Lighting up the dark

Catherine Thankamma's stories are not always pleasant, but they are necessary

- BY ANJULY MATHAI

A KIND OF MEAT AND OTHER STORIES By Catherine Thankamma Published by Aleph pages 206, price ₹699

Reading Catherine Thankamma's A Kind of Meat and Other Stories is a sobering affair. It discomfits and jolts you, drawing you outside your own insular world. Her heroes are ordinary women battling a system rigged against them. The tone is dark; Thankamma does not blunt the sharp edge of reality. There is death, violence, sacrifice—yet, they never overpower the narrative. In fact, the charm of Thankamma's world might be at the other extreme—the gentle, everyday rhythms of life: friends of different faiths encountering each other after many years, a woman's shifting relationship with her garbage collector, life after the death of a spouse.... Through what is, Thankamma spotlights what should not be—the subtle shades of patriarchy, the societal pressure to conform, the cumulative injustices, the lack of agency.