Guilt Trip And Other Stories
Book Launch at IIC
Photos of the book launch at IIC
Guilt Trip and Other Stories Book Launch Panelists from Left Author, Anisur Rahman, Chair Mridula Garg, Malashri Lal and Payal Nagpal
Guilt Trip and Other Stories Book Launch Chair Mridula Garg with panelist Malashri Lal
Malashri Lal talking about the book
From left, Usha Mujoo Munshi, Moderator
Guilt Trip Book Launch The audience
Lakshmi Kannan addressing the audience Guilt Trip Book Launch
Lakshmi Kannan’s Guilt Trip and Other Stories (Niyogi Books, Delhi, 2023) has been declared as “the best book of the year” by Shyamala A. Narayan and Payal Nagpal who compiled the India section for the Annual Bibliography for LIterature, Critique and the Empire Today‘ 2023 (formerly called The Journal of Commonwealth Literature).
Conversation
Jayanthi Manoj (JM) in Conversation with Lakshmi Kannan (LK) regarding her book Guilt Trip and Other Stories.
SETU Bilingual Magazine, February, 2024. Pittsburgh, USA. Pages not numbered.
Dr. Lakshmi Kannan aces as a writer par-excellence not only with food tropes, kitchen mindscapes and food politics but for the minute unspoken power-politics that determines the happiness of newly-weds, elderly wisdom and timelessness of the soul’s journey. An interview with the author brought in more meaning to the written word.
Jayanthi Manoj: What has been your motivation and inspiration to pen Guilt Trip and other short stories?
Lakshmi Kannan : Each story was inspired by a theme, a mood, or an ‘experience’ (either my own or someone else’s) that impacted on me. So, I can’t pin it down to any one inspiration that is central to this collection, like I can do for a novel.
Guilt Trip is a mix of stories. Some of them take up serious and urgent issues, especially the two Long Stories that address the greed of in-laws who plan to swindle a new bride out of her jewellery, silver ware and wedding clothes while the other shows an intelligent woman with a profession of her own who makes some sensible moves to protect her money and ‘space’ from a manipulative, alcoholic husband. I also wrote some stories to capture what seemed to be mystical moments that couldn’t quite be explained away and others to record fleeting moments of joy, the ephemeral beauty of life and of people. Then there are many stories I wrote for sheer fun and laughter.
Collecting them for a book felt adventurous, much like life is, outside the covers of a book. These stories were published over a period of time.
Jayanthi Manoj: I’m really curious to know if there are any autobiographical elements in this collection.
Lakshmi Kannan: Yes, there are. Still, I would like to qualify the term ‘autobiographical’ in order to clarify the suggestion that is implicit in the very word. By ‘autobiographical’ is it implied that some stories may be based on my personal experience? If yes, then what about the empathy of the author who can at times identify herself completely with the protagonist (s) and internalise an experience in such a way that it comes through as her own? I would like to share an amusing response I got for my historical novel The Glass Bead Curtain (2020, c2016) that is set in the background of British rule in Madras Presidency. Some readers asked me if it is ‘autobiographical’, forgetting for a moment that even my mother wasn’t born around that time! It was a period when my grandparents were themselves very young. But I felt gratified in a way that one of my protagonists was so convincing that she came across as me!
Secondly, an experience that I have delineated in my fiction may not necessarily have happened to be, but could have happened to someone very close, either within the family or the close circle of friends and colleagues. No fiction can claim to be totally impersonal, just as mere autobiography may not make it as ‘fiction’ unless it goes through a creative process.
Jayanthi Manoj: The stories are seemingly simple, but they unfold many layers for the reader to explore and reflect. What has been your most rewarding moment of writing Guilt Trip?
Lakshmi Kannan: This question takes me back to your first question regarding the inspiration behind writing these stories. There were many rewarding moments whenever a particular story was received with empathy and a spirit that was somewhat in sync with mine, in that story. The next rewarding moment came when I put them together for Niyogi’s edit team. Sri Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, who advises Niyogi Books on commissioning and editorial matters was wonderfully inclusive in his spirit. He welcomed all the stories within this collection even if a few of them looked “different” from what I usually write. In addition, he offered his valuable critical insights wherever it was needed. My editor Anwesha Panda was a most sensitive and sincere person to work with. I enjoyed some of her cover mails in which she would comment on the story, of how something made her laugh, or think again. With these two people, I re-lived the same adventurous feeling I had when I wrote the stories.
