Ezra Pound declared: “Literature is news that stays news.” Anita Nair’s latest collection, Why I Killed My Husband and Other Such Stories, reminds us why some news is better off staying in the newspaper; the incident of the gang rape in Hathras or the death by suicide of a Dalit medical college student, for instance. The factual reportage of these cases has already grabbed us by the throat and shaken the nation’s conscience to its core. When such crimes are fictionalised (the author describes the collection as a work of literary fiction in the preface), readers are justified in expecting some room for their imagination to expand beyond the territory that news and op-eds have already covered between them.

Some psychological insight, historical perspective, or emotional complexity that is not accessible to us through any means but through the committed, truth-seeking eye of the writer—this is what we look for in literary fiction. The only story in the book that makes some gesture towards these is “The Field of Flowers”, which superimposes on the Hathras incident a large cast inspired by the Mahabharata.

Here, the world of the wrestling akhadas (arenas) in rural Uttar Pradesh serves as a crucible to examine the conscience of powerful men whose complicity or indifference enables ghastly crimes. Driven by contrition for failing to prevent the gang rape, Balram, the powerful landlord who runs the akhada, leaves home and wanders aimlessly in search of forgiveness. He finds succour in the temple of a goddess in Kerala, where he undertakes acts of ritual penance to expiate his sins. All the while, his brother Kanhaiya remains aloof, only offering sugar-coated words on how we cannot predict or control the consequences of our actions.

The Mahabharata parallel is elaborated in painstaking detail, but it does not add much heft to the moral dilemma at the centre. There is a minor sub-plot involving Subhadra and Arjun; a bit about Kanhaiya’s “assignations with married women lovers”; a random mention of Sudama; a reference to the sexual preferences of Balram’s wife, Revati. Taken together, these form the elaborate scaffolding around a far less imposing structure at the core consisting of Bhim’s wrestling prowess, his upper-caste rival Duri’s jealousy, and Shyama’s audacity in helping her fiancé Bhim defeat Duri. 

What is timeless about the epic framing is marred by the writer’s need to make characters mouth explicit political statements about the rape statistics of 2019 or the “male gaze”. It is as if readers must be anxiously spoon-fed “correct” sentiments lest they fail to notice or condemn the persistence of untouchability, the impunity of privileged upper-caste men, or the arrogant self-assurance of feudalistic landlords.

‘State-of-the-nation’ stories

“Quota Girls” carries on in a similar vein about caste discrimination in college settings, this time thankfully without epic pretensions. But the ripped-from-the-headlines story reveals little about the inner lives of any character. Such caricatures populate this black-and-white world that one can easily imagine Professor Badugavi—who “with an exaggerated flourish gestured for Savitha and Uma Shree to return to their seats”, after mocking their English—breaking into villainous laughter.

The mean girl gang in college is headed by a Rupa, who is, of course, the evil professor’s niece. Uma Shree, one of the eponymous protagonists, also comes pre-packaged: the resilient “city girl” as opposed to Savitha, the vulnerable “village girl”. In case anyone missed the point, the third-person narrator clues us in within the story: “Resilience. Resilience. Resilience. She drummed the word into every cell of her being.” Just like the story wants to drum into the reader the obvious moral takeaway.

“The descriptions of Anjali’s volatile married life in the eponymous story—the way sex is as disappointing to her as eating vadam, the casual insults by her husband—are so true to life that they are engrossing.”

In these “state-of-the-nation” stories commenting on everything that ails the country, “The Little Duck Girl” ticks yet another box: CAA-NRC (the controversy over the Citizenship [Amendment] Act and the National Register of Citizens). However, politics here is only the background score in an absorbing character study—of a type the writer knows well enough to mock good-humouredly. Nair draws a convincing portrait of a self-important, middle-aged Malayali bachelor in a small town with a certain amount of wealth and an inexplicable weakness for duck eggs. When his domestic peace and order are threatened by the identity of the orphan girl he employs, he decides to play the saviour nobody asked for. Whether his sudden decision is fuelled by misguided chivalry or self-serving desire is difficult to tell, but the ending feels more or less like he got what he deserved. Shallow as he is, it is hard to hate Shree Raman, and the indulgent satire directed at him lands quite well.

The other three stories in the book that are unapologetically genre fiction—romance, crime, and thriller—are again uneven. “Twin Beds”, as the title suggests, is about a couple whose marriage is almost on the rocks. They go together on their annual trips abroad, but each is trapped in their own world. The story is premised on a wild role-playing game: stuck-up Vasudha becomes the spontaneous Shona, while businesslike Akaash turns into the mindful Sultan.

Given the genre, the answer to whether the game could reveal more of their personalities to each other and rekindle the flame is easy to guess. Yet a few interesting details—like the contrast between Vasudha’s and Shona’s attitude to sightseeing, the reason behind Akaash’s cynicism and aloofness, and Sultan’s intuitive understanding that Shona would love the gift he brought her—keep the story moving along smoothly.

The strongest and the weakest

The strongest story in the collection is “Why I Killed My Husband”, if only because the narrator, Anjali, keeps offering little vignettes of her marriage to Madhavan about all the occasions when she should have killed her husband, before revealing when, why, and how she finally did it. Since her decades-long married life has only been a series of small indignities leading up to a final betrayal, she has had the time and means to orchestrate the perfect murder.

Contemporary events like the 2015 Chennai floods and demonetisation crash in on their lives too but less as occasions for hectoring and more as contingencies shaping the plot. The confident voice of the narrator even berates young readers for assuming a rash ending; after all, this is a woman who only asked for an “uneventful life with no malice and no betrayal.” A staid middle-class Tam-Brahm woman with a steady bank job, Anjali comes from the same zone as Akhila from Nair’s 2001 novel, Ladies Coupé, but has greater clarity and resolve. Some of the descriptions of her volatile married life—the way sex is as disappointing to her as eating vadam, the casual insult by her husband about her harmonica, or the sheer relief she felt when she was all alone for the first time—are so true to life that they keep one engrossed in this tale of crime.

“The Land of Lost Content”, apparently based on the real-life experiences of the author, is the one story that does not stand up to scrutiny even as genre fiction. That a worldly-wise journalist turned influencer who stays on top of online trends (posting #GRWM reels) and is sought after for paid collaborations should fall for a barefaced digital scam seems utterly unconvincing. She is shown to be a woman with enough mental tenacity to plan for divorce and secure her income, yet she is threatened witless by a conman claiming to be a cop placing her under “digital arrest”.

Amidst her distress and panic, she manages to shoehorn in some bleeding-heart sentiments for political prisoners persecuted by the ruling government. It takes a couple of days and the loss of all her liquid assets for her to realise she has been played. The reader can see the twist coming from miles away and only waits for the rather dim protagonist to catch up.

The problem with the collection is not that it wears its politics on its sleeve but that the rest of the fabric is too frail to hold its weight.

Iswarya V. is a freelance translator and critic. She teaches English literature at the Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

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