Review | ‘The Grammar of Silence’ by R. Seshasayee is an unapologetic critique of patriarchy

Senior business leader R. Seshasayee’s new novel, The Grammar of Silence , is an account of the lives of Tamil women navigating various systems within society. The women are trapped by these structures but find ways to overcome them through a characteristic, mindful defiance of convention — this is achieved silently, and without fanfare.

The book is a journey through different centuries, anchored by three women whose unique yet, in some ways, similar experiences illuminate the lives of women from different strata of society in the Thanjavur landscape.

There is Dharma, intelligent and accomplished in the arts but trapped by child marriage, abandonment and later, widowhood. She’s an anomaly in her ritual-bound Brahmin household. Even her brother, an acclaimed scholar, knows she is smarter than him, but will never acknowledge the fact.