Book: Jezebel

Author: K.R. Meera

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton

Price: ₹599

“The parrot to the sparrow said,/ ‘Why, oh why are your eyes so red?’/ ‘Oh, my dear friend, what shall I say?/ Someone has stolen my nest away.’”

These lines are from one of the songs sung by the remarkable Leela Benare in Vijay Tendulkar’s pathbreaking Marathi play, Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe. Benare’s songs and her trial in the play epitomised tales of gender discrimination and inequality in the context of modern India.

The court scene in K.R. Meera’s Jezebel is reminiscent of the trials and tribulations of women in modern India, albeit in a different context. Jezebel centres around an eponymous protagonist, a young woman and a doctor by profession, trapped in an abusive and claustrophobic marriage. The novel begins with a powerful metaphor of suffering and endurance: “As she stood in the family court, pelted with the blame of having paid a contract killer to murder her husband, Jezebel had this revelation: To endure extreme torture, imagine yourself as Christ on the cross.” In an interview, Meera explains: “The Malayalam title of the book was ‘Sooryane Aninja Oru Stree’ which can mean ‘woman clothed with the sun’ or ‘woman adorned with the sun’; a reference to the Book of Revelations, of which Jezebel is a part. The Malayalam word ‘aninja’ doesn’t have an exact counterpart in English.” Through the life of the ambitious Jezebel caught in the vortex of a conservative Keralite society, the novel shows the ways in which women have been epistemologically marginalised and allocated very little discursive space in the material realities of the everyday. Meera powerfully associates the story of a bright and promising doctor with the mentality of male chauvinism that doubts the ability of women to engage in intellectual exercises as well as a traditional world view which insist on the denial of a woman’s epistemic vision. A wonderful translation into English by Abhirami Girija Sriram and K.S. Bijukuma insists on the usage of informal expressions in Malayalam for the retention of the local idiom.

K.R. Meera has tried to break free from Malayalam literary traditions. Her novels — Hangwoman (a Sahitya Akademi Award winner), The Gospel of Yudas, The Poison of Love — have initiated the creation of a space that accommodate women’s perspectives beyond processes of knowledge control. Jezebel’s reluctance to take a stand for herself in the novel and the consequent adversities in her life tell a tale of epistemic marginalisation. According to the author, “I have seen bold, patient women take their time to stand up for themselves. What we often forget is that to sprout wings, one must go through the stages of being a cocoon and a pupa.”

The Poison of Love had focused on the trauma of abandoned women in Vrindavan while The Unseeing Idol of Light is a Sisyphean tragedy that revolves around blindness and insight through the transformative travails of Deepti. Jezebel locates the marginalised lives of women in the medical profession and the consequent world of stereotypes and stigmas. Parallel to Jezebel’s tale of abuse are the tales of the school girl, Sneha, a victim of sexual abuse in the hands of her maths teacher, and the story of four-year-old Angel who survives the mass suicide of her family enmeshed in debt, only to be sexually assaulted by their sixty-yearold neighbour.

Yet, Jezebel is also a tale of resilience and survival. The terminally ill, Anitha, a single mother, becomes a painter after her husband and her lover abandon her. Jezebel’s subdued mother-in-law also offers solace in the darkest of times: “You can wage a war without a sound. And you can win the war without anyone knowing about it. We need to love ourselves first.”

Lily’s ability to retaliate is juxtaposed to the subservient, Ammachi — Jezebel’s mother — and her blind adherence to the scriptures. The successful and final divorce petition in favour of Jezebel finds justice in the resounding laughter of Valiyammachi, Jezebel’s maternal grandmother, who has always lived life on her own terms. The book is a clarion call towards righteousness and justice for women by an author who fiercely challenges social gatekeepers who shape contemporary womanhood by means of exposure and public shaming. As a lively and devastating critique, the novel expands the scope for feminist solidarity.