It was a tense autumn the year Mayura came away from her husband saying she was never ever returning to that uncouth, lustful monster. Everyone in the family was affected by her presence to a greater extent than they had thought likely. A sense of collective guilt emasculated the men even while they lectured her on the moral duty of returning to her wedded husband. A sense of outrage mingled inexplicably with a sense of secret sorrow alienated women from themselves and from each other. No one knew what to make of her or of themselves. And meanwhile, she moved as though nothing, nobody, could touch her. And those who thought they had, retreated, scorched.

Using a deceptively simple and intimate style, Parameswaran explores the subtleties of love, marriage, sex, and family life in a changing Indian environment.

Praise for Uma Parameswaran's Mangoes on the Maple Tree:

"A hymn to the joys and sorrows of family, in the best, most inclusive sense of the word." - Andreas Schroeder

"This is the story of two families that not only dive deep into dangerous waters, but surface photo and live to tell the tale." - Michelle Reale in Rain Taxi Online

"What I found most enjoyable about this novel is that it steers clear of stereotypes about immigrant families . . . There are no daughters being threatened with arranged marriages, no weepy sentimentality about the land left behind." - Nalini Iyer on SAWNET

Uma Parameswaran's profile page

Uma Parameswaran was born in India and now lives in Canada. Her recent publications include award-winning What Was Always Hers (short stories), The Forever Banyan Tree, The Sweet Smell of Mother's Milk-Wet Bodice (novella), Mangoes on the Maple Tree (novel), Sisters at the Well (Poems), and Riding High with Krishna and a Baseball Bat & Other Stories.

Cycle of the Moon - Reviews This delightful novel, set in the Indian city of Madras (now Chennai) in 1965, begins with the return of Mayura, a proud young woman who is intensely disillusioned with her new husband. In deserting him and returning home she has broken all the rules. The question is what will she do next? Will she devote herself to good works like her great-aunt Kamakshi, widowed after a few years of marriage? Will she live the seemingly exotic life of a single woman in the arts, like the friend of another aunt? Or will she give into family pressure and go back to her husband? With Cycle of the Moon, Winnipeg's Uma Parameswaran has added yet another fascinating piece to the rich field of Indo-Canadian literature. If you enjoyed Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey, Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy or Deepa Mehta's film Water, you should read this book. Parameswaran, who moved from India to Winnipeg in the 1960s, is a retired University of Winnipeg English professor. She has published poetry, short fiction and one play. This is her second novel. Mayura's choices, to a western eye, appear very narrow indeed, but they have a familiar ring, even here, even now. And is there any woman (or any man) who hasn't, at some point in a marriage, felt like cutting out? Mayura spends a month at home debating her options. She sees everyone in a new light, including her beloved brother who has just forsaken his sweetheart for an advantageous arranged marriage, and Chander, a cousin returned from grad school in Manitoba. Once an innocent idealist, Chander now exudes a sleazy suggestiveness. Are all men cads, she wonders, or do they simply mature late and wear masks in the meantime? But most of the stories here (the novel is structured as a series of stories evoked by Mayura's presence) belong to women, and most of them are sad tales, full of stoicism and regret. The most moving is the life of Saveri, Mayura's youngest aunt, who married a brilliant scholar. Mayura has always envied her Aunt Saveri. Now she learns the truth. Though all the stories are convincing, it is heavy going at times. But Parmeswaran never lets us wallow in pity or groan at an unlikely monologue for long. Her gentle satire on the elite in post-independence India is one of the highlights. In such a world, having spent a few days in jail during the independence struggle is worth a ministry, and a membership in "the club" is essential. Off go the sons to America (not Britain) for post-graduate work and home they come to be married off, always in August, so they can be back in the United States for the beginning of term. Several set pieces are pitch perfect. The immediate reaction to Mayura's arrival is one of them. From his office, her father shoots off damage-control telegrams to the forsaken husband, while at home her mother presents herself, unperturbed, to visitors who just happen to drop by. Another highlight is the portrayal of Mayura's extended family, headed by her grandfather, a retired judge. They are a privileged and articulate bunch, not as careless of custom and public opinion as the crew in Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, but still an eccentric group. "We are inveterate romantics," claims aunt Kamakshi. "Idealism is a plague in the family." - Winnipeg Free Press

