What does it mean to live in a world where violence against marginalised communities is not an aberration, but the expectation? Where dignity, happiness, or even survival of a person from a marginalised community is conditional on their caste location? The nine stories in journalist-author Jeyarani’s short story collection Sennilam (Land of the Red Soil) do not ask these questions gently. The author takes the most ordinary moments — a man buying a bicycle, a pregnant woman’s quiet anticipation, a bachelor party — and shows us how deeply entrenched casteism is.
The 200-page book is not meant to be an easy read; neither does it allow comfort. Instead, she forces us to confront how pervasive caste violence is. The collection is unflinchingly honest and is mindful of the dignity of its characters. A journalist and author with close to two decades of experience, Jeyarani shows us that the struggles of the marginalised are not distant tragedies, but realities we must confront.
The theme of caste-based exclusion and violence runs throughout the collection, but each story approaches it from a different angle.
The story Sennilam, from which the book derives its name, evokes a faint sense in the pit of our gut, telling us that something will go wrong from the very beginning. ‘You, a man lower than me in all ways, how dare you wear new clothes?’ is the question that echoes throughout the story. But that is not all — the story offers us perspectives on the lives of both the oppressor and the oppressed. It looks at things from the perspective of those who commit and uphold the brutality also. For instance, a dominant caste man, who was ready to kill his relatives over a property dispute, unites with them to attack an oppressed caste man for wearing new clothes.
Another dominant caste man is celebrating his bachelor party. But he is also a casteist rapist. This is woven into the horror story called Aaramavan (The Sixth Man). When we realise the reasoning behind the title, we are surely in for a shock. Perhaps the most ambiguous story in the collection, Aaramavan forces the reader to navigate uncertainty alongside its protagonist. We see the inebriated man question whether he actually committed the assault. He keeps oscillating between denial and doubt, and his doubt is transferred to the reader as well. Multiple men are involved, but the story does not give us the details, it doesn’t matter either. Any one of them could have been the perpetrator, and that is the point.
Nadhimoolam (Origin of a river) is unsettling with its slow revelation of a horror. An orphaned child, who lost her mother when she was two, was raised by a village of people unrelated to her. The child, now a woman, embarks on a journey to uncover her roots. We brace ourselves for a tragic past — a husband who abandoned his wife, an inter-caste relationship that ended in violence, or some other cruel fate. But the truth, when it arrives, is far worse than we could have imagined.
Kulasingam (The Lion of the Clan) appears, on the surface, to be about the inter-generational trauma of women; how a daughter is sacrificed to save a son; and how women’s lives are deemed disposable. But beneath this lies another reality — the casteism embedded in law enforcement.
Dhaagam (Thirst) examines how Dalits are denied access to public resources like water, which leads them to embrace another religion in the hope of inclusivity.
For a person who keeps track of the happenings in the country, there is no shock in the stories, only inevitability.
Jeyarani does not sensationalise caste oppression — there is no melodrama, no forced tragedy. Instead, the stories unfold with a matter-of-fact brutality that reflects reality. We expect injustice. We anticipate violence. And when it comes, we do not flinch. The stories also expose our ingrained biases, making us confront how we expect certain things to unfold.
The only thing we are completely shocked by is the physical violence itself, which is occasionally described graphically. It appears to be the author’s intention to lay bare what is inflicted upon Dalit lives.
A striking aspect of her stories is the way they position the Dalit characters. The narrative does not pity them, nor does it admire them. We are made to meet them at eye level and see them as they are — human beings caught in a system designed to dehumanise them and break their resilient spirit.
Jeyarani doesn’t stop there; her characters plant hope along the way. The women in the stories fight back; they are not the ones to not retaliate. Her characters fight back against the practice of Sati; leave the casteist village they grew up in to give a better future for their daughters; and call out casteist and sexist men, even when their lives depended on the same men. Sennilam also offers glimpses of the journalist Jeyarani, who occasionally adds commentary on the happenings.
Sennilam's stories are intense and are bound to weigh us down for some time, or even days. They demand introspection, to see how deeply ingrained our own biases are. And once we have seen, we cannot look away.
