Book Review - Eating Wasps by Anita Nair

Anita Nair is one of the prominent authors in the Indian publishing scene today. The first Anita Nair book I picked up was Idris, published in 2014. Idris is a historical fiction novel. She is also known for Lessons in Forgetting, The Better Man and Mistress to name a few.

Sometimes, a book comes along that devours you as much as you devour it. I started reading Eating Wasps as soon as I got it - how could you not, with a title and a cover like that? 

EW begins with a first-person narrative of a woman called Sreelakshmi - a writer who had been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award at only 30 years old - she is dead. Sreelakshmi’s character committed suicide - the locals who know about her and didn’t know about her begin to talk about why did that.

“The speculation was as dense as the grief.”

After the cremation of her body, Markose - Sreelakshmi’s secret lover - digs through the ashes, finds a piece of skeleton that once was Sreelakshmi and keeps it for himself, locked in the back of an almirah, forgotten in time. The spirit that is left behind is tethered to that piece of bone, leaving Sreelakshmi in a state of limbo, stuck in the same almirah. 

Her bone is not taken out until 52 years later, when Megha - a six year old girl who has gone through an unspeakable trauma - holds on to the bone as she is hiding from her parents in the almirah which has found its way to a resort they visit somewhere in Kerala - Near the Nila. Another guest, Urvashi - a fifty-something journalist, who has come to the resort to get away from her own life, finds her - and so, the piece of bone makes her way to Urvashi.

As this talisman of sorts move around through different women who come into the contact with it, so does Sreelakshmi’s ghost. She learns of their stories, while also learning about how much the world has changed. 

We meet girls and women of different age, different circumstances, desires, fears - but all of them have one thing in common - the need to get away from something. Besides Urvashi and Megha, there are women like Najma - an acid attack survivor; middle-aged sisters, Theresa and Thomasina, professional badminton player Brinda Patil, dancer Liliana, the diplomat’s wife Rupa and Maya, a woman who is taking care of her adult son who is autistic.

These women are victims of the people around them, and sometimes of circumstances of their own making. Their stories seem more profound in the current climate. These women are the same you meet in your life, women you cross paths with and you don’t give a second thought about. These stories feel real. As we learn more about the women in the present day, we get more of Sreelakshmi’s stories - why she did what she did, how a piece of her ended up in the cupboard that founds its way to the resort.

Anita Nair’s writing is filled with a poignancy that leaks through the pages to your fingers and to within your mind. I didn’t expect to finish the book as quickly as I did, but a good book does that. As disturbing as it is to read some parts, especially Megha’s chapter, you would not feel like putting it down. I was filled with worry and exhaustion on reading about the actions and decisions that some of the characters take - these are flawed people after all. But this just adds to the brilliance of the book.

I did think there might have been a few editing discrepancies that created confusion while reading, but nothing that would spoil the story or the reading experience.

Final thoughts: A well-written book that you need to add to your library.

Thanks to Vivek Tejuja and Westland Books for my copy.