Harsimran Kaur ON June 02, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW, THE DAUGHTERS OF MADURAI BY RAJASREE VARIYAR-FICTION
Rating: 4/5
The tree is jostled by the hurricane that the intemperate winds flow lushly in fidgety lapses. Is it a scam? Or maybe a pretentious charade to make leaves intolerant of their silhouette crumpling insidiously to the ground. The tree stands bare and shows a parsimonious reluctance to stop the leaves from wailing. It knows the isolation, it comes unattended. The leaves are no longer a part of the burgeoning legacy. It cries along, the dried branches vehemently opposing nature’s humor to destroy what it creates.
One fine day, the branches are again resplendent with the ivory green parachutes clinging to it swinging in the air. The dust laden leaves clamor to sing again, dance in the twilight and stiffen by an incalibrated touch. How this particular realm of nature resembles the same pristine affordability of a womb to wait for a life to crackle? Unknowingly both the tree and the womb chaperon the validity of an existence. Their emptiness defied by nature—a moist laden inclusivity in fear of being empty again and then bringing in a sustainable life incognito. Another season, another mating is a clarion call to sow a new life but the agony to see the shovel dig a hole in the appeasement of the tenebrous growth altogether sings a murky staccato of unsavory.
Janani wiggles the outer crust of her stomach, inside the darkness rolls a saccharine flute of breath. She fears the bereavement when the dilapidated womb will blow out cries of losing its consanguinity to the intoxicated peelers who rob her off of being a mother. She moans the death of each of her girls. It has become a ritual and she abides by it; the birth of a girl is a hypocrisy that a woman indulges in to siphon her negligent living onto the people she is forced to belong to, they all think so.
Whom does she belong to? Herself! Presumably No, because she loses courage to save her girls from the immorality of dead pan cultural hues? She does not belong to herself and neither people around her; a proffered being whose respect lies in giving birth to a male heir. She is a curse; a penetrating withering snake that only produces venom giving birth to girls who are nothing but a shredded leaf creating an unflavored blockage for the feet that have no compunction to crush it.
‘The Daughters of Madurai’ by Rajasree Variyar is about a woman Janani and the loss of her daughters due to a puritanical mindset. The inhabitant sclerosis to get rid of the girl child at the time of birth ponder voraciously,
- The behemoth ‘dowry’, its undisputed prevalence, its unclaimed existence! It ceases to neglect the door where the womb is solicitously carrying the patriarch of the family.
- Coarsening the rough hand through the infant’s neck or tempestuously burying the wailing and crying under the mud laden ground is a panacea for the unethical minds. Isn’t it’s a prosperity of their peripatetic divulgence?
Is Janani impervious to all this? She accepts as has no other way. It is the reckless solitude that Janani goes through on the ephemeral transition from being a mother to a persona non grata, yet again offering the womb of unprecedented fear. From the fretted roads of Madurai forsaken in the gleam of sententious ideologies to the serendipitous arabesque of Australia, Janani embarks on a journey filled with sepulchral trials, thereby holding the mantle of recalcitrance.
Rajasree Variyar in her maiden novel, ‘The Daughters of Madurai’ has disinterred the intransigent mind where the ‘girl child’ is considered to be a burden, not at once thinking that the privilege of the womb to meet the demands of consanguinity is borne by a woman too. ‘Janani’—the name in itself means to ‘to give birth’—she does but all of them taken away from her. She then travels miles to protect the last born, ‘Nila’ plastering a cement of secrets form the ‘one’ whom she wants to live and give her the protection she deserves.
TAKE AWAY
A story of a woman who under the thatch of divides and parallels is a conspicuous belittle drudgery. Janani does not lose hope and is imperceptibly awakened to the anomaly of her existence. She twists and tires but resolved in her purpose to save a life, meets people who leave no stone unturned to help her realize her dreams.
Finally, love and life both run intertwined to stream a belonging she deserves.