Now You See Us - Book Review
Author: Balli Kaur Jaswal
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Price: 366 INR
Pages: 344
Genre: Mystery
Buy At: Amazon
About the Book:
Hidden lives. Buried secrets... It's time
to shine a spotlight on it all.
Corazon, Angel and Donita have all come
to Singapore to work for a living. The thing that unites them? Their labour
must remain unseen.
Then an explosive news story shatters
Singapore's tranquility, and sends a chill down the spine of every domestic
worker. Flordeliza Martinez, a Filipina maid, has been arrested for murdering
her female employer. The three women don't know the accused well, but she could
be any of them; every worker knows stories of women who were scapegoated for
crimes they didn't commit.
Shocked into action, Donita, Corazon and
Angel must gather every ounce of bravery and gumption to piece together the
mystery of what really happened on that fateful day. After all, no one knows
the secrets of Singapore's families like the women who work in their homes...
Review:
The book at the onset reads like
a social commentary, a satire with a comic twist, highlighting the
discriminations faced by the migrant domestic female workers from Philippines at
the hands of the organizations that recruit them and their immediate employers.
Their lives lack the dignity and respect in social settings. They are always
distrusted, branded a thief when anything in the house is misplaced, speculated
about doing black magic, not given proper food or allowances, sometimes even
abused. If they are of ill health, they are accused of trying to shirk work,
take time off, or spreading diseases. Some are blackmailed and threatened and
have to live in fear. The organizations that recruit them puts then in huge
debt, treats them like cheap labour, lends them illegally to factories for manual
labour as it knows no one would dare raise a voice, and if anyone does, it would
rather go unheard.
They are vulnerable to
exploitations in systems that do not protect them. The Ministry does a routine
health check-up i.e once in six months, just to determine whether any of them
is pregnant, which results in their deportation back to Philippines. They have
no rights in this country, where they have moved for better work opportunities,
higher salaries and prospects. Through Cora, Angel, Donita and Flor we see the
injustices they suffer in their day-to-day lives. There’s a mystery at the
core, also it’s a tale of friendship. It’s about the underdogs, the invisible
in the Singaporean high-class society who run the show and are indispensable but
are unacknowledged.
When Flor is accused of murdering
her employer, the police convict her without too much fuss of an investigation,
just because she has no alibi. Cora, Angel and Donita try to carry out their
own little investigation instead to find proof that Flor is innocent. They had
seen enough in life to know that powerful men can get away with murder ‘just
because they sit in boardrooms and live in big houses’. Meanwhile the
Facebook Ma’am Pages, that of the employers, blows up with opinions and prejudices
about how Pinoy women and maids in general cannot be trusted, how they are taking
advantage of the employers’, etc. And in the domestic worker Facebook groups,
women warn each other not to talk about it as their comments too can be
reported. ‘Everybody is better off minding their own business.’ The
media also slowly forgets the incident and brings down reportage of the case.
But slowly and steadily clues appear. Again, nothing’s easy as the police can’t
lose face after pinning the murder on Flordeliza. It’s easier to close the case,
on popular public opinion that thinks Flordeliza Martinez is guilty.
I knew nothing about the extra judicial
killings in Philippines, or the drug wars or the license to kill that the
police had there to shoot any suspect peddling in drugs. As per the
International Criminal Courts (ICC) almost 30k people are dead due to this as
of June, 2021. How messed up is our world!?!
But all is not dreary. We see the
goodness of employers through Ma’am Elizabeth who tries to make Cora a part of
her family. But the harshness of the employers is depicted so well through Mrs.
Fann who leaves no stone unturned to harass Donita. All in all, it’s a good
read, a wholesome package.
About the Author:
Balli Kaur Jaswal is the author of five novels, including Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, which was a Reese Witherspoon's Book Club pick in 2018. Born in Singapore and raised in Japan, Russia and the Philippines, Jaswal studied creative writing in the United States and worked as an English teacher in Australia and Turkey. She has held fellowships at the University of East Anglia and Nanyang Technological University, where she also completed her PhD in South Asian diaspora writing. Jaswal's non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Harper's Bazaar India, Refinery29 and Salon.com, among other publications. www.ballijaswal.com
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