Book Excerpt: Can't- A Novel by Shinie Antony

Read an exclusive excerpt from Shinie Antony’s latest novel, Can’t (Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2024)

Newly married but he felt no different. The dowry was being transferred to his debtors, to his business; it would pay backdated salaries of all his staff and servants, settle all the lawsuits. The world could eat his shit! He looked sideways at his bride. Eighteen and untouched. He knew all the signs. At a premarital outing when his hand brushed hers, she had jumped out of her skin.

On the wedding night her umpteen blushing cousins swam him through a sea of candles. His bride of—he did a quick count—eight hours sat with her legs tucked under her. There were socks on her feet. Socks! School-girl despite superhuman efforts to present her as a gazelle in gauze—between them, him the adult at thirty-four.

‘What would you like to do?’ Without meaning to his voice oozed none of the syrup it usually did when he approached the opposite sex. Intuitively he knew she must never have the upper hand. This was no roll in the hay; this was lifelong combat.

‘Can you tell me a story? I’m in the mood for one.’

Hands steepled under chin, plaits thick jute jutting off her head. Such smug bridal specialness! He felt the bile rise in him, it always did when he came across people who never had to go hungry or wait in queues for handouts.

He had a choice in that split second; he could fake a jocular uncle aura or he could be a tycoon, someone who owned her, the CEO of her soul. He thought of her father, a cut-throat businessman who had come up the hard way by betraying every partner he did trade with; he thought of her mother, cowering and subdued, laughing when her husband laughed, frowning when her husband frowned. Unnaturally attached to him, as if he was above the almighty. Whom had this girl taken after? He did not make the mistake of looking at her; she may take it as some kind of power over him. As it is, her flawless diction, pedantic literary references and blind faith in the goodness of mankind struck terror in his heart. All that he cooked up—the high status of his late family, the rich heritage of land and a careless prosperity—served her parents right. They should have been more vigilant. So keen had they been to get their only daughter married to him. Him!

Without acknowledging his bride he turned around, lay on the jasmine-strewn bed and slept soundly. The next day, without a word to her, he set out for the city of his work. He would come back for her, he told her father, by and by. With this, he was sure, he had put her in her place. Her and her picture-book family.

Excerpted with permission from the author Shinie Antony and the publishers, Speaking Tiger Books of Can’t – A novel.

About the Author

Shinie Antony is a writer and editor based in Bengaluru. Her novels include The Girl Who Couldn’t Love, The Story of Lilith, When Mira Went Forth and Multiplied, and A Kingdom for his Love. Her short story collections are Barefoot and Pregnant and The Orphanage for Words, and she has also edited the anthologies Boo, Why We Don’t Talk and An Unsuitable Woman. Cofounder of the Bangalore Literature Festival and director of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival, her story A Dog’s Death won the Commonwealth Short Story Asia prize in 2002. Her columns appear in The Times of India, The New Indian Express and CNBC.

About the Book

In an unnamed town lives Nena—surely one of the world’s greatest eccentrics. Water burns her skin, to the extent that she can neither drink it nor bathe in it; she survives on ‘water capsules’ and does her ablutions with a mix of herbs and plants. She speaks several languages and still grieves about the books that were her childhood companions—that her heartless brother had thrown into the river. And she exults in telling stories about her late husband’s affairs—with a laughter that precludes sympathy.

Then, in her seventies, she embarks on a journey to track down all her husband’s lovers. The narrator, a boy of seventeen, whom she calls Tata (though that is not his real name) accompanies her on this mission. By journey’s end, he has learnt the most startling truth about her—what it is that she can’t do—and what it led her to do.

Laced with humour and a raw wisdom about life, Shinie Antony’s lyrical prose turns this strangely compelling story into a believable fantasy.