“As if in contempt of the calendar, the thinnai has preserved its own mysterious temporality. From its nooks and crannies, dusty memories started to escape.”
The verandah/courtyard/balcony/thinnai is the home’s window to the world. Its grandiosity and openness provide clues to what the family residing inside might be like. Are passersby welcome to stop for a drink of water? Can the men gather to chat about the day’s events? Are women allowed to speak to strangers? Do the residents mingle with their guests? The structure of high-rise buildings that we’re so familiar with does not allow for the luxury of a thinnai, which used to be a coveted addition to the house in cities and villages in a different time.
Kurusukuppam
Ari Gautier’s novel The Thinnai, translated from the French by Blake Smith, brings us to a Pondicherry beyond White Town and Auroville. In fact, in this Pondicherry, the experimental township of the White man is yet to be. Gautier’s Kurusukuppam hamlet in Pondicherry is a sleepy melting pot of confused, assorted identities and ideologies. In addition to the Tamils, there are the white French, the Caribbeans, the Blacks, and the Creole. Here you can find devout Catholics, staunch Marxists, and those who worship and detest Periyar. All involved in small jobs, the one thing that binds the residents is poverty and a perennial state of neglect. Kurusukuppam – the village of fishermen and lower-caste groups – paints a sorry picture. The young narrator (quite accurately) compares it to Armorica, the village where the Asterix comics are set.
The village is amply enlivened by its residents – a motley crew of drunkards, impoverished priests, lustful widows, proud polygamists, North Indian haters, committed Communists and greedy capitalists, a resourceful young man who enacts movie scenes for the village that is too poor to go to the cinema. Each of them has a special nickname bestowed upon them depending on how they look, an unfortunate incident in the past, or their temperament and disposition. Money and comfort might be scarce but there’s no lack of scandals and entertainment. Gossip flows as freely as booze and it gently lubricates the otherwise stagnant – and often painful – existence of their lives.
Gautier takes great pleasure in his description of Kurusukuppam and its residents. He is not interested in hurried introductions. From the circumstances of their births to their current political convictions, the reader is told everything in vivid, hilarious detail. Don’t be surprised if you meet a Nehru, Mountbatten, Netaji, Benito or Adolf during your stay at Kurusukuppam. (If you’re reading this novel in public, be prepared to receive curious stares when you laugh out loud.)
The presence of Whites, Blacks, Tamils, and everyone in between creates a peculiar environment where the independent status of India is immaterial. Little has changed here – it is filthy, there is hardly any drinking water, and it is not rare to step on shit as you got about the village. Here, the dividing lines are not just between the various castes, but also races and languages. It is amply clear that Kurusukuppam is a nest of the lowest of the low. This is where the rejects of Pondicherry have parked themselves. For instance, Lourdes, the Creole housemaid of the narrator’s family, is rejected many times over not only for her mixed-race identity but also for the mishmash language she speaks. Her caste is inconsequential in a way that it’d be for the worst-off amongst us.
Pondicherry before Auroville
Gautier seems to be telling us that this is what the real Pondicherry is – not its whitewashed streets, boutique cafes, and White hippie-populated neighbourhoods. The untouchable here converts to Catholicism and opts for French citizenship to escape his fate – thus undoing thousands of years of caste violence. And indeed it is distressing to learn how much of this history we have wilfully turned a blind eye to.
Great excitement unfolds when Gilbert Thaata – a White man as poor as a church mouse and an unapologetic do-nothing – arrives on Bastille Day at the thinnai for a drink and rest. Although tired to his bones, he is not interested in a sip of water. A gulp of whiskey and some grilled meat would be perfect. After being sufficiently fed and wholeheartedly welcomed, the old man regales his host with the “curse of Sita” – a terrifying curse that has plagued many generations of his family. He launches into a spirited recollection of wars and battles fought many centuries ago, in high seas and treacherous lands, for the priceless diamond Stone of Sita. One can express doubts about the veracity of his story but soon enough everyone in Kurusukuppam is enthralled by it.
The chutney that is Pondicherry is further chutneyfied with the arrival of a new group of Whites in the 1960s, almost two decades after India got rid of its colonial masters. Gautier touches upon the establishment of Auroville in 1968 and the sudden deluge of dirty, bearded, unkempt Whites. The natives are surprised and disgusted by the sight – they are only used to the saheb-types. Pondicherry, which was once also a settlement of retired soldiers, is transformed into a haven of peace – as preached by the hashish-smoking White messiahs. The irony is not lost on anyone.
The thinnai is a fast-disappearing structure from Tamil houses. And so appears to be the Pondicherry of Gautier’s creation. The author, who grew up as a pariah Catholic in Pondicherry, is intimately familiar with this world – one that is precariously nestled between multifarious identities which make little sense to the rigid systems of our political structures. Gautier’s choice to write in French seems to be the most natural choice – in what other tongue can a Pondicherrian tell his story? A rambunctious, delightful novel, The Thinnai is a rare view into Pondicherry’s French legacy from the “native” eye.
The Thinnai, Ari Gautier, translated from the French by Blake Smith, Hachette India.
