Book Review: The Gypsy Goddess, Meena Kandasamy

The Gypsy Goddess, Meena Kandasamy

• My rating: 3 /5 stars
• Read: 15/02 - 05/04/2023
• Book of 2023: 2

When women take to protest, there is no looking back. Sometimes it is over working conditions, other times, perhaps, a strike for higher wages. And so, in a hungry, back-broken community of villages in Tamil Nadu, a group of rural workers begin to defy their landlords. The landlords, in turn, vow to violently crush them. But these punishments only serve to strengthen the villagers’ resistance - after all, when starvation is the only option, what else is there to lose…?

Bel bought me this one for Christmas this year and I packed it in my bag when I was travelling to London. A story of the fight for worker’s rights in 1960s India. Kandasamy inserts herself into the novel in a way that’s unfamiliar as you read. She seeks to wrap the story around herself, so you feel it is truly her tale to tell. 

It’s taking me a while to get through, which is not to do with the novel itself or the writing, more my brain being a clusterfuck of *things happening* at the moment which is really not letting any time or energy for reading through. 

Lines I underlined while reading The Gypsy Goddess:

Alliteration under the armpit, algebra around the rhyming feet. Meter was all that mattered. (11).

It is common knowledge that no land would ever be found interesting until a white man arrived. (15)

Some poets are utter losers (19)

Breasts are a beautiful metaphor any day, and one has to understand the importance of poetic licence. (19)

The tinkling bells of bullocks could add music to these sentences, but they have been muted so that you can silently stalk the storyline. (27)

Everything is so precariously held together here that you might want a helping hand. (31)

This is a joint venture. We collaborate on the critical condition that we do not abandon each other. (32)

A book does not have to be about its title. A title does not have to be about the book. (39)

On a sultry afternoon in July when the sun sets the sky on fire (49)

Like all other writers before me, I ask you to trust me. (60)

We must remember that hate is not always obedient to plot. (71)

When women take to protest, there is no looking back. (75)

The jails are full of fighting Madonnas. They are not afraid. They are not afraid of arrests. They are not afraid of hurt. (75)

They are bold beyond the bruised skin and the bleeding knee. (76)

The police, as puppets of the ruling classes, will not make the law work for the poor. (77)

I am telling a story so that a story gets told (118)

The people remained silent, by order of the party. (126)

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 you will find staggering. (127)

A novel is not about manners. (128)

I cannot allow my mother to judge me when I am at work. (130)

I am now queen of clauses, poet of persuasive round-robin phrases. I swim in these sentences. (137-8)

We work under a ticking clock. (138)

I write my way out of this troublesome task. (139)

Unfortunately, I write for a man who cannot digest contradictions. (139)

Reader, I have not married him. (142)

The fear of upsetting him far outweighed the fear of him. (143)

Kandasamy includes an incredibly moving passage that describes the landlords setting the villages alight, and a brilliantly-written but immensely dark description of death by fire. I was reading it on the train and started tearing up just as the person next to me asked me to let them out to use the bathroom. 

Born without eyes, the fire had used its feet to move. Lacking the forgiveness of water, it had burnt them with blindness and bitterness. (187)

The firewood is not sufficient, and, in a final act of defiance, the bodies refuse to burn. (189)

Life, weighed down by death, weary of destruction, goes on. (195)

Now burdened with mourning, it is beyond the means of the living to try and make meaning out of the randomness of death. (196)

It began when he tamed a notorious, anklet-wearing vampire. (197)

The gods spoke through him and the demons listened to him and there was nothing more any man could ask for. (198)

What has happened now was not in the realm of death, it went way beyond. (200)

The anger keeps the people together, injects them with life, provides them a reason to live, pushes them into action. (202)

Women carelessly wind the fire around their hips and across their breasts. Girls carry fire in the ends of their curling hair and they pretend not to notice at all. (203)

The air is full of golden firedust. Everything is ablaze. Everyone is glowing. (203)

She wanted to be moving in the darkness. She wanted to be alone with her sadness. (204)

Living the nightmare, she has wandered very far away from the land of sleep. (205)

It is strange, the way in which the village has exchanged its sorrow for insanity. (211)

What happens to the saucy chicken that comes into the kitchen on its own accord? It ends up in a curry. (221)

The treat paper no more preciously than pubic hair. (224)

We realize that the law has stealthy claws; it sneaks up and catches the most unsuspecting person. (229)

Strangely, we have outlived our parents and our children. We live between the dead. (234)

A story told in many voices is seen as unreliable. (234)

We know that cinema changes the truth: it takes our eyes by the arm and shows them around. (237)

We shared these stories of revolution endlessly between us until the stories slipped through the sieves of our minds and other stories came to take their place. (242)

We gave witness. We felt their flood of questions eat us away. We were interrogated. We were examined and cross-examined and dismissed. (242)

Our hopes for justice lie with the judge who is busy reconstructing the events of that night and shuffling them into a sequence. (245)

You see, even if the hen knows it is day, it is the cock that must crow. (246)

These were knives that found every inch of our flesh. (250)

We try hard not to lose the little hope we have. (253)

We are in this together. We are the 99 percent. Come and occupy the novel, dear reader. (259)

You have discovered much more than what I stopped to say. (260)

Dew begins to diamond the golden fields (261)

They tell you stories and stories in this manner, of women who do not appear here, of children whose names are not printed on these pages. (265)

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Kandasamy employs a beautiful lyric to her writing, and it’s a messy novel to read but it’s telling a messy story. The Gypsy Goddess is a story of oppression, power, exploitation, fighting for what’s right, and dealing with the consequences of that. 

Kandasamy inserts her voice into the novel routinely so you’re constantly reminded of the importance of this story. It’s important to her, and to her people, and for the reader to learn. It’s a powerful novel which reinforces the weight of storytelling, and keeping people who have been wronged alive through their stories.