Jayanthi Manoj: Reading Guilt trip I could trace that you deal with a lot of geriatric themes and you ace them well…And I really like all the grandmas in your stories for their natural selves. According to you, what is the role of the elders, elderly people in Indian homes?
Lakshmi Kannan: I’m known for my stories about elderly people. My Tamil original “Savvyasachi Chadukkam” (“Savvyasachi Square” in English translation in Nandanvan) got me the Ilakkiya Chintanai award for the best short story. The Hindi translation titled “Savvyasachi ka Chauraha” was narrated for the YouTube by Kathanati Suman Keshari, a renowned poet and a theatre person.
My elderly protagonists got a very positive response from my previous collections as well – such as Genesis: Select Stories (Orient BlackSwan, 2014), Nandanvan and Other Stories (OBS, 2011) and India Gate (OBS, 1993). The elderly protagonists got a new lease of life when published in Hindi translations titled Aakash hi Aakash (Penguin, Delhi, 2007), Laya Baddh, translated by the late Sumathy Ayyar (Jnanpith, Delhi, 2007) and Partein, translated by Raji Ramanan (Vaani Prakashan, Delhi, 1996).
Elderly people in India and all over the world are having a very difficult time compounded by their health issues. There is an increased awareness in social media about the importance of mental health and “wellness” that can help the elderly in a major way. Since you asked me about their ‘role’ in Indian homes, I think they should shed the old, obsolete image of people who passively expect the family “to look after them.” They should step with the times that marks a change in the climate now. Elderly ones who are proactive, who pursue their own interests, read books and share in Book Clubs, who regularly exercise, go for walks, see movies with friends and family, travel in safe groups, are the ones who are happy and healthy. Happiness should be an active goal for everybody. With the current widespread awareness about the importance of mental health, people realise how it significantly improves their physical health.
I have volunteered to work for HelpAge India and Agewell Foundation with seminars that included psychologists, sociologists and doctors as Speakers. I met many amazing elderlies who continue to be active and who help others find a purpose in their lives. The mantra is to be happy!
Jayanthi Manoj: The ladle and the pen, how can a woman handle both without being radical, but in a balanced manner. Is it idealistic or is it possible?
Lakshmi Kannan: There is absolutely no conflict between the two because a woman is naturally gifted with culinary skills, plus she has this warm wish to cook something nice for her family and friends. I know of many super-busy women with demanding jobs who use cooking as a stress-buster. They bake a wonderful, yummy cake for their families and do it so happily. A woman can wield both the ladle and her pen very well because she has an innate capacity for time management, given the fact that she multi-tasks most of the time. It is only when family and social pressures close in on her with cruel, unreasonable demands that she senses a friction. It is so retrograde. Yet, sadly we do see this happening in some homes.
Jayanthi Manoj: You deal snobbery with humour. What cure do you tend to find for snobbish behaviour in your stories?
Lakshmi Kannan: Snobbery of any kind provokes the most satirical instincts in me. I find it so laughable. I don’t think there can be any cure for this, so long as people blithely continue to be snobbish, not realizing how ridiculous it makes them look.
Jayanthi Manoj: Also, I would like to know if Sheila in Dregs the resident writer is anywhere close to Lakshmi Kannan as the writer in residence? How much of this is real?
Lakshmi Kannan: Totally! You’re absolutely right in your guess. All that I have depicted in the story actually happened to me with this Tamil group when I was a writer in residence with a comfortable, furnished flat of my own, complete with a nice kitchen. No exaggeration! You can say Sheila in Dregs is me.
Jayanthi Manoj: Women in household, women in reading, where are we?
Lakshmi Kannan : In both the household and in reading, we are in the right ‘space’. We’re batting fine, just fine.
Jayanthi Manoj: I’m compelled to ask you this. Who are you as a Tamil writer in English from Delhi. What has been your identity?
Lakshmi Kannan: I tremendously enjoy living in a cosmopolitan city like Delhi, just as I enjoyed growing up in Bangalore as a small school girl. You get to meet people from so many other cultures and background that it is a refreshing, learning experience. It helps me expand my mental horizons.
