The Glass Bead Curtain

Kannan’s selection of a subject from social history in the face of the greater interest by most Indian novelists at present to write about diaspora, global, social encounters or myths and legends, seems to be an act of courage as she goes against the tide. A great deal of the social world today is so intimately an outcome of the efforts of innumerable men and women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to bring about greater facilities and possibilities of freedom and education for women.

   Kannan recreates the inner world of the Tamil Brahmin upper class families who experienced the new ideas that were sweeping across the nation in the 1920’s and 40’s, along with the political turmoil…Ideas that were meant to improve the living conditions of women through the efforts of Indians like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Harbilas Sarda, Mahatma Gandhi and the British and Irish men and women, are discussed by the characters in the novel within the closed rooms of their families.

   Even as the novel is feminist and woman-centric, it refrains from portraying all men as villains and oppressors and every woman as a helpless victim. There are as many well-meaning men who support education for women and for their rights as there are women who are patriarchy’s agents for oppressing other women. Much of the tension in Kalyani’s marital home is defused through her husband Natarajan’s humour, tolerance, self-awareness and respect for Kalyani’s mental qualities. Both the concepts of masculinity and marriage went through important shifts at that time…many writers of the 1920’s and 30’s wrote of this – Tagore, Sarat Chandra, Premchand and Jainendra, to name only a few.

In schools, at home, hidden behind curtains, there are many forms of injustices and inequality. The novel however pulls aside several of these curtains, to expose the double standards, hypocrisy and illogical norms that were rampant in the society of that period…Discussions between learned men like Swaminathan Aiyer (Kalyani’s father, a leading advocate), Justice Ramaswamy Aiyer (Kalyani’s father-in-law, a judge) and Natarajan (Kalyani’s husband, a bright lawyer) and between women such as the Irish tutor Miss. Susan O’Leary, Vishalakshi, and Parvati open up many contemporary issues referring to famous court cases and verdicts like the case of Rukmabai over the question of the age of marriage for girls…

   The novel includes a variety of voices, from across the different social strata expressing contrary, even contradictory vibes. To convey the multivocality, the novel employs a large range of diverse linguistic registers – personal, emotional, rhetoric and pedagogic, journalistic, legal discussions and public speaking. Such shifts emerge with a fluency that makes it a fast-paced narrative.

   A new form of women’s writing emerged which had political and social concerns. Many women continued to hide their identity even in the early half of the twentieth century. Kannan again removes some of the curtains …Susan O’Leary and Vishalakshi spring surprises upon the reader by using pseudonyms. Their writings had an impact on both men and women.     The use of pseudonyms by women to deflect social disapproval is recognised by feminist critics the world over.

   ‘So, whose story was it, in the end?’ asks Shailaja, in the concluding Epilogue. Was Kalyani’s steady advancement, becoming a badminton coach in a girl’s school when she couldn’t continue with her studies, the central narrative, or was she one of the several women whose stories are put together to build up a mighty narrative of “her-stories”?

“A Million Mutinies Behind the Glass Curtain”, Indian Literature, March-April, 2017, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi.

The Glass Bead Curtain by Lakshmi Kannan is a novel that explores the paradoxical status of women in Tamil society. When I was reading it, all hell was breaking loose in Tamil Nadu. Seldom have I experienced real time being so much at odds with fictional time. The urge to juxtapose the novel againt the current events was compelling because it was sequestered within the interiors of Brahmin homes of the old Madras Presidency of pre-Independence India, while what was happening in present-day Chennai was out on the roads and beaches. But by and by, I found out that that was not the case, actually. If at all the novel has to be connected to the present, the reader might experience more of the seamless fusion than rupture, at the conscious level.

   The Glass Bead Curtain is a novel within a novel, with writer-character Shailaja shaking off a bout of writer’s block and starting a novel on Kalyani, born into a conservative Tamil Brahmin family. Kannan explores the meta-fictionality deftly, weaving complex patterns not only between the parallel lives of Shailaja, the writer, and Kalyani, the written, but also between conflicting zeitgeists of the writer’s time in the present and of the past imagined by her.

   Shaialja’s novel ends in 1985, when a woman in her childhood was customarily deprived of education and could not have written in her own name, could by then “have written all that she wrote.” It would take three more years for Tamil Nadu to get its first woman chief minister, V N Janaki. And for the next three decades, another woman, Jayalalitha, towered over the state, both in person and in cutouts. The disconnect between such supreme female domination on one side and the slow oppression of female characters in the novel is only apparent, but as the novel unfolds, it brings out the core of women’s plight, and there things haven’t changed much.

