By Pallavi Narayan

Nine Yard Sarees: A Short Story Cycle
Prasanthi Ram
Ethos Books (2023) / 272 pages / SGD 22

As the blurb of the book states, "Nine-Yard Sarees is a multigenerational portrait of a fictional Tamil Brahmin family." What could be termed a 'female-centric' collection of stories is turned on its head by author Prasanthi Ram. Not only is the book about the women of the household, their relationships are often, if not always, perceived by themselves as well as others, in relation to men. Thus the men get a voice too but, in a deft flip, the author provides the women much agency in crafting their own stories and influences. In this strong debut, she changes the narrative voice to suit female protagonists across generations – from the 1950s all the way to 2019.

This work constitutes an experiment that could have remained such or gone off-course at several points but is instead elevated to portraits lush with detail by Ram's adroit hand. Each story enshrines a quiet drama, is very fresh and, most importantly, interwoven with the other stories. Nothing reads off-kilter, and the stories are not so loosely linked that they do not form a cohesive narrative. Indeed, each succeeding protagonist's account is carefully tied into the others' so that the recounting is tight and framed with familial, cultural and historical context. The reader would do well to recall here that this book is Ram's doctoral project and the research behind it shows up solidly, adding much richness to the overarching narrative and the manner in which the stories speak together.

What is interesting is that one cannot call this a novel nor refer to it as a collection; it is, instead, termed a 'story cycle', which means that the stories are loosely interlinked and the narrators are interchanging – from mother to daughter to sister to grandmother to sister-in-law to brother's Korean girlfriend and her mother to children who are now mothers to daughters who are caring for their mothers – in a cycle, that is, of life itself. Helpfully, each story comes with the year it is based in underneath the title. The stories seemingly portray a clash between the contemporary seething against the modern and the modern inching past ages gone by, except that each flows into the next and back again, and they do not cause a discordance at all.

The concept of time takes a backseat in this evocative, delicate story cycle that addresses generations of women not only from a single family, but also those associated with the family by way of other relationships – familial, friendly, cultural or service-oriented. Protagonists keep changing as stories move forward or backwards into time, and secrets in one story are revealed in another. Narrated with deep insight, compassion and empathy, these stories, at their foundation, can be about you and me, and therein lies their elegance. They engage with the losses and indignities that women confront in Asia, and indeed globally, on a daily basis. Family secrets that are kept suppressed, resentments that bloom into generational traumas, joys that are enjoyed in secrecy from other family members due to social restrictions – all find voice within this book's pages.

The stories, in my reading, seem to be situated around Keerthana and the women of her family who are linked to her. It could be argued that some are centred round other female protagonists such as her mother Padma, her grandmother Rajeswari and her aunt Shweta. However, I see Keerthana as the fulcrum around which the stories rotate. The first, very humorous, richly detailed story is positioned in 1996 and is titled 'The Panasonic'. Given that the Srinivasans, the Tamil Brahmin Singaporean family, are "going to America", this is already a statement rife with anticipation for a reader like myself, given my own Indian middle-class background. I settled in for an entertaining read, and was struck by the author's attentive and loving detail regarding the contents of the luggage. As the stories moved on, this translated into a careful construction of scenes, emotions and human frailties centred around the themes of domesticity, crossing gender boundaries, religion and its attendant challenges, and the Asian parent's extreme obsession with how their children and family are looking and are thus perceived by society.

Perhaps the most hard-hitting story in this respect is 'The Perfect Shot', in which Vani, Keethana's first cousin, is photographed with her psoriasis and made to look beautiful by Mira, who also later becomes her girlfriend. To Vani's parents, particularly her mother, this affliction is unforgivable, and she tries all sorts of remedies on her daughter's hair and scalp in order to stop the psoriasis but in turn makes Vani utterly self-conscious. Mira is the first person to help Vani see her true inner beauty; in a world ridden with phobias, the truth of this story stands out. "There she is, bathing in the golden hour, with sunflowers clutched against her face, petals caressing her loathed scar" (p. 103).

Another story that stood out for me is 'Loose Threads', which is about Keerthana's brother Krishnan's relationship with his Korean girlfriend Fiona. It shows up the Brahmin rituals, such as the man wearing a poonal, "a tiny pool of white threads… [which were] long enough to cascade down her back, and they ran in a loop that was held together by a knot" (p. 139). Krishnan's Singaporean-Indian Brahmin identity is subsumed into his Australian diaspora identity, which is noteworthy as his family is already part of the Singaporean diaspora.

The story that I most connected with is 'Amma's Suitcase', in which Keerthana's aunt Shweta is shown to be an entrepreneur who starts her own clothing brand Modern Madisars with the sarees that her mother collected for her trousseau. What is most enjoyable about this story is how Keerthana and her fiancé Vikram is supportive of Shweta's endeavours, unlike her brother and sister-in-law. She is mentoring a student from the National University of Singapore who reminds Shweta of herself, which is where her love goes – to her work and those who are as ambitious as she is.

Indeed, this short-story cycle is itself an ambitious undertaking, one which is successful in portraying the rigours of growing up in a diaspora family and the tough stances the characters are compelled to take for themselves and each other. As I was reading in parallel Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work (2022) by Ruchika Tulshyan, another Singaporean author, the bravery in the brownness that is at the heart of Nine Yard Sarees was highlighted for me. Prasanthi Ram has accomplished a shining tour de force in unpacking both the migrant as well as the settled immigrant perspectives. In the reversals and upheavals that the characters are subjected to or voluntarily undergo, she has opened up the conversation around diaspora populations in Singapore in a way that only her lived experience as an individual growing into her personhood could. This book is highly recommended as a starting point to comprehend specific diaspora realities which blend into the global landscape.

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