What is it exactly that the terrible Raghu has done? What was so awful that Mayura saw no other option but to leave her husband in the middle of the night, breaking her sacred promise to him and bringing shame to her scandalized family? If these are the questions that will undoubtedly draw the reader into the pages of A Cycle of the Moon, it is not the answer to them that he seeks by the end of A Cycle of the Moon. The scandal is but a pretext for Parameswaran to explore a myriad of social issues such as the question of the emancipation of women in a traditional South Indian context in the 1950's, intergenerational conflict and changing attitudes in a conservative environment, and the fluctuating notion of Indian identity at home and abroad. Most of all, through the protagonist Mayura and several other characters, the author explores the struggle of those individuals who seek to reconcile the crudest aspects of passion and sexuality with their intellectual and aesthetic ideals. Like Mayura's return to Hari Villas, A Cycle of the Moon is anunexpected surprise. The issues it forces us to confront are initially unwelcome but nonetheless crucial for the universe of the tale. Parameswaran's writing style is indeed, as the novel's blurb puts it, "deceptively simple." What seems like a light, meaningless intrigue slowly knits its web around us, and, before we realize it, we are personally involved in Mayura's story - and in that of every other character. Just as minding one's business is not something anybody does at Hari Villas it is impossible for the reader not to be caught up the lives of these characters. The reader alternately becomes part of Mayura's conscience, and an observer of her trajectory. We are both allowed into her deepest secrets and emotions while at the same time feeling shut out of her life, just like the rest of her family who are a group of clueless outsiders. We see the world in Mayura's eyes and yet her conscience rejects us, as she has not yet made peace with it herself. We feel her confusion, resentment and guilt as if it was ours, and yet we are constantly left guessing her intentions and discovering new facts until the very end of the book. Finally, we feel trapped between Mayura's feelings of hostility towards her family and their reciprocal attitude; we are caught in the place where incomprehension is met with a refusal to understand. The theme of moral responsibility is central in A Cycle of the Moon, but there are no easy answers available to help us solve the infinite dilemma the novel presents us with. Does Mayura have a moral responsibility towards her family and husband? Or, if Mayura had sufficient reason to flee Raghu, as everyone suspects in secret, does her family not have a moral responsibility towards her? Guilt is omnipresent in the book, but just who should bear the weight of it is unclear. The reader's role in A Cycle of the Moon stands halfway between that of a powerless witness and that of a judge with complete responsibility, a role echoed by Mayura's grandfather, Judge Ramakrishna Iyer, who notes down and judges his granddaughter's actions in a folder, in a conservative yet philosophical manner. Even the pillar of moral duty and tradition in the house of Hari Villas, the elder, is also uncertain at whose doorstep to place responsibility. If Parameswaran's writing is "deceptively simple", it is also because she writes most beautifully and philosophically but in a simple and clear register. Her style is also multidimensional, as it bears the expression of each of the characters' deepest feelings - from the vulgar and demeaning to the comical and light; from the formal and diplomatic to the cruel and violent. The author does not just write from within herself, she writes from within her characters inner worlds, in a variety of voices that all sound authentic. The poet in Parameswaran also shines through in this novel of guilt and passion. The reader who pays attention to the language as much as to the story will be fully rewarded. Powerful expressions like "orgasm of pain" carry the idea that there are no pure joys in life; that moments of joy are always accompanied by torment and unhappiness. A beautiful yet violent nature speaks to usof the conflict, disappointment, crushed ideals and resentment that make up the entirety of Mayura's wounded soul: "Soon," Parameswaran writes, "the clouds would turn red and orange and yellow, the colors rioting and slashing each other for a brief half hour before withdrawing into grey brooding." In A Cycle of the Moon, nature is powerful, sexually charged, full of tension and ugliness, and yet filled with beauty and serenity, as are the conflicted characters in the novel. The book teaches us that ideals are but mere concepts, and that if life is indeed filled with passion, this passion manifests itself in both appealing and monstrous forms as it clashes with society's rigid codes of conduct. Whereas the ending of the novel represents a drastic shift that may leave more than one reader perplexed and perhaps initially disappointed, others may understand that the outcome of the novel is but the logical conclusion of a story about acceptance through the repression of one's ideals. With the complex issues it presents, the deep reflections it provokes and Parameswaran's simple yet evocative writing style, A Cycle of the Moon is definitely worth reading. This very accessible book reads like a light read, but leaves the reader nonetheless deeply affected, especially once the book is closed and placed back on the shelves because it leaves many questions unanswered. - Maple Tree Literary Supplement

