing machine, the power cord for her laptop. Shame, pride and a society in which everyone, from parents to police, expects a woman to «put up» and «shut up» force the realisation that, if she wants to come out of it alive, only she can save herself. 19

A story of self-preservation…  However this is not just a story of survival. It is one of self-preservation, and what makes the novel unique is that, even as she is beaten down, the narrator reflects that every moment of her life has narrative potential. Writing can be her salvation.

 Thus the novel becomes a meditation on the art of writing about desire, abuse and trauma and we are introduced into a “play-within-the-novel”: “Lights, camera, action. Rolling, rolling, role-playing”. 21 … rebound …

 The narrator speaks of her life as if she were directing a play and acting her own role in it at the same time: “And cut! I am the wife playing the role of an actress playing out the role of a dutiful wife watching my husband pretend to be the hero of the everyday.”

 In this double role of director/actor not only does she manage to distance herself from the hell she is experiencing but she also succeeds in regaining control of her life, at first virtually and only partially, through the “play” she makes up: “And what is a writer, if not the one who gets to shape the narrative, to have the last word?” 22 … and recovery.  What started as the recovery of a virtual and partial control of her life, though, later becomes a complete and decisive one when she “exceeds her written brief” and shows her husband up for what he is: “Don’t tell me how brave you are. A brave man doesn’t run. A brave man doesn’t rape and hit his wife. You, my husband, are not a brave man.”  “The woman sitting down to write her story” proves to be a strong, resilient, indomitable person who, in spite of the devastating experience she has been through, “still believes, broken-heartedly in love”. 23 Kamasamy’s style.  Thoroughly heartbreaking and often characterised by stunning changes of tone, Kandasamy’s writing is nevertheless also funny, tender and lyrical, usually simultaneously so.

 She writes with poetic intensity making extensive use of stylistic devices such as repetition in moments of particularly intense pathos: “Hope prevents me from taking my own life. Hope is the kind voice in my head that prevents me from fleeing. Hope is the traitor that chains me to this marriage.” 24

Writing & politics.  Kandasamy’s mixed-caste upbringing and her experiences as a Tamil woman in both India and the UK affect all her work. The act of writing for her can never be separated from her politics despite having faced threats of violence for her fearless criticism of Indian society.

 She feels compelled to bring to the fore such appalling realities as bride-burning:

“In India a bride is burnt every ninety minutes. The time it takes to fix a quick dinner. The time it takes to do the dishes. The time it takes to wash a load of clothing.

The time it takes to commute”. 26 The « system»…

 Bride burning means that a wife is doused in kerosene, or a similarly flammable liquid, and then set on fire. Women rarely survive, and those that do are severely and permanently scarred on over half their body.

 This unimaginable, extremely violent act is performed by the husband or his family, simply because the bride’s family has refused to pay an additional dowry.

 Sadly, this crime is on the rise and has been a particularly growing problem for India together with other common types of homicides which involve drowning, poisoning and hanging/strangulation. 27 …and gender-based violence.

 Steps have been taken to curtail the problem:  in 1961, they passed the Dowry Prohibition Act, essentially making it illegal to demand a dowry as part of the wedding arrangements;

 in 1986, India’s Parliament officially started recognizing bride burning as a domestic violence crime, where convicted offenders could be sentenced to serve anywhere between 7 years up to life in prison;

 more recently, various branches of local police and government, as well as non government organizations, have setup dedicated agencies to investigate reports and counsel women.

 Despite all this, dowry deaths are an on-going form of gender-

based violence… 28

Writing as such!  Driven by a desire for social justice she firmly believes in denouncing wrongs saying that threats “shouldn’t dictate what you are going to write or hinder you in any manner”. Her work has appeared in eighteen languages giving voice to the voiceless so that they may be listened to.  Nevertheless she strongly resents the fact that, to a Western audience, “writers like me are interesting because we are from a place where horrible things happen, or, horrible things have happened to us, or, a combination of the above. No one discusses process with us. No one discusses our work in the framework of the novel as an evolving form. No one treats us as writers, only as diarists who survived.” 30 An avant-garde style.  That is why with her third novel, Exquisite Cadavers, she took on an avant-garde storytelling style: Maya and Karim, the fictional couple at the centre of the story, are tracked by the voice of a narrator-creator, printed in a separate column in the margins and in smaller font, as though Kandasamy were questioning the nature

of the novel itself. 31 Kandasamy today  As the writer and book critic Jenny Bhatt says, “All along, we get a carefully-constructed, running commentary in the margins with anecdotes and lists from the writer’s own upbringing and relationships, ideas about her politics and her craft. […] and a window into the parallel universe of the writer as she creates. There are also some segments of silence in these margins — spaces for the reader’s imagination to interpret aspects of the main story.”  The result is that she has succeeded in drawing both readers and reviewers to “deliberate the creative merits of her singular experiment rather than her personal life.” So…what will come next? 32