How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley

Annotations from "How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder" by Nina McConigley

It was a woman’s fate to stay quiet and hope everything worked out. In all the stories Amma would tell us, the girls never rose up. They accepted their fate, they married. They were dutiful and obeyed.

A good life in spite of. In spite of bad ancestors. In spite of your skin. In spite of colonialism. In spite of capitalism. In spite of nationalism. In spite of the internet. In spite of war. In spite of the patriarchy. In spite of lists of things you want. In spite of a man who came in the dark and did things that he shouldn’t. In spite. In spite. On my one trip to India, Agatha Krishna and I took Amma’s ashes to Kanyakumari. Amma always said it was the place where three waters meet. The Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. A land’s end. It was an auspicious place, a place you could never chop, chop, chop. A place where things flowed together. Kanya Kumari was Lord Krishna’s sister, so this is a place of sisters too. Amma called it Cape Comorin, the British name, a distorted version of Kumari. Some people know only the new name, only the Indian one—they weren’t there for the split. They’ve known only the after. Kanya Kumari was so full of rage at being stood up by Shiva on their wedding day that she destroyed their wedding feast.