Where my identity as a Tamil writer is concerned, much of this cosmopolitan milieu can be found in my fiction in Tamil. I am no different from other writers in Delhi who write it their own regional languages. All of us find a neutral platform when we interact with each other in English, or in Hindi. It is only the Hindi fraternity that can feel they are ‘on their own turf’ because they live on the Hindi belt. Things are easy for them.
It has been a great pleasure responding to your questions. They were so thoughtfully put together that it made me re-assess many things for myself, all over again.
A big thanks, Jayanthi!
Reviews
Review of Guilt Trip and Other Stories by Malashri Lal
The intriguing title made me reach out for this book as I wondered about the many kinds of “guilt” that beset middle-aged women sneaking out of home without telling hubby, eating slices of cheese-loaded pizza while swallowing heart-healthy pills, buying a far too expensive saree while mother-in-law’s medical bills are yet to be paid, and so on. These are random examples of mind game of fantasy that Indian women play, but it delighted me immensely to read Lakshmi Kannan’s “Author’s Note” asserting that “the central women characters have to make some clever moves to salvage something that is valuable to them’ (18)
“Salvage”, yes, that is just the word. Kannan has an amazing knack for creating a dynamic scenario starring vivacious men and women who live in it. “Annapurna Bhawan” is a popular, inexpensive restaurant serving the most delicious local items to lower- class clientele – paruppu podi, mor milagai, vatral kuzhambu…(158). In the mood for a jaunt, Tara, wife in a privileged home, insists on eating there. The highly embarrassed chauffeur deposits her in the Ladies Section and trudges into the General area for his own moderately priced but sumptuous feast. For Tara, an unknown world of women’s sociability opens up – they are a hearty bunch slurping through their meal, chattering over the sound of jangling bangles and clashing plates, gossiping over intimate matters, merrily overeating and freely demanding more food from the male waiters. Far from the stiff five-star luncheons, Tara rediscovers her childhood memories in Annapurna Bhawan and intuits an exhilarating liberation from her social class. “It felt as if a great weight had slipped off her shoulders. She felt light on her feet. A bird fluttered its wings and flew out of her chest”. (170)
Indian Literature May-June 2024 # 341 Sahitya Akademi Bimonthly
Review of Guilt Trip and Other Stories by Malashri Lal
Tara’s story is emblematic of the major theme in this collection, that is, the implied meanings of “freedom” for women. Domestication has tethered women by invisible ropes designed by patriarchy. The kitchen fires glow like a sacred ritual and the male members are like divinities to be served by women preparing endless meals. Lakshmi Kannan expresses the need “to nudge feminism closer to human rights” (23) and I concur with her wholeheartedly. The slogan “Women’s rights are human rights” surfaced in Africa around 1988, and was unanimously adopted as a part of the Beijing Declaration in 1995. Many decades later, it still remains pertinent as the world continues to be a gendered space with women expected to manage the “home front”. In her short fiction, Lakshmi focuses on the Tamil cultural milieu (19) but her vocabulary in the introductory essay, has a global, theoretical thrust. Pointing to the trope of “women’s equation with cooking”, she goes on to deplore that none seem to realize that “women have to eat too, rather that women equally love good food” (20). The stories “Dregs”, Kitchen Fire” and “The Colour Green” address this subject in particular.
The anthology charts another breakthrough in women’s writing by reflecting on the short story and the long story in the Indian context. In essence, each story writes itself, and the author stops when the narrative energy brings it to that point of “that one last word” (18). Lakshmi tugs at a useful reminder that “the ancestors of the genre of short story are fables and folk tales” 16) and these surely didn’t place a word limit. Therefore, some stories are like flash fiction, for example, “Open the Gate” is an imagistic vignette, whereas the title story “Guilt Trip” is built on a larger scale of three girls on a waterfront escapade. In a tour de force, Lakshmi Kannan presents two novellas (one may call them such), “Janaki Turns a Blind Eye” and “VRS” that are masterful portrayals of the inner world of thinking women.