   In her parental home, Kalyani was a happy child with, among other things, an inspiring paternal aunt, Athai, a witty Irish tutor Susan O’Leary who provided her both linguistic and life skills, and a loving father. Much to the anger of O’Leary, the father married Kalyani off when she was a child. After attaining puberty, she moved to her husband’s house, where her mother-in-law actively discouraged  female education as “inauspicious.” 

   Another reason to pick on Kalyani was that she was taller than her husband! Superior male height is such a given that, unsurprisingly, the issue seldom pops up in fiction, as it does in this novel. The girl was deprived of food through religious fasts so that she wouldn’t grow taller than her husband. She did pip him though, and being a tall girl, Kalyani’s wish was to become a badminton coach. Kannan has spotted well the rare sport in which Indian women excel. With the help of her husband, Kalyani did achieve what she wanted.

In the end, it is a sad novel. Kalyani’s success owes much to her husband. This is a bit of thin ice for, votaries of political correctness would have loved to see her pulling ahead by herself. In the novel, the couple grow on each other, and their relationship progresses to transform her goal to their shared goal, but it being understood that her success owed much to male instrumentality. In Kannan’s novel, every aspect of religion, custom, society and culture are shown to be working against women. Yet, it is peopled by with strong, spirited women who are, at times, subversive, and at other times, take things head on.

   The superwoman politician who lorded over Tamil Nadu politics could well have been a male construct, yet men jostled to fall on their knees before her. The all-male sport of jallikattu in an unabashed exhibition of machismo, yet there was a fair sprinkling of women in the protests against its ban. In the novel too, the male ideology is evangelized more by women. The Glass Bead Curtain once again emphasizes that when it comes to peeling the onion skills of reality, the novel remains the most appropriate genre.

   Kannan writes poetry and fiction in Tamil under the pen-name of “Kaaveri.” And she had earlier translated her works into English herself. This is her first novel in English. Though bilingualism is common among Indian writers, very few, like Kiran Nagarkar, or now, Kannan, venture to write in English. What is feared to be lost, and rightly so, is the rich dialects, the cadence of speech rhythms and the immediacy of their first languages. Kannan tried to circumvent this by generously sprinkling the novel with Tamil words, along with a long glossary and occasional parenthetical intrusions into the narrative. As a non-Tamil reader, I confess that I found this novel more readable than Kannan’s own translated works.

“Review of The Glass Bead Curtain By Lakshmi Kannan (New Delhi, Vistara Publishing, 2020, c2016) The Indian Express, New Delhi. Saturday, March 2017

One of the paradoxes of women’s writing – one that challenges many of the major themes – is how patriarchy manages to sustain itself over time, despite the best efforts of writers and critics. Bilingual writer Lakshmi Kannan’s recent novel in English adroitly evades such polarizations by depicting an orthodox Tamil Brahmin society in pre-Independence Madras that nevertheless manages to provide an empowering space for women to study, to play sports and to assert their independence. This is perhaps the author’s most significant accomplishment in the book, her evocation of the Tamil Brahmin milieu that is orthodox on the one hand, espousing child marriages and mistreating widows, but on the other, allowing women to educate themselves and move towards self-assertion. And all this is achieved with the active encouragement of the menfolk!

The novel begins with a framing device: the narrative of the ‘blocked’ writer Shailaja who begins the tale of Kalyani, a child bride, an avid reader of English literature, ace badminton player and coach. The engaging Kalyani captures the hearts of readers as she romps her way through childhood, reading and playing to her heart’s content. Though the specter of married life looms large in the frequent visits of her in-laws, she continues pursuing her interests. When she grows into adolescence, she emerges through the glass bead curtain that separates the men’s and women’s sections of her parent’s home, and goes to her marital home. Once there, she has to endure the castigation of her mother-in-law who is contemptuous of her love for English and believes she has brought shame upon the family by growing taller than her husband! It is a difficult task, but one through which Kalyani sails through with charm and panache. Her resourcefulness and unfailing good humour wins over her husband and father-in-law, and surprisingly she finds a staunch ally in her grandmother-in-law Angachi Patti.  

Lakshmi Kannan creates a galaxy of characters that are set in juxtaposition to Kalyani, her paternal aunt Vishalakshi Athai, her Irish tutor Susan O’Leary, her forward-looking father Swaminatha Aiyer, her many female in-laws and her dignified and progressive father-in-law. What I found most refreshing in this women-centered narrative were the sensitively etched and supportive male characters, particularly Kalyani’s endearing husband Natarajan, who encourages her in all her pursuits.

