Acid by Sangeetha Sreenivasan is a gripping and powerful story about two women and their journeys of discovering their lives and the struggles that come with it. Kamala and Shaly, pose as two distinctive women living in an unusual household. Kamala’s twins, from her former marriage, take care of each other and are a part of the same household. The characters in the book make for a dynamic storyline as the plot is driven by their spirited characters.
Here, Sangeetha Sreenivasan, talks about the psychological and behavioral anatomy of her characters and her road to a final realization of the mould of her characters in the book. Dwelling in the deep crevices of the psyche of women, sexuality, and a unique understanding of relationships, Sreenivasan also explains as to what drove her to write this book, which highlights a quintessential meaning of womanhood and places it in the current state of the world.
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Imaginary as they are, I first came into contact with my characters in the year 2007. Extending in curves and turns, instantly I was allowed to participate in their private lives—their kinesics, their voices and tacit manners, their odors, and their screaming meemies. “A dark and private weather settled down on everything,” to borrow a line from Mark Strand. In a certain sense they started interfering with the course of my regular life. I found myself in a world that really has been turned on its head.
Before they started blurring my mind there was a sort of emptiness within me which I wanted to flush out. I started writing the story of Kamala. But the emptiness I mentioned was not separable from the idleness which was stronger and kept reminding me of the banality of the improbable relationships I wanted to work on. I quit writing at this stage even though I had an offer from a publisher. Years later when I wanted to write a second novel in Malayalam the book in the slush pile came to my mind. There was no literature or no music in it but there was this skeleton I knew would help me work. For me, writing Acid was a nerve-racking business of tampering my inner self with the everydayness I rarely got along with on a daily basis. What I wanted for writing was absolute silence and an exaggerated mindscape where I could find myself emotionally unsettled and strangely lost, where it was easy to toy with certain uncertain situations. I spent three or four intensive months on writing this piece. In the end I sobbed, but like a small wonder that happens once in a while, the emptiness didn’t return.
I am a listener (not always) and definitely not a judge. I don’t believe in judging people, particularly the fictitious ones. Everything is connected here in the inextricably complex and intricate meshes of the Universe. Everything emerges out of chaos and individual existence is fragile like a bubble on the surface of water. Who are we to judge or decide? I don’t care about people’s sexual preferences as long as they do not hurt or harm another living being. It was not my aim to shock the readers by writing a story on homosexuality. I think it is time we forget the divisions. We do not call Manon Lescaut a heterosexual novel though it is one of the most enigmatic and challenging love stories that happened between a man and an amoral courtesan. We call Call Me by Your Name a gay story even though the intention of André Aciman was to depict the intimate bond between two individuals. It is time we accept sexuality in its multiplicity and stop attributing titles and divisions, it is time we stop seeing the strangeness of relationships in the name of sex. I don’t care if a woman loves a man or a woman or a man loves many as in the monogatari of the ‘Shining Prince’.
I remember the story ‘The End of the Party’ by Graham Greene and the way I got carried away after reading it. I couldn’t find a way out of the intense inner worlds of the identical twins and maybe that is the reason why the twins stayed in my mind longer than what the characters in a short story demanded of its reader forcing me to unravel the psycho-behavioral patterns of the twins and pondering over creating fictitious twins of my own. As a reader I always have this kind of troublesome connections with the books I love dearly. My writing is just an extension of what I had read so far, twice or thrice removed from the original text, a faint recreation or an imitation in its weakest form. I was never a detached reader; I applied emotions and shunned my intelligence and ended up an imbecile ready to get carried away at a mere beckoning. The issue of copyright and plagiarism is a different story. I think the books I have read and loved are mine, my books, my words, my worlds—this totally private joy; reading becomes an extended conversation. As Yiyun Li says “To read is to be with people who, unlike those around one, do not notice one’s existence.”
The woman in my story is also an amalgamation of all the women I have loved so far. I believe the strength of a woman lies in her delicate curves and powerful sexuality. I always cherish the images of beautiful women/nymphs from the epics and wanted to create a woman as tender and sexually enticing as one of those magnificent creatures we come across in literature. But when the sexuality of such a powerful being remains unanswered everything turns upside down demanding total devastation. I named her Kamala; the lotus flower, graceful yet susceptible. I gave her twins; I made her marry her brother; I made her long for the same sex; I gave her burdens of every kind; I even placed her in a society that has still not come to terms with accepting or appreciating the power of sexuality. I wanted her to scale the ill-fated mountain.
My associations with the lovely self-taught women from North Eastern regions of India enabled me to experience the cultural differences helping me to develop the character of Shaly. The graveyard I had described in the book is a place I had visited more than a couple of times and its premises are far more beautiful than described in the book. All these were ingredients or separate entities designed to float on the surface of a lotus leaf, the disoriented heroine of my book. The leaf of the lotus absorbs nothing, invites nothing into its inner sanctum. Those who move on the surface may sometimes fall down losing grip. This was the idea around which I started working initially. I wanted to see the beautiful leaf torn and shattered and I worked for the accomplishment of the most probable devastation possible.
Acid is not so much of a story on homosexuality and I don’t consider myself presumptuous in writing on same-sex relationships or psychedelic ups and downs as my book was not meant to shock the reader. But it pains me to think that the society has not come to terms with homosexuality even today. This is indeed a lamentable situation.
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Acid unravels the secrets that lurk beneath the surface of our lives, and marks the entry of a searing new voice in the Indian literary landscape.
