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Mahasweta Devi (author), Anjum Katyal (translator), Truth/Untruth, Seagull Books, 2023. 144 pgs.

Earlier this year, Seagull Books published the late Mahasweta Devi’s 1986 urban novella, Truth/Untruth, in a translation from the Bengali by its former Chief Editor, Anjum Katyal. The novel is set in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the heart of the former British Indian Empire and capital of West Bengal, a state then helmed by one of the world’s few democratically elected Marxist governments.

At the time of the novella’s writing, this urban metropolis was not only India’s largest with a population of over 10 million people, but it was also a city plagued by millions of seemingly unfixable problems. Most of its citizens lived in miserable poverty and its living standards were among the lowest on the planet. Such was the state of decay and despair that the previous year Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi declared in a moment of frustration that Kolkata was not just a nightmare, as his grandfather had called it, rather it was a “dying city”, fast losing its fight against its multiple ailments. Amid this chaos contradictions existed, nevertheless. Illicit funds flowed and the rich lived it up, feigning happiness while isolated as much as possible in their bubbles of culture and comfort. The reader is thus confronted with a compelling study in contrasts where the worlds of haves and have-nots collide, with tragic and deadly consequences.

The story invites us into Barnamala (“Alphabet”), a modern multi-storey, six-block apartment complex; a microcosm for the nouveau riche to live in seeming bliss. It is in his swank unit, “Avantika”, that Arjun Chakravarty has made his castle and is preparing to finally welcome his first-born child with his pedigreed wife, Kumkum, after a long time of trying and failing to get pregnant.

Kumkum and her ilk epitomise the upper middle-class “culture vulture”, excessively and pretentiously consuming high art and cultural experiences. Arjun appears suffocated around them and would rather devote himself to work. He is building an empire that he intends to pass on to his future child. He doesn’t care so much if it’s a boy or girl. If the latter, he vows that she will inherit it all and be spared the woeful plight that befalls so many of India’s daughters-in-law face—“dowry death”.

Arjun’s real name was Sanatan Pushilal before he changed it to sound more attractive, Chakravarty being worthy of respect given its use by high caste Brahmins. Putting his past behind him and fuelled by an entrepreneurial streak, he achieves success as a contractor. Although a walk in Kolkata of the 1980s could be described as “a stroll… through the site of a plane crash”, the savvy businessman had no shortage of opportunity to profit and reap illegal earnings. In this era, the city demolished plenty of heritage buildings and new vertical residential structures took their place. Meanwhile, the construction of the north-south metro corridor and the 32-kilometre-long Eastern Metropolitan Bypass contributed to rapid change in the urban landscape, inviting intense commercial development. Overall life looked up for Arjun, that is until his misdeeds caught up with him.

The deliverer of the bad news for Arjun is Jamuna, the scrappy antithesis of his MA-holding wife. Jamuna hails from Khidirpur, a forbidding slum that was under the thumb of cartels and where residents of Barnamala perceive that “anti-social̦” activity runs rampant. Just two years before the novella’s publication, it was here that Kolkata’s then Deputy Police Commissioner, Vinod Kumar Mehta, and his bodyguard were viciously hacked to death in broad daylight by a mob; their mutilated corpses left to rot in the street. With vacant land in the city difficult to come by, builders had little choice but to erect shiny new complexes such as Barnamala uncomfortably close to areas like Khidirpur. The residents of Barnamala make perfunctory acts of charity to their slum-dwelling neighbours but feel no strong sense of empathy for them. Most would prefer to self-segregate from them completely. Yet the slum dwellers are integral to the enablement of their upwardly mobile lifestyles. Thus, they invite them into their homes as domestic helpers, and depend on them to manage household chores and difficult duties they have no desire to do themselves.

An unabashed social activist throughout her life, Devi uses Jamuna’s character to emphasise the exploitation faced by domestic servants from the most vulnerable strata of the population. As Ray (2000, 694) highlights, Kolkata “has a rich and elaborate feudal tradition”, and per 1981 census data indicated the state of West Bengal had significantly more domestic servants employed compared to India’s other big states. Men and women both historically served as a domestic servants in India, yet when Devi was writing Truth/Untruth, the equal gender divide in the sector was evaporating and it was on its way to becoming what Cunningham Armacost (1994, 53), called a “female job ghetto”. Among the reasons women became increasingly preferred was their acceptance of lower wages and the perception they were safer to allow into one’s private abodes and be around female family members.

Although Jamuna is sharp-tongued and feisty, she falls victim to Arjun’s predatory sexual harassment. Devastatingly, for Jamuna is married and loves her husband deeply, she winds up pregnant with a child she claims to be Arjun’s. Unafraid to confront him, knowing about his stash of black money and threatening to involve the goons from the slum who look out for her, Jamuna demands compensation. Coming up with the payment is hardly an issue, for paying bribes is part and parcel of doing business. But what hurts his pride the most is that he must pay off the lowly maid to keep quiet.

Arjun sees himself as the victim and blames everyone except himself for his predicament. All he can think about is suppressing the truth and defending his social standing. His reputation is on the line! He could have her killed; the police won’t bat an eye over the death of a fifth maid at Barnamala. Arjun, however, resolves to take Jamuna for an abortion. Unfortunately, she visits a quack doctor and dies after taking the wrong medicine he prescribed for her treatment. Thus begins a circuitous game of cat and mouse that introduces a colourful cast of well-developed characters, who scramble to save themselves from scandal. Through vignettes that consistently emphasise the structures of power operating in a hierarchical, stratified society while also highlighting diverse issues like the difficulties of inter-faith love, mental health, and the challenges of caregiving.

Although not of the margins herself, Devi was accomplished in writing from the margins. She does not spoon-feed her reader and uses analogies without explanation, expecting the reader to have enough cultural literacy to appreciate them or put in the work to fill in the gaps themselves. However, the effort is indeed worth it if you are looking for an exhilarating social commentary and biting satire that remains relevant today. Devi also reflects the jargon and dialects of the lower classes as deftly as the peculiarities of upper-class speech patterns. The reader of the original text would have effortlessly been able to identify a character’s position in society from their dialogue. A feat of this work is Katyal’s ability to mediate these multiple registers, rewarding the reader with sharp writing that is at once funny, sardonic, and darkly pleasurable to read.

References
Armacost, Nicola Cunningham. “Domestic Workers In India : A Case For Legislative Action.” Journal of the Indian Law Institute 36, no. 1 (1994): 53–63.

Ray, Raka. “Masculinity, Femininity, and Servitude: Domestic Workers in Calcutta in the Late Twentieth Century.” Feminist Studies 26, no. 3 (2000): 691–718.

How to cite: Greenberg, Jack. “Writing from the Margins: Mahasweta Devi’s Truth/Untruth.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 18 Dec. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/12/18/truth-untruth.

Jack Greenberg resides in Seoul where he is pursuing a master’s degree at Korea University’s Graduate School of International Studies as a Global Korea Scholarship recipient. He is a former management consultant and originally hails from Toronto, Canada. Jack regularly contributes to KoreaPro, an online subscription resource that provides objective insights and analysis on the most important stories in South Korea. His writing has also been featured in The Korea Times and Asian Labour Review. He is interested in housing issues and urban development and enjoys documenting changing cityscapes through photography in his free time and travels abroad. Follow his work on Twitter at @jackwgreenberg. [All contributions by Jack Greenberg.]

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