As a bilingual writer in Tamil and English, Kannan’s visualizations of local culture are a treasure. Janaki is a frail, almost blind, elderly woman in a Tamilian joint family whom most people ignore because she is inconsequential. From this position of vantage, Janaki overhears a conversation about some family members plotting to steal the jewellery of a young daughter-in-law. With adroit advice, she protects the unsuspecting young woman. Hovering around the storyline are portrayals of greed, jealousy, rapaciousness, social snobbery and such other emotions that undercut the assumption of family cohesion. However, in Lakshmi’s universe, there is always the redemption of a woman’s self-knowledge, that being the feminism she upholds, and the young woman gains immense confidence in outwitting her ‘seniors’. The cryptically titled story “VRS” is a further illustration of women who are venerated as keepers of the kitchen and denied better identities. Realization dawns that women are creators of the food but consumers too – and have the right to equal privileges in a parental or spousal home. Without preaching, the message is embedded in these stories, some taking longer to unravel than others, because every family saga unwinds at its own pace.
Lakshmi Kannan’s Guilt Trip and Other Stories offers life wisdom, what Sanjukta Dasgupta in the Foreword describes as “incisive prying open of the inner recesses of the human mind” (15). Yet this gripping and attractive collection is so laced with humour and juicy conversation that the stories are a delight to read and the learnings are incidental.
Indian Literature May-June 2024 # 341 Sahitya Akademi Bimonthly
Review of Guilt Trip and Other Stories by Anita Balakrishnan
The short story distils within its succinct form a moment from the amorphous flow of life experiences and re – presents it with a crystalline clarity. A reader cannot help but be transformed by this epiphanic moment as it serves to illuminate some of life’s most baffling ambiguities. Lakshmi Kannan’s latest book of short stories, Guilt Trip and Other Stories (2023), include thirteen such short stories that provide an insight into people navigating the vicissitudes of life.
In a similar vein, the entry on Lakshmi Kannan in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Indian Writing in English, Eds Manju JaIdka and Tej N. Dhar (2023) observes that her short stories “are explorations of lived experience that create an apocalyptic dimension. They pitch the reader between the luminal space of the living and the dead.”
Several writers have commented on the exacting nature of the short story form, as it denies writers the space to develop their themes or trace the arc of their characters’ lives, its taut boundaries requiring every word to be justified. Given the number of women indulging in practicing this genre and attaining great acclaim, it has been suggested that the short story is particularly suited for women’s subjects, the preoccupation with domestic life and the vagaries of human relationships. It is thought that the inflexible limits of the form serve as a restraint on elaborate descriptions of the sprawl of family life, condensing them into chiselled vignettes that allow gleaming insights to shine.
Lakshmi Kannan, a virtuoso of the short story, has published twenty-eight books including collections of poetry, novels in both English and Tamil and translations. She is a bilingual writer who writes in Tamil under the penname ‘Kaaveri’. She is a prolific writer whose recent books include a historical novel The Glass Bead Curtain (202220, c2016), an English translation of the Tamil writer T. Janakiraman’s acclaimed novel The Wooden Cow (2021) and a collection of poetry Sipping the Jasmine Moon (2019).
Borderless Journal Singapore Shortened for web page 21 May
Review of Guilt Trip and Other Stories by Anita Balakrishnan
This collection Guilt Trip and Other Stories (include) contain eleven short stories and two longer stories, “Janaki Turns a Blind Eye” and “VRS”. Although pan-Indian in nature, Lakshmi Kannan’s stories are able to effortlessly showcase the ineffable flavour of Tamil culture. Her protagonists are frequently educated women who struggle to reconcile their desire to be treated as equals within their families, dealing with the cultural mores that seek to restrict them to their homes and kitchens. The varied themes of Lakshmi Kannan’s stories include the spiritual awareness of the transience of human life as seen in the story “Open the Gate.” Another story that evokes spiritual transcendence is ”Floating Free” where a grieving daughter is comforted by a humming bird which she sees as the reincarnated spirit of her mother.
A recurring trope among the stories is the equating of women with food and cooking, a reflection of the way women are often perceived in Indian society. Lakshmi Kannan elaborates on this idea observing that in the Tamil cultural milieu, the regressive rural-urban divide continues as the norm. Several people, particularly men, do not have a progressive outlook even when they interact with contemporary women who are successful professionals. The author notes: “In Tamil Nadu, the retrograde maxim that a ‘woman’s place is in the kitchen and the backyard’ still functions with a mind-numbing attitude, irrespective of her economic, social or professional status. The author employs this trope in the stories “Dregs”, “Kitchen Fire,” “The Colour Green” and “Ladies’ Watch”. The latter two stories also delineate an allied theme, the insensitivity of adult children in the diaspora who do not hesitate to use their aging parents as unpaid domestic help. Another food-related subtext that Lakshmi Kannan introduces is the selfishness of men who demand that women serve them plenty of food, yet callously consume it without caring to check if there is enough for the women and children of the household.
