“Puttu”/Anthill by Vinoy Thomas

“Anthill”, the English translation of the Malayalam novel, “Puttu” by Vinoy Thomas , is a very engaging read. I haven’t yet read the original. So there is no way I can say where K.Nandakumar’s translation stands in comparison to “puttu”. But without that reference point, I can certainly say that it was a very smooth read, doing complete justice to the nuances in the story .

The really vast range of characters and their individual stories and how those threads have been woven together around the spindle that is the Reformation House , the residence of Jeremias, the central character, is amazing.

Perumbaadi, a supposedly “imaginary” place, created by the author is very much a man’s world, right from the beginning when the karanavar settles down in the virgin forestland with the daughter he has made pregnant. Not sure, but Vinoy may have drawn a parallel with the city of Sodom in the Bible, which was notorious for not just the sexual licentiousness, but for all kinds of unrestrained vices and cruelty.

The place is situated around the Iritty river, which in real life is a region of hardworking settlers. The author too is from Iritty. One can therefore assume that some of the stories and incidents must have been borrowed and duly modified to prevent accusations of character vilification from some of the individuals who must be still around

Many reviews I read, had stated that the large number of characters in this book reminded the readers of the novel “One hundred years of Solitude” by Marquez. I had read that book long ago. Unfortunately, that is a not a book that has stayed with me and I remember almost nothing about it. The characters in this book, however are likely to hover around in my mental scape for quite some time, although I may forget the names, because they are more real and representative of people around us.

Then again, there surely cannot be such a place like Perumpaad, where almost every character’s predominant nature is his sexual drive .

Yes, morality is not absolute and religious institutions have quite often justified what in today’s world we would see as violation of human rights. An example is the “Doctrine of Discovery” the legal and religious concept put forward by England, which stated that the culture and religion of the European people was superior to all others and hence the annihilation of the indigenous tribes of North America was justified. Even slavery had followed from that initial concept. So, it would seem that morality can be constructed to suit vested interests as well.

One can find any number of examples of the changing definitions of what is to be considered as moral throughout history. Even now, the traditions of tribal societies would be far different from the so called “civilized” world but with more harmony amongst each other and with the natural world around them. In their world “exploitation” of any kind would perhaps be considered as the greatest vice and rightfully so. In their eyes, the world outside would be “immoral”.

I guess the point is that when any community agrees upon certain norms of behavior for everyone, breaking that at the cost of causing harm to someone else, would come to be seen as a wrong. In my mind that can be the only way of personally defining one’s behavior to a certain extent, including our very basic urges to do or not do something depending on our emotional or hormone –driven or other “needy” states. And that is perhaps why the need for something like the Reformation house and someone like Jeremias will always be there, even in a place as lawless as Perumbaadi.

The novel also perhaps hints at the need for a more humane and more practical approach to the transgressions committed. Unlike the legal approach, someone like Jeremias and his father Paul before him, who takes upon the task of mediation, know everything about the two parties concerned and the history that came before the eventual act of transgression . The decision is therefore more fair and equitable.

Local institutions like the khap panchayats in the villages of North India must have had its origins in similar ways. Khap Panchayats are however extremely patriarchal and governed by caste hierarchy and hence do not serve the purpose of justice and fair play in today’s democracy when everyone is supposed to have equal rights. In Perumpaadi , on the other hand, religion or caste plays absolutely no role. Yes, there is a church , but that too is not represented in this book as an institution of impeccable righteousness. Human frailties abound there too.

Perumpaadi ,as I said, is a man’s world , including the tea stall of Prasannettan, which has a poster of Silk Smitha on the wall and lascivious gossip is handed out along with the cups of tea and lapped up with equal gusto. The men who came and settled there, along with the women they dragged along , are those whose baser instincts made them “shed the shackles of family, religion and other restraining institutions” as given in the description of the book on Amazon. They had all run away to this place where no one pried or asked questions because everyone had a similar history.

However, one is just not able to see Perumbaadi as a place to be celebrated , because for every Balettan, there was a Velu and Chandri who suffered from his drunken bouts, for every Loius there was a Sicily who was physically mistreated and who was made to feel grateful only because she was eventually allowed to sleep in the same room and same bed as her husband. For every duck breeder Chacko who had liasons all over the place there was an Appam Mary, one of his wives, and their daughter Preetha, who were led to prostitution for a living. For every Augustine there was Rosily and her children.

