THE THING ABOUT MEERA . . .
The back cover of Z P Dala’s “What About Meera” reads an interesting profile about the author: She is a freelance writer with degrees in physiotherapy and psychology. Her writing has been published in a number of publications and her short stories have received several awards. She was runner-up in the 2012 Witness True Stories of KwaZulu-Natal Competition. And she has lived and worked in Dublin, Ireland and currently lives in Durban, where she is a psychologist at a school for autistic children.
Away from her profile, and to her novel lies shades in similarity of personality with the central character, Meera, having worked and lived in Dublin. She now lives in Durban. And as she rightly quotes Albert Camus in her novel, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth”. Perhaps, she has told her own story in her 255 page novel.
In What About Meera, is the story of a 22-year-old protagonist, Meera Narain, born and raised in a dry dusty Indian town of Tongaat in Durban, is forced into early marriage by her family. No thanks to her parents and a Holy Man called India Swami. He had in his sinister ways indoctrinated Meera’s parents and the entirety of Emona community that the girls must be married off before they are eighteen.
“By the time Meera was eighteen years old, she was a married woman. India Swami had cleansed her, and found for her the perfect bridegroom. Rajesh. Perhaps better known as Doctor Rajesh Mahraj. What a catch. The most eligible bachelor in Tongaat, and he was all hers.”
Owing to this unfortunate act, Meera is now exposed to a rich but loveless and inimical Dr Rajesh, who with his vindictive and cruel mother, Anjali, subject Meera to a series of abuse and hate. And her family would careless. ‘You got no breasts, bitch. Flat-chested and ugly,’ he would mutter and run a hand over her exposed hips. ‘This! This is all mine! My property. Mine. To do with as I please.’ If Meera moved or shuffled while he was near her, he slapped her across the face. So Meera learnt her stillness then.’
Following years of turbulence in her marriage, Meera makes a decision that leaves her ostracised from her family and community as she flees her toxic marriage to start a new life in Dublin. There she accepts a position to work as a caregiver at a school for autistic children.
While in the suburbs of Dublin, the emotionally traumatised Meera starts an affair with the father of one of the autistic children and would want more. But the affair with Ian Buckley would lead to nowhere and eventually brings her to a life of lies and attempts to despicable acts fuelled by alcohol and dark memories.
She turns her back at her colleagues as they tried to befriend her. Intriguing and fascinating in her silence, attracted the crowds who thought she was exotic and found it strange that a girl from Africa could also be an Indian girl. She grew tired of explaining in disjointed descriptions a lineage of labourers who had flown the coop of a starving village in India to a life of sweat in South Africa many generations before she was born.
From Dublin, Meera returns to Durban but would not go back home to her family as she stays back to rebuild her life in KwaZulu-Natal. The novel is packed with so much in its theme, setting, character, plot and writing style. Too many issues and too much happenings at once. Hard and challenging experiences by the various characters in the novel. The issue of class, gender and segregation in Meera’s society, the sad world of autism, the issue of Indian caste system in South Africa.
And the issue of skin colour [race] subtly highlighted in the novel, chapter 11. More so the issue of religion. In some ways, the plot appears obscure and places in the novel complex and challenging to follow in some chapters, except for a few short chapters that make up the book like in the opening chapter one “What Happened at Communion” and the “Nepalese” chapter five with the last part of the novel being an epilogue.
Z P Dala’s debut novel, What About Meera is the story of a woman’s attempts to shape her own destiny, and evokes the streets of the Irish capital and the Indian community of Tongaat in rich detail. Published in 2015 by Umuzi, the novel could only make the long-list of authors, out of which emerged the shortlist of three books for the 2015 Etisalat (Africa) Prize for Literature finale which comes up next month.