Nevertheless, the author does not fall into the trap of essentializing Indian men as selfish, uncaring boors. In the story “As Dapper as They Come,” she turs the notion of a well-dressed, attractive man as being arrogant and self-obsessed on its head. The dapper young man lends a helping hand to an older couple in distress, unmindful of sullying his expensive suit. Furthermore, in the charming story “A for Apple”, the author explores the delight that a small-town boy from Karnataka takes in the rhythms and sonic vibrations of his vernacular Kannada.
It is perhaps in narrating the strength of the bonds formed among women who use them to circumvent or subvert the rigid hierarchies and oppressive customs that govern traditional families that Lakshmi Kanna is at her most impressive. She explores the corrosive jealousies, subterfuges and pettiness that undermine relationships within a family. The long story “Janaki Turns a Blind Eye” is replete with irony. Narrated in five sections, the story relates how a nearly blind matriarch Janaki helps a young bride defeat the machinations of the senior members of the family who are plotting to steal jewellery and silverware. “Addigai” and “Annapurna Bhavan” are two stories where the interaction between women may be set in counterpoint.
In the former, a grandmother furtively bequeaths an heirloom necklace on her granddaughter, warning her never to wear it at family celebrations. When Priya the granddaughter wears it just once several years later to a family wedding, she is rudely interrogated by the hostess as to how she came by it. The acquisitiveness and jealousy within this affluent family is in stark contrast to the warm comradery that characterizes the bonds between women in a small middle-class eatery in the story “Annapurna Bhavan.” The well-to-do narrator Tara insists on eating at the same eatery as her driver where she is assailed by the aromas of the food, she had earlier eater in her childhood. The unabashed enjoyment of their food by the women at the eatery, their friendly banter, their freedom from family constraints and their closeness exhilarates the narrator.
Yet it is not just Lakshmi Kannan’s significant themes – the refusal to be bound by narrow definitions of womanhood, the flowering of the creative impulse, a child’s playful linguistic experiments, the conflicts between appearance and reality – that make her work stand out. It is her prose that evokes both the asymmetries and passions in everyday life with a poetic intensity that is remarkable. An acutely observant chronicler of the incongruities, the asymmetries, the felicities and the marvellous absurdities of life, Lakshmi Kannan is able to express it with precision, empathy and humour. She has an innate sensitivity to the jealousies, treasons, duplicities, compromises, evasions, tender feelings and sentimentalities that characterise human relationships.
Lakshmi Kannan’s stories highlight the extraordinary within the quotidian, revealing the layering of the concrete and the mysterious, the interweaving of diverse elements that reveal that nothing is ever as it seems on the surface. She shows that even the most ordinary individual has hidden facets that can never be completely known. It is her treatment of the special bonds that can be forged among individual and contradictory nature of human relationships that makes Lakshmi Kannan’s fiction so special.
Borderless Journal Singapore Shortened for web page 21 May
Review of Guilt Trip and Other Stories by Payal Nagpal
An Instance of a New Feminist Poetics
Bi-lingual writer and translator, Lakshmi Kannan has written several novels, short story and poetry collections in English. She also writes in Tamil under the nom de plume ‘Kaaveri’. A translator of repute, she has translated from Tamil to English. Kannan is the recipient of the IIakkiya Chintanai Award for short fiction in Tamil and the Katha Award for Translation.
Guilt Trip and Other Stories, Kannan’s recent short story collection, has eleven short stories and two long stories. The glossary at the end gives the meaning of the Tamil words mentioned in the stories. The setting of these stories varies from the 1970s and 1980s to the present time. A complex understanding of women’s position in the Tamil cultural milieu and the Indian society at large is presented vividly in these stories. Each one peels off a layer of the patriarchal structure to make us confront our assumptions about socially accorded roles, especially as women. The author shares her experiences and wisdom in relatable language, maintains an objective stance and refrains from imposing the authorial view on her characters. It is as if she stands apart with the reader to watch them perform, a difficult feat as an author.