Morality, as merely some tenets that provide no logical reasons for abiding by them and the breaking of which does not impinge upon any other life, does not make much sense. But even in the most liberal societies, the importance of fairness cannot be done away with. We should have no objection to Arun chosing to lead his life with his boyfriend according to his sexual orientations. The problem is when he has no qualms about going ahead with his marriage with Neeru and then leaving her to deal with her deprived, lonely life.

Jeremias is the one who is the most humane , understanding and well-intentioned human being in Perumbaadi and yet he is the one who received the worst deal….from the point of view of having to be subsumed with the guilt of having had a physical relationship with his daughter –in-law, Neeru. That is where the definition of “morality” is on shaky ground. What if it was not considered wrong for them to get married? They had great regard for each other, which could easily develop into love. They were both alone and their living together would have affected none.

And then there is the cute tale of the tribal couple and the uncle of the girl,who was dragged to the presence of Jeremias by the panchayat member who couldn’t stand the seemingly sinful state of their interpersonal relationships. The uncle was having a physical relationship with the girl . Neither the husband nor the girl were offended , nor did they allow that to come in the way of their love for each other. It was not a forbidden thing amongst them. The husband did have a problem with the uncle suckling at his wife’s breasts while making love to her, for the only reason that he felt that the mother’s milk was only meant for their child. The uncle had agreed to stop doing so when the issue was raised and none of the three required any further mediation in the matter. All three of them were chuckling as he case was being presented and it makes us smile too.

And Jeremias did not interfere either, in spite of the Panchayat member being scandalized.

Neeru starts working and living in the convent , which too had much going on . Valsa chettathy, a transgender , who does the cooking for the nuns, is called upon on most nights, to ostensibly “pick lice” by turn from the hair of the nuns. She is in fact, an unwilling tool for the satiation of their physical needs, as she later explains to Neeru.

In a scene which reminds the reader of the most touching scene in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” when the daughter Rose of , breastfeeds the dying man, Neeru sleeps with Elsa Chettathy , and their physical act is filled with immense tenderness in total contrast to all the sexual “conquests’ of all the male characters in Perumpaadi.

One felt that in spite of the initial impression that the novel is a call for a less inhibited society, it is definitely more layered. Some of the strong female characters, who manage to hold their own in that male world , would point to that…whether it is Bhawani Daivam, who have the men unloading their angst at her feet , or Katrina Chettathy who envelops her dear ones in her nurturing arms, or Neeru who stands tall and defines her life afresh on her own terms or Appam Mary or her daughter Preetha who refuses to sit and cry about their fate or Ayesha, Shukkur Haji’s first wife who is the epitome of a forgiving nature……… so many, in fact.

The entire tale is steeped in black humour and there is not a boring moment, even as one cringes and feels angry and outraged and sad as the stories unfold. Balls get squeezed between benches and scorched by a hot rod in the blacksmith’s smithy …which is just as well, I thought

Anthill has been published by Penguin Random House

 

“Aathi”/ Gift in Green by Sara Joseph

“Aathi” ,is the immensely haunting verdant living space brought alive by Sarah Joseph in her Malayalam novel of the same name, which has been simultaneously translated to English by Valsan Thampu , with the title “Gift in green”.

And a gift it is, bestowed upon the people there, whose lives are so intricately connected with the moods of the water, the mangroves, the fields created in the water- logged land by building bunds layered alternatively with the slush that they scoop out from the water bed and the lushly growing tall green grasses that they reap from all around.

They have a method to creating those sowing grounds and a tradition to the sowing itself which ensures that the quantity of seed they throw into the raised beds that remain after the salty water has drained out from the escape valve, is enough to feed the birds till they build their nests and lay their eggs and still leave enough of them in the soil that will germinate and grow into a crop.

And after the harvest, the fields become the breeding grounds for the prawns…a cycle of seasons and sustainability.

Aathi is symbolic of the harmony and an acknowledgement of the mutual dependence of Man and Nature.

And a “Tampuraan” takes care of them, they believe, their very own deity who had come floating by to lodge himself there and who had been affectionately and reverently housed in an abode that was as unpretentious as their lives. Tampuran had been happy too amongst them, it had seemed, below the thatched roof of the humble “temple”, undemanding and unassuming , patient and as accepting of whatever was being played out, as “Aathi itself.

And the Tampuran is the first one to be displaced, when Kumaran the prodigal son of Aathi, returns with new promises of abundance and progress which will be overseen by the new God that he anoints after buying the land.

And that was only the beginning of the takeover, motivated by greed and self-interests, under the guise of concern and good intentions.

“Aathi” is a story beautifully woven through many layers, with as many threads and as many hues of the days and nights that constituted life in the waters there and the surrounding land and the swing of seasons that breathed through the dwellings and its inhabitants.

