The Gypsy Goddess by Meena Kandasamy Page B

party’s high command that Gopalakrishna Naidu had held a meeting in Kilvenmani, the party’s high command wrote back to the party’s local office that the will of the working people would always defeat the feudal forces.
    When the people found the theory too romantic to be reassuring and when they cried that Gopalakrishna Naidu had publicly announced a ten-day deadline for burning their village, the party’s high command told them, through the proper channel, not to panic unduly. At this point, the party’s secretary in Nagapattinam, Meenakshisundaram, reminded the perturbed villagers that he had written to the chief minister of the Madras presidency a few days before, pointing out all the havoc that was being wreaked by the Paddy Producers Association, and had sought for security for Kilvenmani. The high command unofficially said that the people would not come to any harm because their party was in a coalition with the DMK, the ruling party.
    The party had morphed itself to enjoy the charms of the parliamentary system, and it consoled its cadre that it was playing by the rules of this new game.
    But also to fulfil its role as a revolutionary force amongthe proletariat for which it was originally intended, the party’s local offices held public meetings everywhere. At Thevur and Tiruvarur. At Iluppur and Karuveli. At Avarani and Manjakkollai and Puducherry. At Sikkal too, where it had lost one of its most daring comrades.
    The party continued to work among the people, the party continued to keep their spirits high. The party also provided protection.
    The people remained silent, by order of the party.

    In the midst of the struggle and the starvation, there are songs.
    don’t be blind, open your eyes; don’t be meek, speak out; don’t be a slave, straighten your spine. let the toiling blood thunder, let the crestfallen chest stand upright, let the working class unite! only our shackles shall be lost, in front of us is a golden world! the past is a dream, the future is a new epoch! these times are ours, comrades, we shall see a world of smiling faces and satisfied lives! long live the union, victory to the revolution!
    These songs don’t work in translation.
    They are here only to remind the reader that the historical events of this novel did not take place in any English-speaking country. Don’t you even try to get familiar with what goes on around here, for it is not only the sounds of my native land that you will find staggering.

    Sorry.
    This could be the first and last time you encounter many of the characters who have appeared in this chapter. I plead guilty to the charge of being ultra-utilitarian, but, as far as I know, a novel is not about manners. You do not have to let people stay at your place only because it does not look nice if they are ordered out. Here, I simply push them off the page. Don’t bother asking me about authorial decorum and all that jazz. I am not running for Miss Congeniality. I stopped practising politeness at tenth grade.
    Because I have taken pleasure in the aggressive act of clobbering you with metafictive devices, I can hear some of you go: what happened to the rules of a novel?
    They are hanging on my clothesline over there.

7. A Walking Corpse
    My mother told me never to talk to strangers. Being a woman who has consistently disobeyed her mother, and having caused her a variety of near-fatal panic attacks and palpatations by having all kinds of affairs with all kinds of strangers, I take up this assignment with the belief that my mother will never come to hear of this trespass.
    The job at hand goes beyond speaking/sleeping with a stranger; here, I am asked to share a blank page with Gopalakrishna Naidu.
    Some day, I should sue myself for exposing a nice Tamil woman to sexual harassment and other untold dangers. Given my ‘decent’ upbringing and my mother’s never-ending sermons on morality, I should have never stayed in a room