This slim volume of short stories delivers on the promise of its title, The Little Book of Goodbyes, because it really is a little book of nostalgic look-backs. The author Ravi Shankar Etteth digs deep into his personal cache of memories, mines it for sentiment and poignancy, takes us to a little town in south Malabar, then moves to bigger cities, has us meet a clutch of interesting characters and watch as they rise, thrive, fall, get up again, sometimes stay down.
In Kerala, we read of the author’s grandfather, who commanded a battalion of the Malabar Special Police, tasked with putting down the Moplah Rebellion, and his dog, Fang. We read of Ramaswamy, his batman, the man who knew just how to save a breeched calf, how to read the sky for stars, who turned out to have a surprising past. We meet the misopedic Nonayan (liar in Malayalam) Master who sticks to his claim that ‘his old friend’ Annie Besant once started to give a speech and petered out into silence because she forgot how to speak English. We observe the Jesus Tree, meet the absolutely fascinating Puka Vella (white smoke in Malayalam) who seduced the British missionary’s wife, the author’s great grandmother who heard cattle moan from inside a hill, an iconoclast male member of the family who broke the taboo of lower castes not being permitted to go anywhere near temples, another ancestor whose decapitated head terrorised the locals thereabouts. There is a nod to Etteth’s uncle, the novelist OV Vijayan, when he talks of belonging to Khasak.
Some of the stories are wrapped in the faintest wisp of melancholia, just enough to infuse them with sentiment, not so much as to drown them in sadness. Therein lies this veteran wordsmith’s masterful way with words. The sentences are filled with whimsy, with ideas going off like Vishu crackers, paddy fields glossed golden by the late evening sun, skies turning the colour of molten magnesium, Landour dozing in the shade of deodars, a daridra (poverty-struck) Shiva idol which has nothing to offer but blessings. Given the author’s predilection for the occult, there are stories involving haunted houses, odiyans (shape-shifting sorcerers), as well as meetings and partings, people kept apart by the sadness of knowing and the indifference of unknowing.
The Al-made illustrations throughout the book complement the stories beautifully, lending an evocative touch to them. The picture accompanying the title is an example of this: a woman is sitting straight in the passenger seat of a car, her big eyes filled with shadows, her stillness telling a story all its own. Is she fleeing something? Or is she headed to meet her Significant Other? That’s for the reader to decide, imagine, fabricate.
The author hits us with love, loss, and regret right from the foreword titled To Begin With. He talks of losing his mother after a solid battle “with blood transfusions, plasma bags and entreaties to the gods and the doctors.” Then he tells us how his father died far away in Kerala at a time when Covid stalked the streets, and Etteth couldn’t go to see to his cremation as the eldest son. That regret, he says, will always stay with him. He follows that up with a wry statement of having bid goodbye to a wife, to children, to lovers, partners, and pets, making clear that what has to go will go.
Elsewhere in the book, we watch him bid farewell to a beloved grandmother who had gone to meet Gandhi with plans of her own, one momentous day. You cannot process grief, he says, you can only live it one day at a time … until the emptiness loses its sharp edges and becomes a part of everything you do. And in a Dresden story, a stranger (ghost? hallucination?) tells him he has the calm of someone who has said all his goodbyes.
The humour, where it appears, is rueful. In the end, what stays with the reader is a solemn affirmation of the things that really matter: close friendships, love and loyalty, lots of laughter, some tears shed, some tears swallowed, some emotions given free rein, others kept on a tight leash….all the business of living, in other words.
Etteth, for those who don’t know, is a man of many talents; he is a writer, editor, graphic designer and political cartoonist in a career spanning four decades at some of the biggest media groups in the country. He’s been writing on our political and social scene since forever. In this book, we get to see a more intimate side of him.
There is an adept passage about what happened in Kerala after the Land Reform Act that is concise and scathing at the same time. Alas, Westland, in its wisdom, has chosen a faint font for the author’s name as well as the book title.