In a land where skin colour can determine one's destiny, fraternal twins PULLAMMA and LATA are about to embark on a journey that will tear their lives apart.
Dark skinned Pullamma dreams of being a wife. With three girls in her family, the sixteen year old is aware there isn't enough dowry to secure suitable husbands for them all. But a girl can hope. She's well versed in cooking, pickle making, cow washing -- you name it. She's
also obliged her old-fashioned grandmother by not doing well in school.
Fair skinned and pretty, her twin sister Lata would rather study medicine than get married. Unable to grasp the depth of Lata's desire, the twins' Grandmother formalizes a wedding alliance for the girl. Distraught, Lata rebels, with devastating consequences.
As Pullamma helps ready the house for her older sister Malli's bride viewing, she prays for a positive outcome to the event. What happens next is so inconceivable that it will shape Pullamma's future in ways she couldn't have foreseen.
TELL A THOUSAND LIES is a sometimes wry, sometimes sad, but ultimately realistic look at how superstition and the colour of a girl's skin rules India's hinterlands.
Rasana Atreya is the author of Tell A Thousand Lies. This novel was shortlisted for the 2012 Tibor Jones South Asia prize. She is hard at work on her next novel.
In urban India it is very common for girls to acquire college degrees. Not so in rural India. Parents in rural India consider too much education a hardship.
This is because an educated girl requires a groom of comparable, or more, education. And the more educated the groom, the greater his dowry demand.
Book Excerpt
Tell A Thousand Lies
The news of Headmaster garu’s visit spread. The villagers shook their heads over Ammamma’s foolishness. Letting a girl study all the way up to 12th. What was she thinking? What girl ever needed to read more than an occasional letter from her husband? And if that weren’t bad enough, the foolish woman had sent Chinni and me to keep Lata company, and let me write – and pass – the exams, too. At least Chinni’s mother, though a widow herself, had the good sense not to permit any exam-taking nonsense after 7th class.
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