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| Tell a Thousand Lies
| | Rasana Atreya
| Shortlisted for the 2012 Tibor Jones South Asia prize.
In a culture 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. She is aware that with three girls in the family, there isn't enough dowry to go around. 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. As the sixteen year old helps ready the house for her older sister'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.
Fair skinned and pretty, Lata would rather study medicine. Unable to grasp the depth of Lata's desire, Grandma formalizes a wedding alliance for the girl. Distraught, Lata rebels. She ends up pregnant. The ensuing scandal forces her into marriage.
Lata ends up poor, uneducated and married to a man she cannot abide. Pullamma, meanwhile, is living Lata's dream -- she is rich, powerful, and married to a good man. The only hitch, from Pullamma's point of view, is that she cannot acknowledge her husband in public. And, oh, the fact that superstitious villagers think she is Goddess.
TELL A THOUSAND LIES, is a sometimes wry, sometimes sad, but mostly realistic look at how superstition, and the colour of a girl's skin, rules India's hinterlands.
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