Hegemony by the Water's Edge

The narrative maps the restless lives of those shaped by separation-both the ones who leave and the ones left behind

- SHEILA KUMAR

Jeet Thayil’s new book begins and ends by the Muvattupuzha River. “And so, let us go then, you and I, to that riverside, to meet Ammu who has an ancestral home there, Anniethottam. Let us meet George, the man Ammu weds, let us attend their hesitant courtship, their wedding where Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is discussed and a call to revolution made!”

A memoir of the author's parents, you ask. Well, the dedication is to ‘my mother Ammu George’, but two pages on, the author firmly states,"The real names and photographs in these pages are fictions. The fictional names and events are documentary. The truth, as we know, lies in between.”

This sophistry aside, the book is a beautifully written memoir/ travelogue/family saga that spans genders, switching the narrative effortlessly from a father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, son, daughter, a cousin, some uncles and aunts. We are told just enough about all of them to form some kind of opinion, but it is clear that the writer writes the book because he has to write it, not to garner appreciation.