Dorothy is married to a south Indian surgeon who has been shot in a gang-related murder in Melbourne. She knows nothing about what’s behind this but she feels obliged to travel to her mother-in-law in Chennai to relate what little she does know. This, she dreads doing, not just because this once-Australian, everyone’s ‘auntie’ has always turned a blithe deaf ear to her, but more because the old girl is a scrawn, a whack job, a dizzy, shouting commands and bouncing around doing power-praying in her so-called God’s Kip-out.
Auntie’s alarming behaviour is exasperated by the current domestic help – a girl who has the old shrew’s measure. In God’s Kip-out, surliness and plain dumb disobedience palpably beats screaming fits every time.
If trying to muster up Auntie’s comprehension wasn’t enough, Dorothy is soon reminded of her fury towards Auntie’s other son, Navin, who is a doctor specialising in local fertility clinics and, of course, offering legal terminations to those who would prefer to try again for a son, rather than waste a pregnancy on a girl. As screechingly obtuse as Auntie is, Navin remains stubbornly obtuse to any moral problem with what he does; he has the comfort of the broader picture of his beloved ultra-sound machine’s screen.
Nor does Dorothy bank on the physical manifestations of her husband’s killing coming to literally try to beat Auntie’s door down to get at her. It is as well Inspector Charles Ekanayake is in refuge there with his beloved auntie for his secondment to the Indian CID from Sri Lanka. He doesn’t mind broken legs on the front lawn.
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Bill Reed is a novelist, playwright and short-story writer. He has worked as editor and journalist both in Australia and overseas, and has won national competitions for drama and for long and short fiction. He divides his time between his Australia and his wife’s Sri Lanka.
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