What is a nation? Is it a mere conglomeration of territories? Is it just a collection of governance systems? Where do the people come in? Do the people even come into consideration? Can you be a nation without its people? What is a nation if not its people?
To know the state of the nation, then, one needs to know only the state of the people. From that yardstick, India doesn’t seem to be in a great place. Hasn’t been in a while. Politicians in power provoke the masses to shoot the traitors. Who are these traitors, these anti-nationals, these dissidents, these terrorists? Activists, students, comedians, farmers, climate activists, minorities, oppressed castes, and the list goes on.
Despite these mudd(l)y waters the nation and its people finds itself in, there somehow remains abject apathy in large sections of society. As Anita Nair writes in the introduction to Why I Killed My Husband and Other Stories, “Most of us keep track of the news. International, national, regional, local. Except that we turn the page or scroll down and go on with our lives. We tell ourselves that it doesn’t concern us. We convince ourselves that we can do nothing about it. We take refuge in apathy. All of us are guilty of this day after day. We forget that apathy, too, is a crime.”
This collection of six cinematic stories keeps politics on its sleeves, and with those political sleeves does it examine the many facets and fault lines in our present society. So, while each contains a larger message, they are also compelling narratives in their own right. The titular story opens with: “I should have killed my husband on our wedding night.” Another begins with: “Four months have passed since that day. No one talks about it anymore.” The origins of this book—from a popular audiostory series—are evident in its ability to keep you turning the pages one after another.
These stories explore significant ground, too, from communal discord amid the CAA announcement and the Shaheen Bagh protests to caste conflicts in Hindi hinterlands. “In this new India, there is a new crisis each day that sanctions forgetting,” one story points out, and rightly so, for the ‘system’ looms large across these stories.
For one character, that system is patriarchy, as a newlywed wife is subdued and broken over the years, the story of all too many Indian households. “I wasn’t asking for much. An uneventful life with no malice and no surprises. A husband who was a companion and partner. A son who would grow up to be a decent human being. A gentle sort of happiness was all I dreamt of,” she wishes in one scene, but that gentle happiness continues to elude her.
For another, that system is caste, which follows her wherever she goes, whatever she does. From a local school that insists she be the one to sweep her classroom to a medical school that disqualifies her because her presentation was too good to be true, too polished to be created by a quota girl, that system is a constant accompaniment. “What would she have to do to be treated with some dignity and respect? She had believed that competing with everyone else would show them she was just as good. (...) You can’t shed your caste, she thought, just as you can’t shed your skin.”
In yet another, the system enters a life unexpectedly in the garb of a scammer. As the character under ‘digital arrest’ coughs up more and more details and assets with time, her unfamiliarity and fear of the system works in favour of the scamsters. “You can fight everything on your own: an uneasy marriage, an aborted career, wrinkles, greying hair, credit card disputes, surly staff, termites—anything but the system. How do you fight that on your own?"
Subtly or otherwise, complexly or otherwise, Why I Killed My Husband and Other Stories by Anita Nair captures the state of the nation by capturing the state of its people. Whether it’s the story of a housewife fed up with her entitled patriarchal husband or a Muslim orphan girl finding solidarity with the women in Shaheen Bagh, they portray a nation in flux, a nation in deep waters.