by Gracy
Fathima: The dead seem to haunt many of your stories – be it the greedy ghosts of ‘Orotha and the Ghosts’, the meddlesome parents in ‘Illusory Visions’, or the embittered, yet hopeful ghost of the young girl who comes visiting on the night of Nativity in ‘It Is Winter Now on Earth’. Why do the dead interfere in life on earth so often in your stories?
Gracy: The dead have appeared in most of my stories. Even in my latest collection, Randu Charithrakaaranmaarum oru Yuvathiyum, there is a story called ‘Mudhritham’ which maintains that the world of the living belongs to the dead as well.
Orotha is not only a brave girl, but also interacts with ghosts. It is also because Orotha’s husband is a coward, and so, naturally, she has to be brave. Motherhood in women is awakened when fearful husbands become dependent on their wives. Orotha has no children. That affection is also showered on the husband. Their marriage is so secure because it is built on love.
Fathima: There are many savarna symbols and Hindu rituals that keep recurring in your stories, even the ones set against a strong Christian background. Could you comment?
Gracy: In my childhood, there were some remnants of Hindu customs practised in our family. The Pulluvan song for appeasing the serpent, offerings of toddy and dried chicken left inside prayer rooms for karanavars or ancestors. The belief was that the karanavars would come to receive their share, and so on. Over time, such practices have disappeared and such syncretic rituals have come to an end in Christian houses. Also, I married a Hindu. For these reasons, I think both cultures accommodate each other in some of my stories.
Fathima: I have also noticed a tendency to equate fairness with beauty in some of the stories, say, ‘Theechamundi’, ‘Fever Eyes’, etc. Are you conscious of it?
Gracy: Do you think so? I have never been aware of it. Until you asked me, I never even thought about or was conscious of it. My stories are mostly about people and situations I have known, most often intimately. My grandmother was a golden-complexioned, beautiful lady whom I much admired. Maybe that is one reason why a fair complexion got linked with good looks in my mind. I was totally oblivious of it and it was unconscious.
Fathima: Would it be trite for me to ask you why you write, and whether you have a philosophy of writing that compels you to write?
Gracy: Since ‘Who am I?’ is a question that the sages of India have asked themselves time and again, and found various answers to, I didn’t think there was any point in looking for anything new by asking that. Many modernist writers in Malayalam revolved around these existential questions. I am convinced that Indians are troubled more by the bitter reality of how this accidental life could be endured, rather than to labour in finding out the truth about who one is. Also, I think we should allow our lives to be shaped by our own culture. It seems to me that the world today is so tense because it does not have such a perspective. It would be worthwhile to examine the implications of why Indian social life was not allowed to evolve slowly and naturally, instead of being forced to make a quantum leap into modernity. Perhaps it came about when the world transformed itself into a global village. Religion is another factor that is responsible for making life become so unbearable. Especially in the Indian context. More deaths have occurred in the name of religion than in the World Wars. Human beings have only become more and more intolerant, narrow-minded and superstitious. So, life has become increasingly problematic. The predominance and pervasiveness of politics only heightens the misery. Even the enabling possibilities of sophisticated technology are misused by our barbaric mindset, as evident in the rampant misuse of social media. In the given situation, only art can offer a parallel world for human beings. Especially, literature. This is the relevance of literature, I believe.
Fathima: The short story is a powerful medium – ‘short and powerful like a bullet’, as Mini Krishnan puts it. Most of the established short-story writers in Malayalam have also written novels, with some of them preferring to switch over completely to the novel. Were you never tempted?
Gracy: There are stories in Malayalam that can stand on par with stories from other parts of the world. Many tall claims have also been made about how this literary period is defined by fiction. But the reality is that those who only write short stories will not gain much recognition or be given their due. I have heard some writers brag that anyone can write a novel. I would say that this is a pure, absolute lie. A novel is something that requires a lot of hard work. As for me, my situation in life did not allow me even to make an attempt. I do desire to write a novel. But I always retreat, because of the niggling doubt whether the small canvas and the condensed idiom of short stories would lend themselves to the genre of the novel. Besides, I like to pare down language, and so am unsure whether I can even attempt the long-form narrative, though ‘Fever Eyes’ was begun as one and abandoned to become a novelette. What is to be remembered is that the short story and the novel belong to two distinct mediums, and I doubt if all short-story writers can be good novelists. For instance, T. Padmanabhan and C.V. Sreeraman are eminent short-story writers who have kept themselves away from long fiction. On the other hand, there are many others who have failed miserably in their attempts to write novels.
Fathima: I know some of your stories have been translated by V.C. Harris, Narayana Chandran and Hema, and in fact, this volume includes a translation by Mini Krishnan – ‘Rakthavum Mamsavum’ translated as ‘Body and Blood’. I found it delightful to work with you as you are an author who is deeply involved in the translation process, reading the various drafts word by word and suggesting pertinent changes. Are you excited about your first collection in English?
