The Grip of Change – A Novelby P Sivakami

I just finished reading this book.

The first Tamil novel by a dalit woman, translated to English as The Grip of Change by herself. About a dalit leader who toils for his community and his upcoming rebellious daughter who has other dreams about the community.

The novel is realistic in the first part and turns self critical in the appendix called Author’s Notes where the protagonist revisits the novel again. The novel flows very smooth with powerful language in translation. Moored in the social movements of Tamilnadu the novel asks some very pertinent questions regarding the intersection of caste and gender.

However, the ending came too fast for me. I was just getting excited about the new changes that the new generation of the community has initiated, just inhaling the newly bloomed jasmine in Gowri’s house and there I was left, all by myself to imagine whatever happened further.
Two themes that caught my attention: The portrayal of love relations within and outside the caste and the treatment of women’s body and sexuality. The love relations are treated, with extreme sensitivity though there are no triumphs of passion in the climax. In fact the protagonist Gowri is left with almost a puritanical predicament without the possibility of love brooding anywhere. But the attempts of intercaste courtships and determination of the young men to treat their brides with equality are all scripted by a sensitive hand. The second theme is perhaps the most prominent one. Woman’s body and how it becomes the space of caste feuds, gender exploitation and a benchmark for many personal decisions [like Gowri deciding not to marry, to avoid her mother’s fate]. As Meena Kandaswamy has said in the appended review, the novel begins with the violence on Thangam’s body battered and bend by the uppercaste men and women. I would say, it ends with Gowri who stand straight near her Jasmine bush, which used to adorn her body and hair in childhood, eyes filled with dreams about social changes, with no man near her.
Somehow I was not so excited to read the Author’s Notes as I was with the novel as such, though it was a good attempt at self criticism. I was in fact surprised to read there that Gowri is the author of Book I. I would not have missed anything if I were not told what all incidents inspired the events in the novel .