Karimayi

Chandrasekhar Kambar is one of the most accomplished Indian writers working today. In each of Kambars novels, the archetypical Mother, Karimayi, is at the center. The narrative of Karimayi moves through an astounding time span, beginning with the mythopoetic times of Goddess Karimayis birth and continuing through the historical and cultural shifts in the life of a small rural community called Shivapura during the British colonial era. Karimayi breaks the familiar narrative of an idyllic and traditional village community being destroyed by the incursion of modernity. Instead, the multilayered narrative of Karimayi weaves everything into itselfthe story of the villages past, the myth of Karimayi, the disorder that sets in with the invasion of colonial modernity and the lure of the city, and, most importantly, of the disruption of another form of native modernity that the village community has already begun to incorporate into its rhythms of life. Cleverly challenging colonial cartography, Kambars book plays with the idea of an eternal India that exists between myth and reality.