Book Review: The Thinnai

Ari Gautier magically transports readers into the lanes of a working-class district of Pondicherry, curating a potpurri of history and culture.

Pondicherry (or Puducherry as the city is now called) means different things to different visitors. For some of us, the former French colony is an entry point into the Francophone world: a place to appreciate well-maintained colonial architecture, walk through broad and leafy avenues, taste French or Creole food and feel a certain French or Indo-French ambience. For others, the raison d'être of Pondicherry is the Aurobindo Ashram and the not-so-well understood community of Auroville. Those who go to the pleasant Indian union territory never step one foot beyond the tourist areas.

As someone who visited the territory way back in 2004, I have always had a great degree of curiosity about Indians who were subjects of the French. How different were they from those of whose grandparents were born in British India? In The Thinnai, Madagascar-born Ari Gautier, who has lived in India, magically transports into the lanes of a working-class district of Pondicherry, curating a potpurri of history and culture.

What is a Thinnai? They are seating areas that are built into the outer walls of houses, a verandah meant for those who call on the home on a short visit or a place for the owners to get some semi-outdoor space. Thinnais are essential parts of a traditional home in Tamil Nadu and northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Gautier’s story revolves around a visibly French elderly vagabond named Gilbert-Thaata who turns up at the unnamed narrator’s Thinnai on Bastille Day.

Working-class Pondicherry

The narrator’s home is located in the working-class neighbourhood of Kurusukuppam Here’s how the narrator describes the neighbourhood from his childhood memories.

“Kurusukuppam was one of the poor neighbourhoods beyond the city boulevards. A house made of stone would have seemed a palace among the hovels, some of which didn’t even have doors. A piece of old jute cloth protected the privacy of the families who lived there. On rainy and windy days, it writhed back and forth pitiably, letting sodden, miserable sighs escape from within. The interiors of these houses were so small that their inhabitants spent most of their time in the narrow and winding dirt road rather than in their homes.”

The novel is, however, not some kind of poverty porn meant to please a western audience which is comfortable in its stereotypes of India. It, instead, is a humorous take on the impact of colonialism, creolisation, religious conversion and the caste system on the weaker sections of society in the erstwhile French-held Indian territories. It’s impossible to not break into laughter when reading some of the anecdotes of daily life in Kurusukuppam. For example, there is a hilarious passage about the local communist:

“Manickam Annan had fathered a family of Bolsheviks, to whom he gave Soviet names that nobody could pronounce. So the famous Martov became Manthrope, Bulganin became Bolkani, Khrushchev became Guchov, Kosygin became Kushni, and so and so forth, until the last, Molto the Zebra (Molotov), who was a cocktail of cretinism.”

I read this book in translation. The original was written in French, and due credit must be given to historian Blake Smith for an absolutely brilliant job for the translation.

The characters in this novel like Jean-Noël aka Asamandi Baiyacaca Sonal, Three-Balls Six-Faces and Emile Kozhukatti-Head, Pascal Pig-Tail, Edouard the Cripple and Lourdes evoke memories of the key figures in Malayalam novelist O. V. Vijayan’s Legends of Khasak. As is the case with Vijayan’s narrator, one identifies with the storyteller in The Thinnai. There’s a little bit of these narrators in each and every one of us.

Gautier also informs the unaware of the two types of Creole communities in Pondicherry, and how those with French ancestry enjoyed far higher status than those who were descendants of Portuguese and Indians. We also come across the delights of Creole cuisine such as Baffade and Fougade.

After reading this book, I am all the more eager to return to Pondicherry. I know Kurusukuppam won’t be the same place described in this book. Like all Indian cities new, ugly structures have made entire localities unrecognisable from even a decade ago. But who knows? I may just bump into Three-Balls Six-Faces re-enacting an entire Tamil film!

Gautier is a fine storyteller, and The Thinnai, which should be read in the original by those who can understand French, makes for a great entry point into Indian Francophone literature.