Genre: Literary
Blurb
In a land where skin colour
can determine one's destiny, fraternal twins PULLAMMA and LATA are about to
embark on a journey that will tear their lives apart.
Dark skinned Pullamma dreams
of being a wife. With three girls in her family, the sixteen year old is aware
there isn't enough dowry to secure suitable husbands for them all. But a girl
can hope. She's well versed in cooking, pickle making, cow washing -- you name
it. She's also obliged her old-fashioned grandmother by not doing well in
school.
Fair skinned and pretty, her
twin sister Lata would rather study medicine than get married. Unable to grasp
the depth of Lata's desire, the twins' Grandmother formalizes a wedding
alliance for the girl. Distraught, Lata rebels, with devastating consequences.
As Pullamma helps ready the
house for her older sister Malli's bride viewing, she prays for a positive
outcome to the event. What happens next is so inconceivable that it will shape
Pullamma's future in ways she couldn't have foreseen.
TELL A THOUSAND LIES is a
sometimes wry, sometimes sad, but ultimately realistic look at how superstition
and the colour of a girl's skin rules India's hinterlands.
Sneak Peek
“Good thing you aren’t pretty,
Pullamma,” Lakshmi garu said with a laugh. “Can you imagine the headache if we
had to hide you, too?”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Lakshmi garu was here to lend moral support for my older sister’s bride
viewing, and I mustn’t forget it.
“Towering like a palm tree,
you are,” she said, “and skin dark like anything.”
I wondered if ‘garu,’ as a
term of respect, was wasted on this friend of my grandmother’s. Still. I was
sixteen now. Couldn’t let words escape my mouth without proper consideration.
Lakshmi garu studied me for a
long moment, the wide slash of her mouth disappearing into the flat rectangle
of her face. Shaking her head, she turned back to my grandmother.
It couldn’t be easy for our
Ammamma, saddled as she was with three orphaned granddaughters and no male
support, to marry us off. If today’s alliance for Malli fell through, where
would we find another family willing to accept the limited dowry we had to
offer?
Of the three of us, Malli was
the most beautiful. But my fraternal twin, Lata, was pretty, too; it was for
this reason she’d been packed off to a relative’s house, out of sight of the
groom’s family. For, if they got it into their heads to take Lata home as their
daughter-in-law, it would be hard for us to refuse them. Given that Malli was
the best-looking, it was unlikely, but why take the risk? If they chose Lata
over Malli, forever people would think there was some defect in Malli that had
caused the groom’s family to reject her. Who would marry her then?
Now, as Ammamma, Lakshmi garu
and I waited for the prospective bridegroom’s family to grace us with their
presence and decide if our Malli was good enough for them, I surveyed our
walled-off rectangular courtyard. Our house was a series of rooms lining the
back of our courtyard, one opening into the next, like the compartments of a
train. A veranda separated the rooms from the courtyard. Perpendicular to it
was our cowshed. On either side of the cowshed were a tamarind tree and a
sampangi tree. A coconut tree drooped against the far end.
Lakshmi garu was settled next
to the sampangi tree, on a straw mat laid out on the mud floor. It was against
this tree I sat, as I made my promise to Goddess Durga – if this alliance went
through, I’d break coconuts at her altar.
That got me thinking. How many
coconuts would it take to appease the Goddess? Two? Five? Twenty? Two seemed a
little... miserly. This was bride viewing, not some silly plea to have a cute
boy smile at me. But, if I promised too much and couldn’t deliver, the wrath of
the Goddess would surely befall me. Even more important, if Ammamma were forced
to pay for twenty coconuts out of our meagre household income, she would strike
me dead. Five seemed safer all around.
“Pullamma,” Ammamma said,
interrupting my internal debate. “They should have been here twenty minutes
ago. Go over to the post office and keep a watch for them.”
The only way into the village
was past the post office, so I sprang to my feet.
“Let the girl be,” Lakshmi
garu said. “How can they come here so soon? That, too, after travelling all
night? They need time to freshen up, don’t they?”
I flopped back on the ground.
"Pullamma!” Ammamma said
reprovingly.
I sighed, carefully arranging
my half-sari over my feet. Remembering to be ladylike wasn’t as easy as it
sounded.
Know About the Author
Rasana is the author of Amazon
bestseller 'Tell A Thousand Lies', which was shortlisted for the 2012 Tibor Jones
South Asia award. UK’s Glam magazine calls this novel one of their five
favourite tales from India (June 2014).
Her other works are 'The Temple Is Not My Father' and '28 Years A Bachelor' (coming September 2014).
The cover of The Temple Is Not
My Father was awarded the coveted gold star by book designer Joel Frielander.
Rasana declined a traditional
publishing contract in order to self-publish. She was also invited to New Delhi for Amazon India‘s launch in February
2014. She is the only self-published author to be invited to the prestigious Jaipur
Literary Festival as a panelist (January 2013).
She’s mother to
a girl and a boy who were respectively six and eleven years-old when they wrote
and illustrated The Mosquito and the Teapot. She lives with her husband and
children in Hyderabad, India, where a lot of her stories are set.
She blogs at
http://rasanaatreya.wordpress.com
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