There are story –tellers within this story and lessons that are sourced from those tales that they then string through their collective consciousness in a way that they feel will contribute to the harmony all around.

“Aathi “ is a symbol of a certain kind of yearning for a world that is not driven by greed and cunning and exploitation of man and nature.

It is a story of the underlying human spirit that will hang on as long as it is possible to what is closest to nature and minimal and sustainable.

It is a story of manufactured consent, that we see all around us and which we become part of, when definitions of success and happiness are fed to us with such conviction that the world begins to be too much with us , as Wordsworth had described it.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.”

 

The Winnowing Waves

Hello friends,

Glad to inform you all that the e-book version of my book is now available on Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Google Play and iBook

The print version is available on Notionpress (the Publishers) , Amazon.in, Flipkart and Amazon.com

I will be delighted if you would read the book and give me a feedback.

Believe me when I say that those who have read it have found it quite interesting.

Thank you all.

 

The Winnowing Waves-my first published book

 

This is my first novel and I am pretty excited about it.

Reading has been a passion from as far back as I can remember, which goes back to the time that I had just started putting alphabets together to form words and I would try and make sense of the words I came across on any printed space or signboard on the streets.

As a child it was Enid Blyton who cast the spell and in my late teens,  the Mills and Boon series and authors like Hermina Black  and Barbara Cartland swayed my romantic heart. The community library just next to our house also provided us with a lot of books in my mother-tongue, malayalam.

As an adult, there was no particular genre that I preferred. I HAD to read, that was it.

In the job that I held for twenty five years in a Central Government Ministry , before  I took voluntary retirement , ten years prior to my superannuation date, there was a lot of writing that took place. May be it was my proclivity to write that made me use my  pen for the notings and draft letters submitted to the higher authorities on the files and  made me depend a lot less that one normally would , to dictate them to my stenographer and have them typed out.  But there was no scope for creativity in that milieu of presentation of hard facts and figures.

I was busy even after my retirement in matters that I had involved myself with , which again , had little to do with writing. But I had started a blog and later joined Facebook when i started putting up posts of this and that and pretty much everything that interested me or wanted to share.

It was only after I relocated from Delhi in North India , where I had spent close to thirty five years,  to Bangalore where my daughter was settled , to sign in for the role of doting grandmother,that the seed of an  idea of putting something together in the form of a book , was planted in my mind. I had  in fact straightaway written the first chapter of a novel, which i thought would effortlessly take off, considering that I could call upon my vocabulary without too much effort and because I imagined that there would be plenty of time to spare.

But my grandson became my only area of abiding interest till he started to go to school. By that time , the initial fervour had subsided and i would half-heartedly take up the chapters with huge gaps in between. It was only in the course of the last one year that I approached it with any amount of consistency and then too, by the time I had finished putting together around twenty five chapters, I was gripped by impatience to be done with it.

Thereafter for a few months, I tentatively explored the regular pubishing platforms , but was left feeling dejected, seeing how long and tiring the process would be and that too without any guarantee of success.

So I went the self-publishing way and the book has been available online for the last three months.

To most of my friends here, the background and culture in which the characters are set in will be totally strange. But may be, just may be , it will make for an interesting reading. The society  and places are all familiar to me from close at hand and hopefully, I have been able to add a touch of authenticity to the story. I will be delighted if you get a copy and read it.

It is an attempt to capture the changing patterns in the intra-community and inter community relationships  that one has witnessed from my childhood up to the present time in my homestate, Kerala , a caostal state in the South of India.

In India the book  is available on the Notionpress online store , amazon.in and Flipkart

For those outside India it is available on amazon.com

Here is the link:

https://notionpress.com/read/the-winnowing-waves

 

 

 

 

The Book of the People-A book by Joshua Newton

“It was dark. .A cold wind blew over the hill and the trees swayed and the sleepless cicadas shrilled. By the hillside, through the deep green expanse of the trees and shrubs wild and sprawling , two frail figures ambled on. One tiny and the other frail, both women. One held a small hurricane lamp that allowed an orange gleam just enough for them to walk about. Two women in a pale orange light in the pre-dawn stillness. The path was wet from the night’s dew. Their footsteps seemed to intrude into the silent night that awaited a quiet dawn. The flame in the glass chimney flickered on, shedding barely enough light for the two to take tiny, careful steps. They had to do this before the dawn, before the sun came. The dictum said so. The older one was looking for herbs. ”

This lyrical passage introduces the reader to Biji Rajan, the masseuse , one of the ten people whose lives we become familiar with after reading Joshua Newton’s ,”The Book of the People”.
This passage is an example of the empathy with which the author has approached the small and big details , the twists and turns , the prose and poetry of the lives he unfolds for us.