There is piquant irony when Kalyani, who was mocked for her English education, is asked to teach her sister-in-law the same language to help in saving her marriage. The interactions of all these characters as they negotiate a changing world while trying to maintain their cultural ethos makes for a gripping narrative.

As we get drawn into Kalyani’s struggle to become her own woman, we become aware of the major influences that shape her. Vishalakshi, a child widow who refuses to let her misfortune dampen her spirit, becomes a guiding light for Kalyani. Vishalakshi called ‘Athai’, uses her intellect covertly yet powerfully, to debate the burning issues of the day such as women’s education, the need for women in sports, domestic violence and marital rape. Another mentor of Kalyani is the delightful Susan O’Leary who opens up the world of English literature to her while simultaneously insisting that she never be ashamed of her height. As Kalyani is initiated to the world of books by her tutor, her outlook broadens and she learns to look beyond petty domestic concerns. However, the author at no point ever disparages domesticity.

The glass bead curtain is perhaps the most beautiful symbol of tradition and aesthetic values, located as it is between the outside world and the inner realm of women, with both its beauty and its tortuous ways. This is perhaps the author’s greatest achievement in the book, her ability to foreground these weighty themes without compromising the readability of the novel. The prose is free-flowing, interspersed with cunning turns or phrase and Tamil words and kinship terms such as yendi and Athimbere, which further enhance its authenticity.

Perhaps there can be no greater sign of Lakshmi Kannan’s remarkable ability to focus on the most relevant issues of the time, in that many of the concerns she explores in relation to an earlier era are still pertinent today.

Review of The Glass Bead Curtain, Novel by Lakshmi Kannan (New Delhi, Vitasta Publishing, (2020, c 2016) Confluence: South Asian Perspectives, London, U.K. August, 2017

Indian poet, novelist, and short story writer Lakshmi Kannan’s 2016 novel (reprinted, 2020), The Glass Bead Curtain, provided me with a deeply poignant experience. For me, a novel that offers layers and depths holds interest. Kannan’s book delivers on those and much more. I wish I had read it earlier, but then, a great novel like Kannan’s is timeless and can be read again and again over time.

Readers all over the world will find in this novel a great expression of pre-independence India and the patriarchal and matriarchal tendencies of the times. For me, a historian and writer, the irony was not lost that while it is now a different time, many of the cultural mores haven’t altered drastically.

The appeal of comprehending the pre-partition socio-cultural milieu through the eyes and pen of a sensitive writer such as Kannan had me excitedly traversing the pages, thumping shoulders with the idealist-realist protagonist, Kalyani, who bravely, optimistically, and defiantly sets norms for gendered leadership in early twentieth century India. The novel does not centralize India’s freedom struggle, which is instead placed as a backdrop like the props in a stage play. Rather, it draws on the self-actualization of middle-class women during a tumultuous nationalist movement through the medium of private and professional spaces, in turn generating love and respect both at home and outside the presumed safety of the four walls of a house. I quietly and resoundingly said yes! Yes! Yes, many times, seeing myself and numerous other women in the role of Kalyani!

Respect was drilled into Kalyani by her Irish tutor, Miss Susan O’Leary. “Now listen Kalyani, whatever happens to you, hold on to yourself. It’s yours and yours alone. And hold on to this body. It’s also yours and yours alone. Let it grow, as it wants to. Live within it with respect, like you would within a temple” (Chapter “The Glass Bead Curtain”). Coming from the perspective of a teacher, that too, non-Indian, might appear to signify its great relevance among educated Indians. However, respect and dignity were mentored into Kalyani by her own father, father-in-law, and husband as well, all three of whom made sure that if she ever doubted herself, they would not let her accept defeat.

So, we have feminist men, such as Justice Ramaswami Aiyer, Kalyani’s father-in-law; her husband, Natarajan, a leading young lawyer groomed by his father; Swaminatha Aiyer, Kalyani’s father, who is a well-known legal luminary; and finally, Kartikeyan, Natarajan’s scholarly brother-in-law. These men reminded me of comparative personalities such as Frederick Douglass, James Mott, Daniel Anthony, and Henry Blackwell, to name a few, who supported the women’s suffragist movement in nineteenth-century America, and later men such as W. E. B. DuBois or Martin Luther King Jr. who actively involved black and other women in race reform. The parallels of feminist struggles in two lands thousands of miles apart were abundantly transparent to me. Many of the women activists in both countries were wives or daughters of male leaders too. Clearly, Kannan nods towards the close connection of education with class and opportunity. But what she also stresses is that many educated Indian men did not waste their own enlightenment by keeping the women in their lives home bound or subjugated.

