Lower-Caste Life in India Is Illustrated in a New Short-Story Collection
Dalit activist and writer Gogu Shyamala’s debut collection of short stories, Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But . . . , explores caste, tradition, and exploitation in contemporary India without romanticism.
A jogini, a female temple attendant obliged to be sexually available to local men, sits at home with her daughter in Andhra Pradesh, India. (Ami Vitale / Getty Images)
There’s a scene near the end of the short story “Jambava’s Lineage” where a woman named Ellamma notices that something has happened to upset a group of children who are standing nearby as she chews betel. The children are members of the Chindu caste, itinerant performers who act out the myths of the communities they visit. But at that day’s performance, villagers who showed the actors respect were openly mocked: the Chindu are lowborn, the subtext was, and so were undeserving of deference no matter how skillfully they played their parts. When the children relate what they saw, Ellamma, an actress herself, responds: “The best way for us is to attract them with our performance, to make it so riveting that they sit and watch for hours. That is the most fitting reply to those who try to ride rough over us.”
It’s tempting to read the line as a kind of thesis statement for the book in which it appears. Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But . . . is the debut short-story collection of Gogu Shyamala, a lifelong activist in her home state of Telangana. Described by the Times of India as “one of the foremost contemporary Dalit voices in the country exploring the tribulations and aspirations of her community,” Shyamala has previously edited Black Dawn, a volume of Dalit writing from Telangana, and authored a biography of the state’s first Dalit woman legislator, T. N. Sadalakshmi. These stories, which mainly focus on the Madiga subcaste, are an extension of her broader political engagement.
Outside of the Margins
Shyamala’s book is part of a larger wave of Dalit feminist literature that has won recognition and scholarly attention in recent years. Dalit writing began receiving broader attention in India in the 1990s with the translation of several influential works from Marathi, a language with some 73 million speakers, predominately in the state of Maharashtra. Still, the Indian literary establishment has dragged its feet when it comes to promoting the work of Dalit writers, to the point that many still find it difficult to secure a publisher. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the barriers to entry have been particularly high for Dalit women. In this context, the scholar Susie Tharu has dubbed Shyamala an author less of “short stories” than of “little stories,” a term that references both the Telugu tradition of “little magazines” and the writer’s position as a subaltern whose work pushes against the mainstream.
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