{"id":5458,"date":"2008-10-11T10:05:48","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T15:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=5458"},"modified":"2008-10-11T07:56:03","modified_gmt":"2008-10-11T12:56:03","slug":"review_the_toss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/11\/review_the_toss\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: “The Toss of a Lemon” by Padma Viswanathan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read my Q&A with Padma Viswanathan here<\/a>. <\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n

No, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a book of recipes and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the sister of the much-maligned Kaavya<\/a>. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Toss of a Lemon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/a> (Harcourt, Sept. 2008) is Arkansas-based and Canada-born writer’s<\/a> first novel. And what a beautifully-wrought, political, social, and at times heart-wrenching work it is\u00e2\u20ac\u201dten years in the making. \"toss-cover-us.jpg\"<\/p>\n\n

The Toss of a Lemon<\/em> begins in 1896 in the caste-organized village of Cholapatti in Tamil Nadu and carries us to 1958 where the strictures of caste have broken apart amidst the new economic and political framework of post-colonial India, specifically South India.<\/p>\n\n

In the opening scene, ten year old Sivakami (a character based on Viswanathan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great-great grandmother)and her parents are on a pilgrimage to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153her mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s place\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and decide to pay a visit to a young healer and astrologer Hanumarathnam. While making Sivakami\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s astrological chart, the healer announces that their stars happen to be in alignment \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He blinks rapidly, the lamplight making him look younger than his twenty-one years. He takes a breath and looks at Sivakami\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI have never looked at, nor ever proposed to any girl before now. Please \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 consider me.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only one small glitch. Hanumarathnam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s horoscope predicts that he will die in the ninth year of marriage–unless his first-born son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s horoscope matches his.<\/p>\n\n

Sivakami\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents are optimists and the two are subsequently married \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like everyone else, at an auspicious time on an auspicious day in an auspicious month.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n

At the heart of The Toss of a Lemon<\/em> is a horoscope. It dictates the destiny of Sivakami, who is widowed at age 19, the mother of one girl and one boy and the inheritor of her husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family home and properties. It also dictates the destinies of Sivakami\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s children: Thangam, a quiet beauty whose skin gives off gold vibuthi, or dust, with healing properties\u00e2\u20ac\u201da result of her father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alchemist experiments\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand Vairum, a math genius with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153irises nearly black yet strangely brilliant, diamond sharp\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and a skin condition (vitiligo) which makes him an anomaly in the Brahmin quarter early on in his life.<\/p>\n\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a memorable description of Sivakami early in this book: she \u00e2\u20ac\u0153carries herself with an attractive stiffness: her shoulders straight and always aligned. She looks capable of bearing great burdens, not as though born to a yoke but perhaps as though born with a yoke within her.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Indeed, though strict Brahmannical traditions call for Sivakami to shave her head, wear white, and to not contaminate herself with human touch between dawn and dusk, she is also a rebel who chooses to raise her children in her husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ancestral home (instead of returning to her natal village and living with her brothers). Helping her in this herculean task is Machumi, a non-Brahmin villager and closeted gay man, who manages Hanumaranthnam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s land properties and business. Sivakami\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main reason for staying in Cholapatti is to give her son, Vairum, the opportunity to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153become what he already is, what he was meant to be.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That translates to sending him to an English school, not to a paadasaalai, a Vedic school, where he would be educated as a priest and thereby \u00e2\u20ac\u0153remain both Brahmanically pure and Brahmanically poor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Vairum is reluctant to leave his cousins and start a new school:<\/p>\n\n

\n\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153So take me back there so I can start school. I told you, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m waiting for.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\n\n[Sivakami] jabs her hand in the general direction of her brothers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 house. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you go back to Samanthibakkam, the school you will go to will make of you nothing more than a Brahmin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\n\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am a Brahmin,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says her son.\n\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she cries. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you are already a Brahmin, and I think you can become something more, if you go to a proper school.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/blockquote>\n\n

Eventually, Vairum is persuaded to attend his English school, bribed with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shiny pair of brown leather shoes, foreign made.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hooves! They will be like bullock hooves. What Brahmin wears the skins of killed animals?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is Sivakami\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s initial reaction. But, she acquiesces and this trade off is a signal of the changes that are to come in her life. Without realizing it, she has set in motion a chain of events that will forever alter her son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relationship to his caste identity.<\/p>\n\n

Thangam marries a handsome good for nothing and gives birth to ten children, all of whom are raised by their grandmother. Vairam becomes an immensely successful businessman in Cholappati and Madras, but like his father, his fate is beholden to a horoscope, which predicts that his wife cannot bear children. As the novel progresses and new generations come into the picture, Viswanathan deftly switches points of view so that we can see the world of Cholapatti and beyond through younger perspectives. In this novel where social structures are constantly breaking apart, strict observers of the Brahmin social structure rub shoulders, knowingly and unknowingly, with a gay man, devadasis<\/a>, and the Self-Respect movement<\/a>. By doing this, she takes us into a world where rituals, superstition, and the holy grail of caste undergo a transformation none of the characters could have predicted. This is not a preachy novel, nor is it melodramatic. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I liked about it. We see how social movements and political events impact families and societies at the micro level, in day-to-day affairs. And yet, the novel has a layer of magic realism, you might say, where the author doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make bones about the fact that there are forces beyond our control\u00e2\u20ac\u201dincluding things like stars, magic, and unexpected secrets\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat shape families\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 destinies.<\/p>\n\n

I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t put down this 616-page book once I started it earlier this summer. On our way back from our family vacation in Maine, I sat in the passenger seat engrossed in the complex family saga that spans 102 years of India\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history. When it was my turn to drive, I moved over to the driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s side reluctantly, leaving the heavy book on my seat. As I glumly sped down the Mass Turnpike, my husband took pity on me. He picked up the book and started reading it out loud, picking up the thread of the story where I had left off. His parents, who were visiting from Coimbatore, perked up in the back seat where they were dozing off. Here was a story that spoke to the world they had seen once, which their parents and grandparents came from, and which has changed so drastically over the past century.<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who is this Padma Viswanathan? my father-in-law asked.<\/p>\n\n

I handed him the publicity materials that came with my galley. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A new writer. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She based this book on the stories her grandmother told her.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I replied. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She’s very good. Very very good. Take a look.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\n<\/p>\n\n

Read my Q&A with Padma Viswanathan, a thoughtful and incisive addition to the South Asian literary landscape here<\/a>. I’m also hosting a give-away of my galley copy of the book, so if you’d like a chance to win it, visit my personal blog Literary Safari<\/a> and drop me a comment letting me know. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a book of recipes and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the sister of the much-maligned Kaavya<\/a>. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Toss of a Lemon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/a>is Arkansas-based and Canada-born writer’s<\/a> first novel. And what a beautifully-wrought, political, social, and at times heart-wrenching work it is\u00e2\u20ac\u201dten years in the making.<\/p> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[44,22,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5458"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}