Book Excerpt: 'A Woman of No Consequence' By Kalpana Karunakaran

In "A Woman of No Consequence: Memory, Letters and Resistance in Madras", author Kalpana Karunakaran reconstructs the interior life of her grandmother, Pankajam, a twentieth-century Tamil Brahmin housewife, through her letters, poems, and diary entries. She uses these personal archives to show how writing became a means of self-expression, learning, and resistance against restrictive social norms.

The book situates Pankajam’s reflections on love, intimacy, and marriage within the cultural and political shifts of a newly independent India. It offers a feminist reading of everyday domestic life, revealing how seemingly invisible women engaged intellectually with the world around them.

Book excerpt: A Woman of No Consequence

The little women of Eluru (1919-1920)

In her autobiographical narratives, Pankajam was writing of events that took place several decades ago. Yet, her prose resonates with dramatic tension and conveys a sense of immediacy and urgency. She makes us feel the mute sorrow of a five-year-old whose mother inexplicably disappears for several months and about whom she cannot speak to her father. We feel the helpless terror of a six-year-old who sees her father raining blows on her mother. We suffer with seven-year-old Pankajam when she recounts the events that led to her brother’s death, even as she makes us see the subtly different ways grief and loss leave their imprint on adults and children. We rejoice with her when, as a lonely single child of eight years who has just lost her younger brother and devoted playmate, she embraces with passion a world of horses and dogs, birds and insects and, more occasionally, children when chance encounters bring her new friendships.

For all her zest and enthusiasm for life, Pankajam was conscious that she was growing up in a household riven by conflict. Her narrative suggests a child’s unhappy awareness of being a pawn in her parents’ competing visions of a life and future for her. When her mother and her orthodox father battled over whether she should learn English or Sanskrit, Pankajam was forced to learn three languages as part of an uneasy truce of sorts. An incipient spirit of independence probably drove the eight-year-old to take matters into her own hands by learning and making swift progress in a fourth instead! The Ellore period in Pankajam’s life is one of self-discovery, a growing recognition of what moved her and what did not, a deep attachment to a new friend, the test of loyalty that it provoked and the start of what was to be a lifelong commitment to letter correspondence with those she loved.

I was eight when we moved to Ellore and I left it when I was nine and a half. This period of a year and a half was an important phase in my life as I was very young and at an impressionable age. I remember very well how every little detail and incident forged my character and influenced my thoughts and ideals.

Next to our house, there were three or four similar bungalows all in a row. They were occupied by a PWD engineer and a police official. The PWD engineer was an Iyengar and he had a daughter of my age with a younger brother. For a few months, this girl was my playmate. I am afraid I never liked her, for she and her gossiping mother were very different from my mother and me. To begin with, this girl had lots of fine clothes and jewels, which she displayed to me. I envied her these things for my mother always dressed me in simple frocks and I had no jewels. My father had no extra money with him as he had to support his older brother [Seshan] and his large family. Besides, he aided and assisted every holy man or anyone who came to us in the garb of one.

Though both my parents loved me much, their love for me only brought them into greater conflicts with each other. Mother wanted me to learn English and engaged a Christian lady tutor for me. But my father criticised it and tore up the coloured plate English primers bought from Spencer’s [Madras]. He wanted me to learn Sanskrit instead. This was not his idea, but was suggested by his brother, and conveyed through his letters. So ultimately, my father taught me Sanskrit whenever he had leisure, my mother taught me Tamil and the tutor taught me English. But I showed no interest in any of the three languages, and preferred to learn Telugu. I asked our maid to get me a Telugu primer and learnt the characters from her and showed great improvement in it.

My mother, after she emerged from her intense stupor and misery following the death of my brother Raja, devoted herself entirely to me and my education. She read to me every night and told me stories of our ancient myths and Puranas. Of course, the Ramayana, the eternal story, gripped my heart with its beauty of thought and emotions. But the story that affected me much and even shaped my character was the The Little Women of L.M. Alcott. All children love it. But to me it was something dearer to the heart. I tried to live up to the ideals in the story. At different times I identified myself with one character in the story or the other and for weeks went about behaving strangely. My mother at once noticed the change and asked me about it. She was pleased to see that the story was changing me. Before I heard the story, I was wilful, not fond of doing lessons, obstinate, selfish and playful like most children. But the desire to be like the girls in The Little Women whom I greatly admired, and comparing my mother to Mrs March, I slowly learnt to master my waywardness and childishness and apply myself to my lessons.

Now I must dwell on the death of my second brother. This brother was two-and-half-years old when he died. He suffered from enlargement of the liver or cirrhosis—a malady of children common at the time. I must say that the death of this brother did not touch my heart as Raja’s did. I was much older than him and we never were companions or playmates. I felt his loss more for my mother’s sake than mine. However, I kept Lord Siva’s picture in a corner and prayed every day for my brother’s recovery. When he died, I stopped my prayers for months.

Excerpted with permission from A Woman of No Consequence by Kalpana Karunakaran, published by Context- Westland Books.