Padma Viswanathan

Follows the life of a girl married at ten who becomes a widowed mother of two at eighteen.

The Toss of a Lemon

From the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist, a gripping exploration of class, race, friendship, sexuality, what an author owes her subject and what it means to be a good person—all wrapped up in a riveting Canadian true crime story. Padma Viswanathan was staying on a houseboat on Vancouver Island when she struck up a friendship with a warm-hearted, working-class queer man named Phillip. Their lives were so different it seemed unlikely to Padma that their relationship would last after she returned to her usual life. But, that week, Phillip told her a story from his childhood that kept them connected for more than twenty years. Phillip was the son of a severe, abusive man named Harvey, a miner, farmer and communist. After Phillip’s mother left the family, Harvey advertised for a housekeeper-with-benefits. And so Del, the most glamorous and loving of stepmothers, stepped into Phillip's life. Del had hung out with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Mexico City before the Cuban revolution; she was also a convicted bank robber who had violated her parole and was suspected in her ex-husband’s murder. Phillip had long since lost track of Del, but when Padma said she’d like to write about her and about his own young life, he eagerly agreed. Quickly, though, Padma’s research uncovered hidden truths about these larger-than-real-life characters. Watching the effects on Phillip as these secrets, evasions and traumas came to light, she increasingly feared that when it came to the book or the friendship, only one of them would get out of this process alive. In this unforgettable memoir, Padma reflects on the joys and frictions of this strange journey with grace, humour and poetry, including original readings of Hans Christian Andersen fairytales and other stories that beautifully echo her characters’ adventures and her own. Like Every Form of Love is that rare thing: an irresistible literary page-turner that twists and turns, delivering powerful revelations, right to the very end.

A Memoir of Friendship and True Crime

Like Every Form of Love

In 2004, almost 20 years after the fatal bombing of an Air India flight from Vancouver, two suspects - finally - are on trial for the crime. Ashwin Rao, an Indian psychologist trained in Canada, comes back to do a "study of comparative grief, " interviewing people who lost loved one in the attack. What he neglects to mention is that he, too, had family members who died on the plane. Then, to his delight and fear, he becomes embroiled in the lives of one family caught in the undertow of the tragedy, and privy to their secrets.

The Ever After of Ashwin Rao

Villaggio di Cholapatti, India, 1896. Nella camera tutto è pronto per la prima notte di nozze. La piccola Sivakami siede sul letto. Fuori della porta ha lasciato i giochi, i sogni, le fantasie. Ha lo sguardo pieno di paura e sta tremando sotto il sari e i gioielli. Ha solo tredici anni quando sposa Hanumarathnam, guaritore ed esperto di oroscopi. Così hanno deciso i suoi genitori. Da questo momento in poi nessuno si occuperà più di lei, ma sarà lei a prendersi cura degli altri, prima come moglie, sempre attenta a compiacere ogni desiderio del marito, e poi come madre. Ma la forza che Sivakami ha nutrito e scoperto in sé nei primi anni di matrimonio forse non è abbastanza per affrontare la morte di Hanumarathnam. Ora Sivakami è vedova, la condizione peggiore per la casta brahmanica di cui fa parte. Da adesso in poi deve rispettare le rigide regole che il suo stato le impone: tenere i capelli tagliati a zero, indossare il sari bianco, non uscire di casa, non avere alcun rapporto con il sesso maschile e non toccare nessuno dall'alba al tramonto, neanche i suoi figli. Crescerli, farli studiare, offrire loro una vita migliore pare impossibile in questa condizione. In bilico tra i conflitti inconciliabili della tradizione e la modernità che incalza giorno dopo giorno, Sivakami dovrà scegliere. Sarà l'amore incondizionato di madre a spingerla ad agire e a prendere una decisione drastica, che influenzerà il destino di tutti loro in maniera sorprendente e inaspettata.

La sposa bambina

Ashwin Rao is smart, funny, and perceptive, an Indian psychologist who is gifted at turning the fragments of his patients??? lives into stories that help them heal. In 2004, almost twenty years after the fatal bombing of an Air India flight from Vancouver, two suspects ??? finally ??? are on trial for the crime. Ashwin decides to return to Canada, where he was trained, in order to interview the surviving families. A study of comparative grief, he calls it, pretending to keep his professional distance. Soon he is deeply embroiled in the lives of one extended Canadian family, whose members have staggered on in very different ways since the bombing, carrying their heartbreak and fear mostly in silence. Until we blindingly realise that he too has a secret.

From internationally acclaimed New Face of Fiction author Padma Viswanathan, a stunning new work set among families of those who lost loved ones in the 1985 Air India bombing, registering the unexpected reverberations of this tragedy in the lives of its survivors. A book of post-9/11 life, The Ever After demonstrates that violent politics are all-too-often homegrown in North America but ignored at our peril. In 2004, almost 20 years after the fatal bombing of Air India Flight 182 from Vancouver, two suspects are—finally—on trial for the crime. Ashwin Rao, an Indian psychologist trained in North America, comes back to do a “study of comparative grief,” interviewing people who lost loved one in the attack. What he neglects to mention is that he, too, had family members who died on the plane. Then, to his delight and fear, he becomes embroiled in the lives of one family that remains unable to escape the undertow of the tragedy. As Ashwin finds himself less and less capable of providing the objective advice this particular family seeks, his surprising emotional connection to them pushes him to face his own losses. The Ever After imagines the lasting emotional and political consequences of a real-life act of terror, confronting what we might learn to live with and what we can live without.

A Novel

In south India in 1896, ten-year old Sivakami is about to embark on a new life. Hanumarathnam, a village healer with some renown as an astrologer, has approached her parents with a marriage proposal. In keeping with custom, he provides his prospective in-laws with his horoscope. The problem is that his includes a prediction, albeit a weak one, that he will die in his tenth year of marriage. Despite the ominous horoscope, Sivakami’s parents hesitate only briefly, won over by the young man and his family’s reputation as good, upstanding Brahmins. Once married, Sivikami and Hanumarathnam grow to love one another and the bride, now in her teens, settles into a happy life. But the predictions of Hanumarathnam’s horoscope are never far from her new husband’s mind. When their first child is born, as a strategy for accurately determining his child’s astrological charts, Hanumarathnam insists the midwife toss a lemon from the window of the birthing room the moment his child appears. All is well with their first child, a daughter, Thangam, whose birth has a positive influence on her father’s astrological future. But this influence is fleeting: when a son, Vairum, is born, his horoscope confirms that his father will die within three years. Resigned to his fate, Hanumarathnam sets himself to the unpleasant task of readying his household for his imminent death. Knowing the hardships and social restrictions Sivakami will face as a Brahmin widow, he hires and trains a servant boy called Muchami to help Sivakami manage the household and properties until Vairum is of age. When Sivakami is eighteen, Hanumarathnam dies as predicted. Relentless in her adherence to the traditions that define her Brahmin caste, she shaves her head and dons the white sari of the widow. With some reluctance, she moves to her family home to raise her children under the protection of her brothers, but then realizes that they are not acting in the best interests of her children. With her daughter already married to an unreliable husband of her brothers’ choosing, and Vairum’s future also at risk, Sivakami leaves her brothers and returns to her marital home to raise her family. With the freedom to make decisions for her son’s future, Sivakami defies tradition and chooses to give him a secular education. While her choice ensures that Vairum fulfills his promise, it also sets Sivakami on a collision course with him. Vairum, fatherless in childhood, childless as an adult, rejects the caste identity that is his mother’s mainstay, twisting their fates in fascinating and unbearable ways.

Padma Viswanathan

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