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Nine Facts About Author Sangeetha Sreenivasan That Will Intrigue You
Sangeetha Sreenivasan’s descriptive book Acid, set in the rapidly evolving city of Bangalore, deals with the convoluted lives of two fascinating women and marks the entry of a fierce and bold new voice in the Indian literary landscape.
Here are nine facts about her that you should know:
Acid – An Excerpt
Sangeetha Sreenivasan’s remarkable debut Acid is a gripping tale that attempts to subvert the conventions of society. The narrative is fuelled by the intense romance between Kamala and Shaly who stay in the same house as Kamala’s sons, Shiva and Aadi. Shiva and Aadi stay downstairs and take care of each other in their own way.
When Kamala’s mother dies, she returns to Kerala—to an ancestral house lying next to the cremation grounds in Cochin’s outlying reaches. Although an uneasy place for her, the place, nevertheless, is home. However, nothing can prepare her for the devastation that ensues in this lyrical, hallucinatory trip of a story.
Here is an excerpt from the novel:
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In the kitchen Aadi set some milk to boil, his heart pounding all the while and his lips trembling. He did not remember much about his grandmother, though. He was worried about his mother, now an orphan bereft of someone to guide her.
By the time Shaly came back, she had regained her composure and she cautioned Aadi in a carefree manner to watch the coffee, which was boiling over. She shut the flame off and accidentally knocked the lighter down, but let it remain there. The bright red polish still shone on her nails, especially on her toes. After Aadi had gone to Shiva’s room with the tray of coffee and biscuits, she picked up the lighter and lit the stove again and prepared some tea.
She had to push the door open with her leg as she was holding a tray laden with a teapot, cups, biscuits, toast and marmalade. Kamala stood beside the table, unmindful of her shouts or reluctant to open the door. She took no notice of the tray Shaly placed on the table. Instead, she stood there listening to some lone voices from within. Shaly should have been bitter about this, but her poise betrayed only signs of suppressed anger, shrouded in grace. When Shaly noticed Kamala’s eyes closed in rapture she pulled her up by the hair and hit her hard across the face, anyway. ‘What the hell!’ said Shaly.
Kamala stepped back and carelessly knocked the teapot over with her hand, spilling the hot tea onto the floor.
‘I’m going to kill you, you bitch!’ Shaly tried to thrust her fingers into Kamala’s mouth, with a force sufficient to scoop out the insides—the tongue, uvula, teeth and everything—but anticipating the worst, Kamala pursed her lips disgustedly and forced them out, so that Shaly had to give up.
In consequence, acid took the reins. It designed the maps of convulsed ecstasy under Kamala’s tongue. Soon it would travel, numbing whatever it touched on the way until Kamala was numb to the world outside her eyes. Red kangaroos wearing lucky horseshoes would race up to her brain, making her forget her present, past and future in the haze of dust their hooves would raise. Neurons would mount on camels obscured by clouds to take her for a short pleasure ride.
‘Bastard! What do you think of yourself? You stupid slut!’ Shaly shook her hard; slapped her harder still. Kamala didn’t seem to be in pain. Yet she covered her face in her hands and squatted on the floor. ‘Everything happens because of you, Kamala! How many times have I warned you against taking those dumb godforsaken pills? But you don’t listen. You are on medication. Do you hear me?’ Tea pooled in the wooden depression on the floor.
Shaly went out to fetch a mop, saw Aadi on the stairs and yelled, ‘What the hell do you want? Get out of here.’
It was not easy for Shaly to compose herself this time. After a while, she tried to fake a sympathetic look and walked to the children’s room, pretending everything was under control. Before she knocked on the door she said to herself, ‘Kams is a horrible woman. Everything here is garbage,’ and smiled.
Still smiling, she asked the boys, ‘Shall I get you breakfast?’ The boys looked at each other and then at her. ‘What about grandma? Are we not going to see her?’ Shiva asked solemnly.
Shaly was about to say something but suddenly the sound of the saxophone shook her up and her face turned pale and bare. Music came floating down the stairway.
On the upper floor, Kamala closed the windows, drew the curtains shut and sat on the floor in the corner of her room. She thought she was safe, no harm could ever find her. She stared at the innards of her stereo and laughed thoughtfully.
‘I will bring you toast, please wait,’ Shaly called out from the kitchen, as if the boys were impatient and enthusiastically waiting for something to munch on.
The first two pieces of toast got burned on the frying pan. Shaly wondered from where Kamala had got hold of the hallucinogen again. She had taken it on an empty stomach, in addition to the sleeping pills she had had the night before. Shaly recollected the faces of each and every peddler on the road. Bastards.
Two tiny pieces of eggshell flopped on to the yolks in the pan. White pyramids on yellow balls. She removed the pieces with the edge of a spatula. ‘I should not have left her,’ she said to herself.
No one knew how long a bad trip would last. Kamala’s mother, frozen, white and pale, waited for her daughter in uncertainty while Kamala shut herself up in a room too far away from her mother and mused on something that would never be useful in life. She moved the gears on an unbridled, hysterical ride, on a magic journey some people mistook as life.
On top of her worries, Kamala had a pet dog called Depru. Monsieur Depression. An impalpable ghost of her esteemed hypotheses. It accompanied her wherever she went. A huge bulk, a mass of comfort. A cushioned bundle of sadness. It showed no interest in playing with a ball or a toy, no interest in going out for a walk. Instead, it would mount her shoulders, its weight crushing her. They say dogs make eye contact. It looked straight into Kamala’s eyes like other dogs. But in the mauve shadow of its eyes, a child drowned every second. And Kamala wept, looking at the dying child.