A striking quality of Kannan’s writing is her powers of observation. Kannan’s pen delves into the inner thoughts of the characters especially the female protagonists in these stories. An important trope visible in almost all the stories in this collection is that of food. Stories such as “Dregs”, “Kitchen Fire”, “The Colour Green”, “Annapurna Bhavan” and others use food as a trope to understand the patriarchal marginalisation of women in their daily life. Kannan pointedly mentions in the author’s introduction, “The same people who so inextricably intertwine a woman’s life with the food she prepares, are somehow incredibly obtuse in the way they cannot see—or will not see—that women have to eat too, or rather, women equally love good food as much as they do!” Kannan weaves situations effortlessly to bring out women’s appropriation in domesticity through food politics, a factor that remains relevant to this day. Women such as Shiela in “Dregs”, and Arundhati in “VRS” are wise as they quietly stack food for themselves before a meal, knowing full well the gluttonous nature of the male guests. Society’s expectation of women to perform endless household chores including cooking is strongly critiqued. Savitri in “Ladies’ Watch” devotes her life to accomplishing the routine duties expected of her. As she collapses, the doctor’s question, “For God’s sake, allow her to breathe. What’s this pile of clothes doing on her bed?” jolts the reader out of complacence. “The Colour Green” presents the pathetic plight of parents who go to meet their children settled abroad, only to end up as house workers for their families. The stories underscore how it is certainly not a joyous situation for a woman to spend precious hours in the kitchen to satiate the patriarchal palate. The stories emphatically reveal how women remain trapped doing unproductive labour in the household. The grim realities of life are accompanied by moments of fun and gentle laughter—the young boy Prakash’s struggle to negotiate with English through the vernacular turns “A for Apple” to “A for Aji”; the dapper man who helps Jayashree in “As Dapper As They Come” brings sunshine into the bleak atmosphere; the camaraderie of young girls in the titular story, who plan a clandestine trip to Srirangapatna to take a bath in the river Kaveri, is endearing.
The story “Annapurna Bhavan” is placed at the intersectionality of class and gender. Tara has some time to have a quick meal before she meets a friend. She has received fancy suggestions from her family—she could eat at the “The Verandah” in “Taj Connemara” or at the “Raintree Hotel”. Due to paucity of time, she rejects these options and decides to eat at Annapurna Bhavan, a place frequented by her driver. The experience is both liberating and transforming as she becomes a part of the community of women who seek to be free of patriarchal surveillance. The women tell each other, “I feel like I’ve come to my mother’s house. I can eat as much as I want without…”. The women are well aware of how they are usually expected to eat last or not eat enough in their homes. In Annapurna Bhavan, they ensure all dishes are served on the “leaf”, and they look out for each other’s requirements. Eating uninhibitedly liberates them even though momentarily from the diktats of an oppressive society. This unrestrained flow of food, the smell of ghee, the female camaraderie in Annapurna Bhavan connects Tara with her childhood.
Confluence South Asian Perspectives London Nove-Dec 2023 – Copy 19 May 2024
Review of Guilt Trip and Other Stories by Payal Nagpal
The two long stories in this collection have been written in the Tamil genre of “Nedung Kathaigal” where gender issues are presented in a phased manner. In the long stories too, we encounter strong women characters such as the ageing and near blind Janaki and Arundhati, a teacher in the University, struggling with age related osteo[1]arthritis. The Teiresian wisdom of Janaki in “Janaki Turns a Blind Eye” through heightened aural powers helps her to protect her granddaughter-in-law’s jewellery, her stree dhan, the ornaments given to her at the time of marriage. She overhears the devious plans of her daughter and grandson and forewarns their daughter-in-law Vidya. Janaki’s perspicacity of thought and her conviction as woman are inspiring. In “VRS” the female protagonist Arundhati, is surprised at the indifference of her husband, a medical practitioner, to her condition. As the sequence of events unfold, Arundhati is shocked and disappointed at how her husband had chosen to give up his medical practice and follow a Swami, as she was still earning and would therefore take care of all household expenses. Her firm decision to take voluntary retirement from service is a response to her exploitation as an earning member of the family.
In her introduction the author makes a statement for “a new poetics of feminism that can face up to the ‘post’-ness of post feminism, and can match the complexity of creativity from writers who are women.” This collection more than meets up to the authorial demand. The women in these stories are delineated in the context of their complex reality. The decisive nature of the women and their firm resolve to resist subjugation establishes the contours of this new feminist poetics, one that gives women agency to exercise their choice.
