Spunk, swagger and perhaps even sex—Susan’s debut collection is mainly about feisty women. In the title story, the sentences are short, repetitive and draw the reader into the world of Vicky’s, with its mix of bi and heterosexual collisions and unlikely encounters that span different countries all woven by the wonder of a teetotaling bartender. Or perhaps it is drawn together by the quick encounters, the hot and not-so-hot men who one expects to live forever.
Having set the tone with a sassy cover image, Susan takes up the tales without dropping a stitch. The Handkerchief Kumaris in The Trinity are to be expected from someone part of the Pink Chaddi initiative. Much of A Trinity is filled with whip-sharp, witty comments on local communities as the girls tour the youth festival circuit, bringing the house down with their talent or lack of it, but ending grounded in reality after wild oats are sown. Life in college seems full of possibilities until life and marriage happens. And there’s Teresa which, for good reason, evokes Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca with its first sentence, as the protagonist explores the life of her husband’s ex-wife, along with Mumbai newsrooms and the outsider-ness of Malayalis in cities outside Kerala.
Even though the title story is about not inventing Facebook, they are mainly connected to the world of the internet. Susan’s is a world of old chat rooms and creaking dial-up modems that provide the only exciting connections to a world outside Bangalore and the deep South and even then, there is always the chance that someone might hear. Many characters are addicted to Twitter feeds like the author, at war with ‘sickular’ society and who is unhappily aware that the books serious fanboys read are the ones written by Ruth Jhabwala or ‘Mary Roy’s crazy daughter’. It is because of Twitter and Chatterati that WiFi graphics punctuate the pages.
The women here look for their real selves, confident that they have found what they have to do despite the fact that it is not where their hearts are. Like the singer who works in a BPO, rather than doing her riyaaz and who gravitates from fake music chat rooms to real life via Skype. There are male-centric stories as well, with issues like rape and the Gujarat riots thrown in. Susan’s men, however, seem to swing between both sexes in a state of confusion that erupts in violence, occasionally hemmed in by women who seem to be locked in an infamous sisterhood.
The stories are set mainly in Bangalore and backwater towns in Kerala, with the protagonists boldly looking ahead, aware of their disruptive presence. Susan explores what it means to be a South Indian woman in the context of traditionalism represented by parents and teachers, with assorted paraphernalia of life in the south. For most the wild-child experience palls when marriage approaches, but there are a few who at 27 are still single and who feel that life may lack meaning, with no passionate spark, whether of creativity or romance.
Susan’s women characters are confident, young, defiantly urban and on the move, determined to make a statement the way young millennials do, regardless of the older generation’s approval—even though some elders have their own streaks of creativity. Parents and teachers are there to be defied, while they sport flashy sunglasses and pretend to be hip-slinging NRIs in Bangkok or Bali.
Susan is at her best when her language is boldly upbeat--stories about those who inhabit the lower depths tend to be expected, given the fact that the unhappiness of poverty is, sadly, much of a muchness, with pussyfooting around the word ‘servant’ in a politically correct time. Her world is that of besties and friends rediscovering a new connection through Susan’s witty observations. Undoubtedly the dark side lurks, without it the stories would lack much of their punch, since tension remains part of the post-millennial world where most people are busy presenting cover images, resulting in a tangle between the status statement and what lies beneath.
Ultimately, what you remember are the knowing eyes and full, louche lips of Rohit Bhasi’s cover image that memorably sums up the stories in their wit and perception.