This is historical literary fiction, and even though India’s independence movement is not the central focus, I was often reminded of Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi or of my own father, Chaman Nahal’s novel on the partition of India, Azadi (Freedom), and the juxtaposition of leaders, events, policies, moments, and ordinary folks. The dichotomy of contradictory trends at the time over education for girls, women’s work, and political participation by women has been presented as matters of fact in Kannan’s novel, empathically reminding us that personal and public lives can be distinct or the same.

The nation was indeed going through a tumultuous and confused phase. While the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw myriad social-religious reform movements, such as the Brahmo Samaj, and the Arya Samaj within the protected spaces of the home, educated (or not) parents struggled with indecision about whether or not to encourage their daughters in the direction of knowledge and enlightenment. Many middle-class Indian parents believed education, especially learning the English language, might make their daughters too aware or too independent for a successful marriage. Kalyani’s mother-in-law, Ambujan, was especially against her continuing her education, which she had received in her own parents’ home. Kalyani was labeled “proud and arrogant” (Chapter “Simple Solutions”). “No daughter-in-law of this family will waste time learning English,” her mother-in-law Ambujam had said firmly. “Next, you will want to go to school again. We’re a respectable family” (Chapter “Brahmahatya”).

The above hesitations and potential repercussions continue simultaneously in nineteenth and early twentieth century India at the same time when Jyotirao Phule, Sarojini Naidu, and others were also urging forth for girls’ education. Kannan also mentions the British Annie Besant and Irish Margaret Cousins, who were zealously promoting education as members of another prominent reform movement, the Theosophical Society, in Madras. The spread of such reform gripped the nation from the East to the North to the South and Kannan has effectively brought that out in her novel.

An interesting twist in the novel is when Kalyani teaches English to her sister-in-law, who had been rejected by her educated husband for not speaking the language. Due to the efforts of the kind-hearted and very wise Kalyani, her sister-in-law, Karpagam, learns English and is accepted back by her husband, which in turn changes her mother-in-law’s attitude towards her. Lakshmi Kannan subtly employs symbolism and metaphors to let readers know that while some women resisted change, they came to accept and respect it when they saw its impact on one of their own.

The above examples could also be that Kannan is underscoring the value of learning, especially English, among educated Indian men during the British Raj days and the desire to have English-speaking women, full of the etiquettes of Victorian women, as wives. It is well stated in historical texts that during the years of the British empire over India, the British wanted to create, as Lord Macaulay said, “a class of people, who … may look like Indians by color; but their likes and dislikes, morals and thinking will be like an Englishman.”

It is fascinating that the older women in the family, Kalyani’s intellectually endowed and erudite aunt, Athai, and Kalyani’s grandmother-in-law Angachi Patti show a fierce independence in their spirit as women who sliced their way to create their own space. Lakshmi Kannan, therefore, presents a very delicate balance between generations and the flow of worldly experiential scholarship from one to the other, perhaps alluding to geriatric wisdom.

Later in the novel, Kalyani and her family find out after Athai’s death that she had been writing in local newspapers for many years, under two pseudonyms, speaking up against domination over Indian women and the duality of their lives. Under her Phalguni pseudonym, in the Chapter “Rukmabais of India,” she laments, “It is unfortunate that in the land of Gandhi and Lord Buddha, we continue to witness such horrendous outrage against a woman’s dignity.” Under another pseudonym, Agastya (a revered sage from Hindu mythology), Athai exposes faulty court decisions against women.

To me, the most captivating part of the novel was the central theme of a sports teacher trying her best to encourage sports as a capacity builder for girls, both in terms of actual physical activity and instilling confidence and, hopefully, independent thought and action. Kalyani, in her own growing years, had loved sports and had played both tennis and badminton. Given the historical placement of the novel, it was inspirational to read one woman’s determined journey to ensure not only her own development through sports and education but also that of others. It’s noteworthy that while some men in the family encouraged Kalyani, her mother-in-law not only did not want her to learn English but also did not want her to work. Through this construct, I believe Lakshmi Kannan is alluding to women sometimes being a woman’s biggest hurdle to success though not all mothers-in-law are as such, and Kannan is in no way generalizing an anti-mother-in-law paradigm.

In this dialogue with her husband, Kalyani voices her desire to be a sports teacher, and her husband articulates his concern that his mother will not agree.

Kalyani: “Yes. I want to teach sports to girls. I would very much like to…”

Natarajan (her husband): “Sports?”

Kalyani: “Yes. I love sports.”