Confluence South Asian Perspectives London Nove-Dec 2023 – Copy 19 May 2024
Review of Guilt Trip and Other Stories by Jayanthi Manoj
Journeys from Stereotypes to Prototypes
Lakshmi Kannan’s Guilt Trip and other Stories is an experience of food, emotions and relationships that make our everyday life. Less jargoned but treats with ample servings of the native flavours of Tamil and Kannada glossary, the 13 stories capture the innateness of the South-Indian sensibility. One can quickly relate with the ‘amma’ and ‘Patti’ of the Tamilian home space.
Kannan’s characters are closely real, simple and relatable. She handles the varied human expressions of care, guilt, jealousy, helplessness, loneliness and adventure with utmost authenticity. A woman who tries to tell what she needs can be seen as improper, but these stories navigate through the feminine terrains to find ways to voice it out. They are insightful and delve into the social behaviour that reflects the diverse worlds in which a woman is born into and the world which she creates as an evolved one.
SETU, Bilingual Magazine, pages not numbered, February, 2024, Pittsburgh, USA.
Review of Guilt Trip and Other Stories by Jayanthi Manoj
The Guilt trips…
Guilt Trip… is a journey of characters that move from stereotypical characters who satisfy the kitchen roles to prototypes like young researchers and University Professors who find ways to balance the ladle and pen. The normalized role of women essentially is to cook and serve. This qualifying act is vividly discussed in ‘Dregs’. Sheila, “recalled her sisters-in-law in Tamil Nadu who slaved all day in a sooty kitchen, cooking elaborately for a large extended family” (56).
The drudgery of serving food is not because of the act of service but lack of value and affirmation that is due to a woman who eternally serves food in the household. Kannan clearly rips open the hierarchy and insensitivity that is normalised in this everyday ‘service-ritual’ that is religiously repeated without any consideration left for the women who slog in the kitchen. Sheila’s sisters-in-law went to bed half hungry. “Then they got up the next day to repeat the same work, cooked large meals, ate leftovers and went to bed hungry. The next day and the next… it was understood as a very normal thing for women” (57). Food has a prominent presence in this anthology highlighting subtly gender roles and gender non-conformity.
Sheila is a young researcher in a new land acing with her pen but pursued for the ladle. The male-colleagues did not come to check on her research themes, but on her kitchen. Dregs is a powerful symbol which signifies that a woman is a remnant of something left unworthy. Be it in Leeds or in her own hometown, Sheila is not questioned about her research pursuit, but she has to answer a lot of typical questions such as how would her husband manage food in her absence unmindful of the academic journey that she had voyaged to make it to the Leeds.
‘Dregs’ is a powerful meta story on the politics of cooking. Sheila is a prototype of a ‘thinking-woman’ who “…sleeps with monsters” as in Adrienne Rich’s ‘Snapshots of a daughter-in-law’ as opposed to the stereotype of ‘serving-woman’. Women’s place and role in the kitchen is an undercurrent theme that is recurrent in varied narratives in ‘The Colour Green’, ‘Ladies Watch’, ‘Kitchen fire’ and ‘VRS’ apart from ‘Dregs’. These stories are a wake-up call of changed roles of women who in spite of embracing their femineity can be women who start to think for themselves without the ‘guilt-trip’.
‘VRS’ is a voice call to empower the society that has to handle an empowered woman. An empowered woman is on a different realm, a separate genre, by herself as against the common given whom the world and household are familiar with. She is even part of the gossips among women who have not yet made their inner journey a celebration of sisterhood, and find ways to go by the heart’s content.
Plating for food in the South Indian cuisine is more of serving. Serving food is a main ingredient in the Tamil cuisine. The ethos behind serving food is to serve the cooked food with love and care. It is believed it adds flavour to the food and the people who eat have the stomach and heart content. With family roles, many a time unconsciously ‘Serving’ has become a mark of ‘Servitude’. Women are designated to serve rather than be obliged to serve. Arundhati’s decision to go for a VRS is a backlash or a proactive response of a ‘thinking woman’ who no longer is willing to be exhausted in acts of servitude.
