The stories in Jaya Padmanabhan’s Transactions of Belonging are
set either in India or the U.S., and they seem to be arranged in such a
way that the reader goes from denser, heavier subjects to the lighthearted
and airy. And though short, the collection amply displays
her ability to tackle different narrative styles, ranging from first or
third person to letters and even drama.
Humans are innately relational beings. Our lived
experiences are molded by our ties (or the lack of it)
with other humans. Relationships pull, tug, push, transform,
explode, fuse, and suffuse. Almost every mortal
act is an action or a reaction to our relationship with the
other, and our sense of place and belonging is in turn
determined by that relationship. It is, in other words, a
“transaction of belonging.”
The stories in Transactions of Belonging (Leadstart
Publishing), Jaya Padmanabhan’s debut short story
collection, are about the ebb and flow, the highs and
lows, the centrifugal and centripetal forces that bring
humans together and pull them apart. The writer is
not new to the publishing world: her day job is editor of
India Currents, a California-based monthly publication,
and she has previously won fiction writing contests for
the stories “His Curls,” “Neyyappams,” “Curtains Drawn,”
and “Mustard Seeds.” “His Curls,” for instance, deals with
the constant fear that resides in a mother about her son’s
behavior—is he mine, is he deviant? Is he capable of
terror? The ending is ambiguous and it allows for a
deeper engagement between the story and the reader.
“As a writer, I like to leave the reader simple clues so
that the task of figuring out connections, dotting i’s, and
crossing t’s becomes a fun engagement,” Padmanabhan
adds in an interview. “Reading is passive unless you
are wholly engaged and this is my way of engaging the
reader. There are other possibilities and the challenge is
in thinking through each possible scenario.”
In “Neyyappams,” a young boy wonders about his
place in his family and if he truly belongs. This story
grew from her grandfather’s childhood experiences in
Kerala, Padmanabhan points out, and in it, the author
deftly explores the eternal dilemma that befalls the
middle child—where is my rightful place in the family?
Do I belong? Am I a mere filler between the heir and the
darling? In “The Little Matter of Fresh Meadow Feces,”
Padmanabhan weaves in the intergenerational tensions
of Indian families living in the United States. The
narrative form employed in this story—letters in first
person exchanged between characters spanning continents,
and personal journal entries—is especially suited
to this piece and highlights the awkwardness of direct
confrontation in parent-child relationships, a theme
that will resonate with Indian readers. In “Strapped
for Time,” Padmanabhan writes about the seemingly
mundane yet intimate rituals of aging, and the
inevitable loneliness of an old man who looks forward
to the daily routine of his housekeeper.
The stories are set either in India or in the U.S., and
seem to be arranged in such a way as to take the reader
from dense, heavy subjects to the light-hearted and airy.
Padmanabhan adds, “I left India, but India hasn’t left
me. When I write, images of India flood my imagination
in all its glory and chaos. It was Nadine Gordimer who
once said, ‘Writing is a process of synthesis, the taking
of strands from one place and another ….’ For me, India
is one strand and the United States another. My writing
is influenced by where I live and reflects where I once
was. I don’t think I’ve written enough about India, and
in the process of writing, I’m coming to grips with a
country that I may have wanted to get away from in my
youth, but one which I’d like to cling to in my maturity.”
The collection, though short, amply displays
Padmanabhan’s prowess as a writer adept at toggling
different narrative styles. Some stories are rendered
in first person; “Indian Summer” is presented as a
play while “Mustard Seeds” is set to lyrical prose. The
process of writing, for Padmanabhan, is “much like
writing software code. One statement should logically
follow the next, and if it doesn’t there must be a reason
why not, and often the logic is the most critical aspect
of writing.”
If this debut collection is any indication, the world
of Indian writing in English is set to welcome into its
fold a writer with an intimate understanding of the human
experience. Padmanabhan is currently at work on
her first novel, titled The Eleventh Letter, set in Kerala.
Girija Sankar, who works at an Atlanta-based NGO, is
a freelancer writer. Her work has also appeared in Eclectica,
JMWW, Alimentum, Youngzine, and Muse India.