The Covenant of Water

The Condition—the moniker that Big Ammachi assigns to the curse under which her husband’s family lives—is the primary motif that runs throughout the book. In nearly every generation, someone dies by drowning. After her beloved JoJo drowns as a child, Big Ammachi makes it her life’s work to find someone who can help her discover the causes—and hopefully a cure—for the Condition. It also comes to symbolize, more generally, the human Condition, the fact that families must confront tragedies and heal the best they can. While the novel is filled with tragic events, it ends in promise, with Mariamma reaching out to her long-lost mother. By then, she has successfully identified the causes of the Condition and managed to save her own lover, Lenin Evermore. There is hope for the future.

By the conclusion of the novel, Mariamma’s perspective on the Condition has shifted: “Mariamma thinks about her own shattered illusions. Should she thank or curse the Condition and Lenin for bringing her here [to her mother]? The Condition takes away, but it also gives gifts that one might not have wanted” (714). In these pronouncements, the phrase has a dual significance—referring both to the family’s singular Condition and to the broader human condition.