Sunday book pick: Ari Gautier’s ‘The Thinnai’ is a rambunctious novel about Pondicherry’s ‘natives’

“As if in contempt of the calendar, the thinnai has preserved its own mysterious temporality. From its nooks and crannies, dusty memories started to escape.”

The verandah/courtyard/balcony/thinnai is the home’s window to the world. Its grandiosity and openness provide clues to what the family residing inside might be like. Are passersby welcome to stop for a drink of water? Can the men gather to chat about the day’s events? Are women allowed to speak to strangers? Do the residents mingle with their guests? The structure of high-rise buildings that we’re so familiar with does not allow for the luxury of a thinnai, which used to be a coveted addition to the house in cities and villages in a different time.

Kurusukuppam

Ari Gautier’s novel The Thinnai, translated from the French by Blake Smith, brings us to a Pondicherry beyond White Town and Auroville. In fact, in this Pondicherry, the experimental township of the White man is yet to be. Gautier’s Kurusukuppam hamlet in Pondicherry is a sleepy melting pot of confused, assorted identities and ideologies. In addition to the Tamils, there are the white French, the Caribbeans, the Blacks, and the Creole. Here you can find devout Catholics, staunch Marxists, and those who worship and detest Periyar. All…

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