Tales of Heartache, Hurt, and Hope

Common threads run through the stories in Saras Manickam's My Mother Pattu, a collection of short stories that doesn't look like one from the outside. In the face of adversity and its accomplices: racism, classism, cultural differences, patriarchal attitudes, suffocating traditions and others, the characters struggle to maintain their dignity, ideals, individuality, and humanity.

The window into Saras Manickam's portrait of the human condition is the first story, "Number One, Mambang Lane", in which Meena, a precocious teenage Indian girl, is exiled to her relatives' quiet homestead in the fictional small town of Mambang after committing what her Tamil household considers cardinal sins: falling in love and getting a boyfriend.

As Meena settles in, she is slowly introduced to the community. Towards the end, we do not know of her fate or when her exile will end, which is fine because the thing about stories is that they just keep going – and in directions you least expect.


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