Gracy: Every writer wishes to get her/his stories translated into other languages. I, too, want my stories to reach more people. My work has been translated into Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, and included in collections. Though some of my stories have already appeared in English, this is the first time that so many of them are getting translated. And when it is a collection of my favourite stories, it indeed makes me very happy! So, I will cooperate as much as possible with the translator. When there is no big difference between the wavelengths of the author and the translator, the delight only increases further.
I wish to express my gratitude to you for translating the stories, Mini Krishnan for editing them, and Rahul Soni and HarperCollins for publishing this collection.
About the Book
An intimate chronicle of the world we live in ... deceptively simple but searingly truthful
K.R. MEERA
When they were first published, Gracy’s stories shocked readers with their sexual candour and frank celebration of female desire. She is now widely recognized as one of the most important contemporary writers in Malayalam.
Her short stories, which vary from half a page to novella-length, draw the reader into the world of modern men and women caught in quagmires of desire, lust, jealousy and vengeance – emotions that they often carry even into the afterlife. In these pages we will find: the bitter defiance of a daughter going to her mother’s funeral in her most alluring sari; a contemporary retelling of the story of Draupadi; the sinister coming-of-age tale of a young girl.
Brilliantly rendered by award-winning translator Fathima E.V., Baby Doll brings a comprehensive selection of Gracy’s work to English readers for the very first time.
Endlessly playful, cleverly mischievous, enchantingly magical, scarily nightmarish
K. SATCHIDANANDAN
Literary expeditions into the depths of contemporary life
SUBHASH CHANDRAN
About the Author
Gracy is a Malayalam short-story writer, whose first collection of short stories, Padiyirangippoya Parvathi, came out in 1991. It was followed by nine more short-story collections. She has published three memoirs and a short autobiography. She has also made her mark in writing for children. Her work has been translated into Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, etc. Some of Gracy’s stories have also been translated into English and Oriya. She has been the recipient
of many awards, including the Lalithambika Antharjanam Award (1995) instituted for women writers, the Thoppil Ravi Award (1997), the Katha Prize for the Best Malayalam Short Story (1998) and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (2000).
Fathima E.V. is a writer and translator. Her translation of Subhash Chandran’s A Preface to Man (2016) won the V. Abdulla Translation Award in 2017 and the 2018 Crossword Book Award for Fiction in Translation. She is a co-translator of Delhi: A Soliloquy by M. Mukundan. Fathima is currently working as an Associate Professor at KMM Govt. Women’s College, Kannur, Kerala. She did her MA and PhD from the University of Calicut, and her CertTESOL from St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Her poems have appeared in international journals and anthologies.
Praise for Baby Doll
Gracy is one of the finest practitioners of the short story in modern Malayalam literature. Complex, compelling and shocking, her stories grip you by their narrative energy even as they stand your world on its head by their eerie, unsettling vision. With unerring perception, she captures the Indian woman as she flies through nothingness and with nothing to hold on to. These translations dexterously transport into English the startling, surreal and beautiful world of Gracy’s writing.
– PAUL ZACHARIA
Gracy is easily one of the most engaging fiction writers in Malayalam, dealing with an astonishing range of themes, in a variety of voices from the tragic to the ironic. She can be endlessly playful, cleverly mischievous, enchantingly magical, and at times even scarily nightmarish. The pangs of growing up, the unpredictability of desire, the fragility of relationships – Gracy deals with all of them in her uniquely nuanced narratives that laugh at the follies of men and women, their self-love and the anxieties it generates, without ever looking down on them, biblical resonances often contributing to their depth. Her characters are unforgettable, and the situations strange and familiar at the same time. Fathima E.V.’s selection in Baby Doll reflects the author’s range, while her translation captures the subtle twists in these intensely human tales, making them perfectly faithful and yet highly readable.
– K. SATCHIDANANDAN
Here is an author of extraordinary literary poise who has created many stories that have emboldened my generation to rebel and revolt against the violence thrust upon our lives, eventually liberating our souls from the confinements of the male gaze. Together, these stories present an intimate chronicle of the world we live in, depicting our times with amazing clarity and dexterity, in a deceptively simple but searingly truthful manner. Beautifully and skilfully translated, these stories transform the everyday world and ordinary lives into insightful representations of intriguing human conditions.
– K.R. MEERA
Gracy’s ability to express the complexities of the feminine inner self through simple narrative techniques, the compact structure of her stories, and her literary expeditions into the depths of contemporary life set her apart from the rest of our modern writers.
– SUBHASH CHANDRAN
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First published in English in India in 2021 by Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
www.harpercollins.co.in
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Published by arrangement with DC Books
Copyright for the original Malayalam text © Gracy 2016
English Translation Copyright © Fathima E.V. 2021
P.S. Section Copyright © Fathima E.V. 2021
P-ISBN: 978-93-9032-787-4
Epub Edition © February 2021 ISBN: 978-93-9032-788-1
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Gracy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.
Cover design: Aaryama Somayaji
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