Cast Me Out If You Will : Stories and Memoir/Lalithambika Antherjanam. 1998, 186 p., $11.
Contents: I. Stories: 1. The power of fate. 2. In the moonlight. 3. The Goddess of revenge. 4. Admission of guilt. 5. Within the folds of seclusion. 6. Wooden cradles. 7. The Devi and her devotee. 8. Life and death. 9. A leaf in the whirlwind. 10. "Come back". 11. Daughter of humanity. 12. The boon. 13. Fulfillment. 14. Dhirendu Majumdar's mother. II. Memoir: 15. Childhood memories. 16. A writer is born. 17. A woman writer's reply. 18. Lessons from experience. 19. An account of a performance. 20. Sesame seeds, flowers, water. Glossary. Bibliography.
"The stories and the
autobiographical fragments in this collection are engaged and
critical accounts of life in Namboodiri households. Set in the
thirties, forties and fifties, these texts bring alive the world
into which Lalithambika Antherjanam (1909-1985) was born. They
record in vivid detail the physical incarceration, the mental
agony and the terrorizing disciplinary holds of rituals of purity
with an intimacy that can only come from one who writes from
experience. Yet these stories are also accounts of individual
women's protests, and these range from the ones that shake the
polity, to ones that subtly re-order the immediate world.
Surprisingly little known outside Kerala, her work provides
invaluable insight into the little documented social reform and
nationalist movements of Kerala. The introduction places the
author and her work in the cultural history of Kerala."