". . . a thoroughly enjoyable read. [ . . . ] Uma Parameswaran takes us deep into the politics of the extended family, tracing its complex interrelationships, intrigues, histories and developments through a period of crisis. [ . . . ] Parameswaran is an historian of a vanishing tribe." - Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, New York University Uma Parameswaran, Fulbright scholar, retired English professor of the University of Winnipeg, has previously published poetry, drama, short stories and the novel, What Was Always Hers, which won the 1999 New Muse Award and the 2000 National Canadian Authors Award for the best collection of short fiction. A Cycle of the Moon is set in Madras in the 1960s in a large family compound of an upper-class Brahmin family. The patriarch of the family is Judge Ramakrishna Iyer, who has built separate houses for his married sons on his two-acre plot of land graced by a grove of coconut trees. Underneath the judge's sharp wit and heavy-handed control of his large family is a man of great generosity, compassion and common sense. Uma Parameswaran has created the daily life of the extended family in great detail, filled with colour, jealousies and conflicts. But the novel offers much more. There is the backstory of the older characters who lived through the Independence struggle, the threat of war from China and Pakistan, all of which give the story a wider canvas. In addition, the writing is awash with Hindu mythology and philosophy. The startling incident with which the novel begins is guaranteed to capture the reader's interest immediately. It is the sudden return of Mayura, a newly married granddaughter, who declares that she has left her husband and will not go back. The family is naturally abuzz with gossip, conjecture and suspicion. Mayura says of her husband that he is "a boor and a sensualist." His crudity, socializing, gambling and jesting about their intimate life to his friends are all sources of disgust to Mayura. She wonders why she, an intellectual from a cultured and highly educated family, was paired with this businessman instead of with someone in law or academia. Mayura's return is the catalyst that forces out into the open the hidden stories of the women and men in the family. Mayura provokes Jaya to reveal to her younger sister her past indiscretion. Mayura is not all vindictiveness and arrogance, however. She sees the change that Canada has wrought in her cousin Chander and knows that he is now sensual and corrupt. She is compassionate towards her brother about his impending marriage, the age-old arranged marriage being the bugbear of the young people of India since time immemorial. Mayura has inherited her grandfather's personality. She does not suffer fools gladly and she returns home, not in humiliation and meekness, but with pride and arrogance. She will confide in no one and though she seeks out only the older women she respects, she barely takes their advice. Great- Aunt Kamakshi and Maya form a startling contrast to each other. The former is the conventional Indian widow, while Maya, moving among the Bombay film crowd, is glamorous and cynical. The encounter with Maya is just the dose of medicine Mayura needs to straighten out her confused ideas. Other characters are unforgettable. Savitri, who though granted a love match with a man of Brahmin caste, but poor, lives to suffer bitterly. Vasudevan, exiled from India during the Independence struggle, is invited back and returns with his daughter, raised in Greece, whose hybrid ancestry and upbringing become a source of conflict for her. Prairie Though the family tree is a bit overwhelming, the novel is, nevertheless, an absorbing read. A Cycle of the Moon is a fine accomplishment - Prairie Fire Review of Books Vol 11 No 4 Nov 4 2011