We the poor
Reviewed by Shalini Rawat

The Story that must not be Told
Kavery Nambisan.
Penguin Books. Pages 272. Rs 499.

Day after day, we replenish ourselves with stale gossip, glossy news items, titbits of music and some such vocation and avocation that may help carry on the business of living. Often we blot out the poverty-stricken from our everyday existence, who like unpleasant memories continue to bother us at every traffic signal.

Kaveri Nambisan steals upon the underprivileged lurking in the shadows and shines a torch for us to witness their poverty. Our capitulation and the poor’s helplessness in eradicating poverty form the substratum of the narrative.

The story is told by one of "us", an old man who lives with his cat in "Vaibhav Apartments" in a metro serviced and flanked by a slum, ironically called "Sitara". But the characters of the slum are the real protagonists. The climax is a meeting of the two worlds, "ours" and "theirs". The anti-climax is the perpetual co-existence, or is it? And, as for the end, there isn’t any—or at least none in sight as of now.

The slum in the narrative is thickly peopled with maids and latrine-cleaners, "second-hand" flower-sellers and arrack-brewers, a butcher who is also the teacher in the slum school, a cooking-oil magnate who is also the local politician’s right-hand, a doctor’s assistant-turned-doctor and many more who are flesh and blood persons, serving us day after day and yet to whose existence we are nonchalant.

Nambisan, a doctor by vocation and social worker and writer by avocation, draws heavily on her experiences in all of the above to produce a book that reiterates the verity that the poor are, to us, a nuisance. A nuisance that cannot, however, be wished away. Her suave flourishes please even the most discerning of readers.

Then again, the title of the novel, which begins with a small "t", little surprises around the corner like the metaphrased "Why worry? What-what when-when will happen, that-that then-then will happenay happen" and nuggets of wisdom like bits of chocolate in chocolate-chip cookies no wonder helped the novel to be shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. What holds it back is too much of a good (or is it bad?) thing. Pick up the book to find answers to questions, or then again to question the answers.

HOME