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The Big Girl & Other Stories is a retro-collection of short stories by Alagu Subramaniam.

The stories recount scenes of life in Jaffna in the 1950s.

The Big Girl contains 17 finely-written episodes(including “Professional Mourners”) of humour, surprise, pathos and rare insight into the daily lives of people, with all the historical, religious, cultural and psychological diversity and complexity.

The style of these stories is deceptively simple (although the stories never are). By using simple language and few obvious stylistic devices, every word becomes important.

The book which had disappeared from circulation has now been updated and reprinted in its entirety. These stories evocatively capture the ethos of an era now past and will leave someone nostalgic for a simpler time.

Background
When this book of short stories written by Alagu Subramaniam was first published in 1964, Ceylon had been independent of the British for about 16 years. Then as now, the effect of colonialism was a topic of open discussion.

English writers of the past have often written from the perspective of coloniser rather than colonised. However, Ceylonese born Subramaniam writes from a Sri Lankan viewpoint. In the stories we are shown, not told. Alagu Subramaniam makes each story a small jewel of drama and compassion, revealing in large ways and small.

Solomon’s Justice
One example. “Solomon’s Justice” shows how an imported religious tradition (evangelical Christianity) – here a too literal understanding of a Christian story – can desensitise people to what native traditions themselves preserve.

In this story, the collision of traditions is emphasised by the coroner - who wears both white, ‘the appropriate colour for an Asian funeral’ and black, a ‘necktie, the symbol of European mourning’. The magistrate, presiding over a dispute about who is wife and who ex-wife to their deceased husband and thus entitled to make funeral arrangements, insists that the disputants keep ‘the Queen’s peace’.

But the appropriateness of keeping to standards of European decorum in a Sri Lankan context is immediately questioned – ‘”The Queen’s peace in Buckingham Palace?’” The dispute’s ‘resolution’ is eventually provided by a Mother Superior. Her brutal suggestion: severing the corpse in half, thus solving the problem over the funeral, a ceremony intended as a mark of reverence, love and respect for the deceased.

The Thorn
Other stories show how the displacement of traditional culture can affect so deeply the most vulnerable. “The Thorn” shows the emotional effects on a very young girl (learning English reduces her to tears), and demonstrates the casual emotional blackmail involved (your Mother won’t go to heaven). These effects embed themselves into even the simplest daily act – eating a meal – causing frustration and distress through the inability to eat ‘properly’ with a ‘thorn’ (fork), rather than her fingers.

The Scholar
Several stories examine the conflict between a modernising younger generation and an older tradition. In “The Scholar” Thambirajah is introduced as successful in the new, modern way (having received a scholarship to study in England for three years). Such success ironically makes him an attractive prospect for a traditional arranged marriage, which his parents duly organise for him.

The story turns on this conflict between tradition and modernity, older and younger generations (Tharimbirajah has met another student, Radha, and both want to marry). However in the end the force of tradition wins out (and here force means exactly that, physical force – Radha is beaten into submission). The power of tradition is more destructive still than simply separating two young people – but read the story to discover its ending.

Professional Mourners
Often critical, these stories nevertheless display a light tone throughout and often a wry humour. In the “Professional Mourners”, the tables are abruptly turned at a village funeral when its self-important organiser boasts of his dragging along the low caste professional mourners despite their own mother’s death that morning. Instead of the expected approval, he finds himself met with howls of condemnation.

Released from their obligation, the lower caste women, now suddenly objects of sympathy (perhaps for the first time in their lives), instead elect to stay and begin wailing ever louder. Stung into redoubling his efforts, the deflated Master of Ceremonies only manages to collapse ignominiously beside the corpse as the mourners wail louder still.

Cousin Thampoo
In “Cousin Thampoo” for example, changing the position of a single comma in the story’s final sentence would have entirely changed the story’s significance. The story’s ending as written is the more complex and resonating one, an example of the care, craft and wisdom of writer and stories.

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