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Amla Mater, a memoir by Devi Menon is every bit as nostalgia inducing and mouth-watering as the title of this review suggests. Do look it up!
Lovingly made home-made pickles, trees from childhood that became spaceships and the magic faraway tree as and when your imagination soared, a neighbour-cum-best friend who’s family took you in as another member – if any of these strike a chord with you, Devi Menon’s sweetly written and illustrated memoir is up your alley.
Published by New York-based Yali Publications, an independent publisher devoted to South Asian themes, this debut graphic novel is a delightful little book for you to devour on a lazy day and is one you will want to come back to, if you hit a rough reading patch. Alternating between present and past, the story captures an immigrant woman’s pregnancy in London, evocatively and with all the fears, anxiety, excitement and joy that accompanies a pregnancy. The feverish countdown to the birth of the baby is told alongside the narration of a ten-week ritual of the making of a favourite gooseberry pickle.
The longing for a lost friendship runs through the book and without seemingly overtly saccharine, there is a graceful reunion in the end, with both the original pickle as well as the old friend.
I particularly enjoyed Menon’s illustrations and the nuggets of rural Kerala, and the imagery it evoked of the socio-cultural mores of the times from Mili’s (the protagonist) childhood- the sprawling houses, the joint families, the rigid social customs and the agricultural livelihoods.
Descriptive writing and the simple pencil sketches that bring alive scenes of a variety of places – rush-hour commuters’ London, paying guest accommodation at an orthodox household in Chennai, a job at an IT park in Bangalore and the protagonist’s suburban London flat- the author has no trouble in gracefully narrating these scenes through her illustrations and easily-relatable writing. Sample this: ‘There is a peculiar sense of wellbeing that you only get from watching reality shows and commiserating with disillusioned colleagues’.
While characters like Padma Paati, the protagonist’s loving yet inquisitive landlord in Chennai and Nandini, her friend from Bangalore, keep flitting in and out of the book, the story of how she fell in love and married the baker is very well done through a series of panels that spoke of the joys of an inter-cultural union. As a reader, I only wished that the baker’s character and some other details were better fleshed out. However, the pristine, unpretentious writing that had me running to the amla pickle in my fridge, will call out to you, if you have homes across the world, or are trying to find one.
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Top image via Goodreads and book cover via Amazon
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Being a writer, Nivedita Louis recognises the struggles of a first-time woman writer and helps many articulate their voice with development, content edits as a publisher.
“I usually write during night”, says author Nivedita Louis during our conversation. Chuckling she continues,” It’s easier then to focus solely on writing. Nivedita Louis is a writer, with varied interests and one of the founders of Her Stories, a feminist publishing house, based in Chennai.
In a candid conversation she shared her journey from small-town Tamil Nadu to becoming a history buff, an award-winning author and now a publisher.
Nivedita was born and raised in a small town in Tamil Nadu. It was for schooling that she first arrived in Chennai. Then known as Madras, she recalls being awed by the city. Her love-story with the city, its people and thus began which continues till date. She credits her perseverance and passion to make a difference to her days as a vocational student among the elite sections of Madras.
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