Natarajan: “I know, I know. God, this will be such an alien thing for my mother to consider, but at least it’s not what she thinks of as education. I’ll have to work out a strategy for this.”

Kalyani: “But sports are educative too. How can you say it’s something alien?” demanded Kalyani.

The reinforcement that Kalyani wanted to give girls in sports, later even working at a vernacular (local language) government school, reminded me of the commitment by so many teachers in the US to sports for girls in schools and colleges and the value of a law such as Title IX.

Kalyani is shown almost as a missionary with a passionate, noble zeal to help girls follow and achieve their full potential, just as boys do. When she told her father-in-law about her decision to change schools, he was a bit skeptical, yet she was steadfast, stating, “I should go to a vernacular school and help the students as best as I can. I know I can’t make much difference to their lives.” (Chapter “A Little Madness”).

Another critical aspect revealed in the novel is the duality and frustration in many men about getting their daughters married young while also supporting women’s education and the rearing of their self-worth. Such is indeed the guilt and doubt that Kalyani’s father and father-in-law were plagued with for having Kalyani married off as a child bride.

Lakshmi Kannan touches upon so many relevant women’s issues! To add to the ones already written above, the issue of widowhood has also been brought up in the novel. Kadambari, a friend of Kalyani’s, is a child widow, and she is later educated so that she can stand on her own despite the loss of her husband. Though remarriage is not looked upon favorably by her family or the larger society, through dialogue between the different characters, Kannan is able to convey the characters’ vexation with the clash of modernity with a traditional Indian mindset: “This happens in spite of Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar who argued in favour of the remarriage of widows.” (Chapter “Setting Sail”)

Furthermore, another absorbing aspect of the novel is that it also critically draws out society’s perception of the beauty of the female form. Skin color and height are the focus of biased descriptions. Kalyani is very tall. Married off as a child bride, she grows to be taller than her husband. Kalyani’s mother is agonized that her female in-laws imposed fasts on Kalyani so that she would stop growing. It was eye-opening to read about discrimination perpetuated by the women closest to us in our families. The men in the family, including Kalyani’s husband, did not object. Her tall students, too, face the same unfairness, and they stoop to look shorter just as she did in her childhood. Here is an interesting dialogue in the Chapter “Straightening up for Srividya,” which is similar to what happened with Kalyani when she was growing up.

“I don’t seem to stop growing Madam, although my mother nearly starves me. Sometimes I steal food!”

“Gracious!”

“You see, I’m much taller than my elder brother. He hates my height. Calls me names.”

“So, that’s why you stoop. Don’t your parents scold your brother?”

While the above examples might seem simple and known ones of matriarchal domination in intergenerational families or in societal spaces, the intricacies of body-worth identification through language or physical attributes are very telling in their timelessness, as in current times, globally, things are pretty much the same.

As we reach the end of the novel, the confusion among the English-educated Indian intellectual class after independence in 1947 has also been discussed. Kannan, through her astute observations, tells us, without sentimentality, about the situation Indians were going through. “Kalyani was amused by the way independent India was teetering on the edge of a post-imperialist hangover. There were lots of visible changes, and yet, a certain class of people continued to cling on to England by the very rim of her skirt. English meant a stamp of quality to everything, from education to consumer goods. Many an elderly matriarch in an extended family would exhort her husband to buy “only Britannia biscuits” and only “Woodward’s Gripe Water” for her children and grand-children because they “deserve the best” (Chapter “I Yam Letter Yell”). Damned if they retained their Britishness, and damned if not!

A final word before I conclude is the welcome insertion of Tamil vernacular language words in myriad places in the novel, introducing the readers to a new cultural flavor. Terminologies related to food, such as appalam, chakli, koottu, or malvadasa (stained garments during menstruation) or to the names of relatives, such as sister (Chitti) and grandfather (Thatha) allow the reader to gain some knowledge of spoken Tamilian words. There is a glossary at the end for a methodical explanation of the words.

With twenty-eight published books, numerous poems, and stories in journals all over the world, Lakshmi Kannan is a prolific writer! Well-regarded among contemporary Indian English writers and globally, Kannan has carved an envious position for herself in the spectrum of storytelling with The Glass Bead Curtain, which is an amalgam of history, feminism, and realism.

This is every woman’s novel that transcends boundaries, and the very real curtain made of glass beads separating the public side of the house from the private quarters, signifying male-female division as well. This novel needs to be read by all interested in early 20th-century gendered politics in India.

Review of The Glass Bead Curtain published in the American journal titled Pen in Hand: Literary Journal of Maryland Writers' Association