Arundhati is an answer to the kitchen politics, a proactive woman who stands up for herself and who echoes what Lakshmi Kannan has noted in the beautiful quotation of Maya Angelou, “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it, possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women”. That is so beautifully brought out in Arundhati’s character wherein she, even directly tells her helper, Rooparani, to stash away a little food for themselves and should not serve it even if they had to fall short of food that’s put on the table. When we defy a stereotype, we need a model, a prototype to follow. Arundhati without guilt is Kannan’s model of an empowered woman who stands up for herself. She decides that she would no longer be exploited for her goodness, goodwill and resources, including finance and food.
There is a strong message beneath the subtle stories that food need not be just delegated only to the womenfolk and can be a shared endeavour. Kannan brings out the beauty of the shared endeavour in ‘Kitchen Fire’ where there are instances of Padma and her husband Raghuraman in spite of her heavy schedule and his ailment seamlessly make it as an act of mutual-respect to honour each other’s need. There are days Padma makes time to make food for her sick husband amidst her precious work as a fellow in IIAS Shimla. There are times when Raghuraman helped her with dinner, made her tea after she had a tired day and was sensitive enough to warn her against Namakkal, Chengalpattu and Thittakudi who awaited a dinner invitation for home-food unmindful of Padma’s hectic schedule. Raghuraman becomes a prototype of an empowered man, evolved to be sensitive enough to respect and be emotionally available for an empowered woman as his wife unlike Arun in ‘VRS’. It has to be noted that Kannan’s stories are not only exclusively rich with the female experience but also present men capable of respecting and reaching out to women with sensitivity such as Ragurahman in ‘Kitchen Fire’ and the well-dressed man in ‘As Dapper as They come’
The success of Guilt Trip… could be if every reader can take time to check on people, irrespective of the gender, who serve them food every day with a simple note of affection, “Did you eat?” It can be the man and woman in the kitchen, a family member or friend who waits on you to serve, a road-side dabbawalla, a hotel server or anyone, that would be an enhancement of the human spirit with an act of kindness and affirmation. Food represents the culture of a place and is also the emotion of a household.
Stories on women’s roles in ‘Addigai’, the girls’ adventures in ‘Guilt Trip’, woma(e)n’s day out in ‘Annapurna Bhavan’ are interesting reads on a woman’s mindscape. ‘Adiggai’ speaks about the zero tolerance for women who are seriously devoted to careers of their own or women who pursued higher studies. The conflict among the submitted self and the evolved is strongly reflected in ‘Adiggai’.
…And other Stories
Kannan’s collection also has a menu of other stories that surprises the reader with the soul’s journey and transience in ‘The Open Gate’ and ‘Floating Free’, aching for an apple and discovering the native flavour of ‘Guava’ in ‘’A’ for Apple’ and the love and value of the geriatric population in ‘Janaki turns a Blind Eye’
‘The Open Gate’ has an ethereal essence, deep and gripping other-worldly insight. When the soul is ready to leave, nothing can stop it. The best is to prepare the way for it to comfortably leave the body of pain. The soul never dies, it only leaves… is the crux of the opening story of this collection. One can visualize the soul’s passage to the next dimension through the gates as Mr. Subramanium wanted it to be open for a seamless journey. As a show-but-don’t-tell narrator, Kannan states the voice of the soul. The song and gate are signs of getting ready. The song is a symbol of celebration of a life lived, and the gate is a symbol of transition to the next dimension. The soul lives, gets ready to live in another time space. The spiritual transcendence prompted by the comforting humming bird in ‘Floating Free’ is another instance of the transience of life.
Geriatric themes, abound in many of Kannan’s writings. She many a time touches upon the fear and loneliness of the old and sends a strong reminder to embrace the aged with love. Janaki is portrayed as an endearing one who has the power to stand with goodwill towards the young bride in ‘Janaki turns a blind eye’. Hope permeates the story that otherwise captures with wry humour the plans to plunder the newly wed. ‘The Colour Green’ and ‘Ladies Watch’ unveils instances of insensitivity and thoughtlessness of the grown-up children towards their aging parents.
In Lakshmi Kanan’s collection the simple is no ordinary, but envelops layers of meanings which open up the varied roles of typecasts, stereotypes, prototypes with varies perspectives, ideas and customs. A recommended read to journey into our very own homes and identities where we struggle to be and become the best version, we are capable of.
SETU, Bilingual Magazine, pages not numbered, February, 2024, Pittsburgh, USA.
Photos of the Reviewers and Panelists of the Book Launch
