What is it like to search for belonging in a place you call home? This is the crux of Ramachandran Usha’s Tamil novella Unmoored (Karai Thedum Odangal), translated from the Tamil by Krupa Ge. The novella’s three protagonists – Ayesha, Indu, and Ameera – return to Chennai, to lives very different from the ones they have left behind. Having left for “the Gulf” earlier in search of work, they are now eager to reconnect with their loved ones: Ayesha with her children, Indu with her husband, and Ameera with her natal family. But there are challenges that await them, and this re-settling is filled with questions and doubts brought about by time apart. “Unmoored” from their surroundings, they must figure out new lives in a place they once knew.
Ayesha, Ameera, Indu
The book captivates the reader’s attention right from the start. Opening at a moment of high tension and high energy, the first chapter reveals excruciatingly little detail. Having just been released from prison, we learn that Ameera is being separated from her son but that she is going home. This keeps the reader hooked with the intensity of the scene that is set. Within the first few chapters, a scenario has been established – Ameera is going home, after years in jail, blamed for the death of her rich, elderly husband. Each subsequent chapter maintains a tightness of pace that gives you a few more details and keeps the reader almost rushing through the book, wanting to know the next piece of information and the next choice each character makes.
The three women are introduced rapidly, with Indu and Ayesha introduced soon after Ameera. When new characters like Jameela, Ayesha’s friend, or Ameera’s brother and sister-in-law are introduced, it is made to feel natural, as if the reader themselves is being introduced to them, and not as if they were a character one was reading about. Ayesha’s introduction itself is one such: “The woman who was waiting to enter the toilet burst out, ‘Ya Allah, is it Ameera?’ ‘Maami!’ Ameera rushed to hug the other woman”. The “other woman” is Ayesha.
In order to match the pacing, one is thrown around from setting to setting, from one life to another in an “un-moored” fashion – like a boat that someone has forgotten about in one of the annual cyclones off Chennai’s coast, floating back and forth on the Adayar river, the river near which the story is set. Ayesha, Ameera, Indu: each chapter, though short, is intense and delves deeper and deeper into one protagonist’s life before moving to another. This intensity of life winds itself around the narrative but doesn’t constrict it, with the length of time also contained to a few days.
The translation also creates a scene of realness, where the reader can imagine themselves in different scenarios and not have their attention distracted by words or language that feels out of place. The writing works to create a feeling of “Chennai-ness”, but does not stand out as odd in the English language. However, I did find certain word choices in translation to be a bit unusual in the way they stood out. The translator chooses to include, in a few occasional places, words that do not necessarily fit the flow that the rest of the story has; words like “dirge” that sit oddly with the flow of the paragraph, or “moringa sambar”, where retaining the Tamil-ness (“murungai’, rather than ‘moringa”) might have been a better choice. This is more pointed as the translator has done the opposite in several other places and brought out the Tamil-ness, even emphasising a Tamil joke of “poriyal” versus “poriyiyal” (“vegetable preparation” and “science”) through a character’s mispronunciation. In this manner, the book holds a lot of humour, and this humour is clearly of a Tamil sensibility, translated carefully into English. The structures of dialogue, coupled with description and scene, create a completely immersive experience where we watch the scene unfold.
With large sections of the story happening indoors, the exploration of identity and the struggles it brings are intimate. Ayesha has to understand her children’s desires to embody the wealth she has sent them from abroad; Ameera fights her sister-in-law’s desire to have her remarry; Indu struggles to reconnect with her husband, who has vanished amidst her other material losses in Dubai.
But this embodiment of identity, too, is brought across quite artfully. With sentences like “We don’t make sambar like your people”, stated at a dinner table as an apology, we are witness to the divisions of religion and culture that also exist within the book and the city. Represented less as pejorative and more as fact, these differences then make up the groundwork of bringing these characters closer by acknowledging these differences. This is cemented in the refusal to see these differences as anything more than superficial. Ayesha stands by Indu in her financial hardship, despite knowing almost nothing about her. At the same time, when we are taken to Ameera and Ayesha’s homes, we see that there are further differences of class and language inside these houses that have known each other for a long time. Ameera is from an Urdu-speaking family while Ayesha is Tamil-speaking, something that is pointed out to Indu in the course of the narrative. Caste and religion are very much a part of the storyline, but in embodying them, the characters do not become stereotypes or caricatures. The author Ramachandran Usha builds a world of differences that come together through shared struggles and mutual love and respect, which eventually enables them to bring their lives closer together.
Leaving Chennai
In a sense, the city of Chennai acts as a location but also as a character. The setting is given strong grounding. Ayesha’s house in Rangarajapuram is the focus of the story. Srinagar Colony, with its bungalows and laid-out streets, also adds to the setting. Each part of this extended neighbourhood provides the reader with a strong sense of place. The close-knit community of Rangarajapuram and the far-off neighbourhoods that Indu must travel to contrast with each other, as does the way in which houses act to support and nurture, while also to constrict and contain.
Ramachandran Usha examines her characters’ personal lives through the story and tells us what it means to migrate in order to find work. At the same time, she weaves in questions of identity and society that bring out curious details of the three women’s lives, painting a picture of each with intimate detail. But the strength of this book comes from the fact that it never feels too heavy or too intense. The realness of the situation and narrative keeps the reader engaged and wanting to know more. As a translator, Krupa Ge translates both language and ideas to bring the story alive to a different audience.
The two short stories at the end of the novella are like desserts that complement a scrumptious meal – having indulged deeply in one narrative, they refresh you with a few pages of something entirely different. The reader feels sated after making a journey of their own.
Unmoored, Ramachandran Usha, translated from the Tamil by Krupa Ge, Zubaan Books.
