The Abyss

Originally published in 2003, this deeply human story from Jeyamohan (Stories of the True) tells of slavery, religious hypocrisy, official corruption, and arranged marriage in 1991 Tamil Nadu. Perennially cash-strapped patriarch Pothivelu Pandaram puts on a pious face by working as a custodian at a Hindu temple. In fact, he makes his living from the horrific practice of breeding and trading a group of deformed people he and his associates call “items,” whose proceeds from begging on the temple steps he transfers to his own pocket. One has just given birth to her 18th baby, and he stuffs the pair and his other “items” in a van bound for a Hindu festival in the temple town of Pazhani. What unfolds there and back home is painful to read: Pandaram’s overseers regularly beat the beggars, the police abduct and rape one of them and leave her in the hospital with a broken spine, and Pandaram, who’s contracted a venereal disease, makes an ill-fated deal with another enslaver. When his plans to marry off his oldest daughter backfire disastrously, he unleashes his savagery on his own household. Yet the novel is eminently readable, thanks to the unsparing view not just of Pandaram’s cruelty but his folly, as well as the wit and wisdom of the beggars. Observing the festivalgoers, one says to another, “They’re going a-begging. Begging to the lord on the hill.... We beg these folks for money. And they beg the beggar God.” This is a masterpiece. (Apr.)