My book "Daughters of Kerala"

       “One Still Picture Cannot Capture a Life’s Story” by Gita Hiranyan

     Marie Varghese who reviewed "Daughters of Kerala" remarked that 'One Still Picture Cannot Capture a Life's Story’ offers fascinating insights into the intersections of women's roles in relation to social class—the working poor and the Malayalee elite.

     Azhakamma, the young girl who used walk to school with her friends in long blue skirts, with hair plaited coming down on both sides, a gold necklace and a carefree attitude becomes an orphan when lightning strikes her hut and kills her mother making her an orphan, and knocks her down unconscious.

     After she wakes up she is forced to drop out of school and earn a living cleaning houses and washing dishes for four families, everyday. She is willing to clean all the rooms, but not the toilet, even when the mistress of the house reminds her that Kasturba Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi’s wife) used to do it. The day the story takes place, Azhakamma is angry at the whole world for everyone reminding her about cleaning the toilet.

     Having to work in four houses everyday gives her little time for personal care or grooming, leaving her hair and body smelling. When she looks at herself in the mirror in the upstairs room she goes to clean, she imagines her image admonishing her for not taking better care of herself and not dressing better, and not wearing even a ‘bindi’ on the forehead.

     Gone are the days she used to dress up for school. Azhakamma has completed eighth grade and the daughter of the house where the story takes place, Ramyakutty, considers her educated enough to ask the cleaning girl for the correct spelling of a difficult word, ‘bougainvilla’ or ‘bougenvilla.’ Some times they watch TV together and both are crazy about cinema actors.

     The cook in the house has sympathy for Azhakamma and advices her to get a government job as at least a janitor so that she doesn’t have to run to four houses and get her hands all blistered with the cleaning materials. The cook gives her special food like fried fish without the knowledge of the mistress of the house, though she just throws it out saying that the bones of the stolen fish will get stuck in her throat.

     Azhakamma is most hurt when someone mentions that she has no husband or children. Men in the area know that her mother has gotten an astrologer to write the name of Azhakamma’s lover in her past life on a small gold disk on a black string that is tied around her hip to protect her from men.

     The last part of the story is her version of her life story, proving her Malayalam teacher’s remark, “You know how to write.” But there is no one to read or listen to her story.