Frozen Speech

The ‘book’, as this formless narrative is termed in the blurb, is more an ethnography of the Paraiya self than creative writing. An insider account of the onset of menstruation, food culture, marriages and domesticity is offered, yet it’s not quite ethnography. Sangati informs, does not enlighten. Perhaps the creative aspects—how the stories are told, the use of "rough—dialectal Tamil" are lost in translation, where the Tamil thanni-ginni (in Hindi paani-vaani) is rendered "water and geeter". Unintentionally Rushdiean. Unidiomatic usage abounds, like "he was born alongside four or five brothers."