They are not celebrities whose achievements would clamour out for their lives being recorded to inspire others to walk their way. There is no real drama..nothing that would make the book a nail-biting read and yet the way the extroadinariness of those ten ordinary lives is so surely , but subtly spelt out that they keep bothering you after you’ve put down the book.

Admittedly, some stories leave more of an impression than others. But yes, admittedly again, which of the ten stories gets under your skin may be different for different readers.

I think I was touched most by Biji, who healed innumerable people who approached her, with the love and empathy in her palms. May be the way she was introduced pre-dispositioned me into liking her. The little girl who grew up imbibing all the native wisdom and ethics of healing from her grandmother. Biji who emphasised that “most importantly we needed to love. If our hearts lacked love, nothing would work”.

Manu, who could never tire of elaborating on the “virtues of the wilderness”, and the intricacies of the lives of butterflies and who according to the author “had sprouted into a spirit that imbibed elements naturally belonging to a butterfly-lightness,swiftness,harmony, agility, silence and a love for the woods” , does not fail to impress either. What a charmed life, away from the hustle and bustle of the rat-race.

Koyamon, the native of one of the islands in the Lakshwadeep cluster ,whose life went through its crests and troughs, even as the waves in the surrounding ocean, went through the same routine endlessly and Peter Tomy, whose sense of right and wrong had been submerged way below the surface of his erratic and unruly youth and whose redemption came through an act of forgiveness of his mother-in-law , whom he had attempted to kill also stuck with me. So did Ravuthar, who trudged miles and miles into the forest to gather grass to thatch roofs, something that he had been doing all his life and which he continued to do with the utmost grace and submission to God’s designs.

Then there is Anand, the naturalist, who had eventually found serenity and harmony amongst the trees and plants of “spice Village” in Thekkady, where he lived and breathed in the luxriousness of Nature allowed to thrive with the very minimum of intervention . The boatmen whom one may accost on a vacation trip along the backwaters of Kerala and would as quickly forget once out of those environs, wouldn’t ordinarily invite a second look into their lives. Not anymore perhaps,,not after coming to know Radhakrishan , who had perhaps spent the major part of his life chugging along the vastness of those waters .Time had in the meanwhile changed the teenaged boy who accompanied his father on his cargo boat to a grey-haired man.

The author has obviously spent a lot of time getting to know these “ordinary” people. At places, one felt, the inclusion of all the tiny details became a deterrant to the smoothness of the narrative. But then again, those details were necessary, I guess to bring out the extroadinariness in their existences which would otherwise escape our notice, swamped as it were with the monotony of their everyday routines. One thing that they all shared in common was perhaps the peace with which they had accepted the place where they had found themselves eventually in life. There is immense wisdom perhaps in the realization that no life is ordinary .

Many times, one did feel that the narrative was by someone who was unfamiliar with the Kerala landscape and were witnessing things for the first time…but then the author has explained why that is so in his Note at the beginning of the book, “ This is what I belive:Our daily lives do hold moments of poetry. I’m not sure which part has won in this book though- the poetry or the rawness. Everything narrated is factual or based on facts. Persoanl life-stories are woven through their day jobs. Obviously, I stand the risk of being called a “faux naïf” examiner , somebody examining his own people as a foreigner and getting away with it. That’s okay. My interest was in drawing material from my own people to create something non-local, a kind of work that will resonate with readers anywhere.”

Notwithstanding that anticipatory bail, I would’ve personally vouched for the poetry winning if it had not been for the sometimes lengthy detailing, such as the one on vermiculture in Anand’s story , which almost seemed to come as an interruption. I think the story of Suresh the “kalaripayattu practioner failed to hold my attention for the same reason.

candy crash

 

Vanity Bagh- A book by Anees Salim

” In black humor, topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo, specifically those related to death, are treated in an unusually humorous or satirical manner while retaining their seriousness; the intent of black comedy, therefore, is often for the audience to experience both laughter and discomfort, sometimes simultaneously. ”

So goes the description of black humour in the Wikipedia. If a literature student wanted to lay hands on a book in this genre, contextual to our times, Vanity Bagh” by Anees Salim would be a most appropriate one .

Six muslim youth, aspiring to attain the hieghts of notoriety of the local don, Abu Hathim, form an allegiance and wait for their moments of specious glory, meeting daily on the stairway of the mosque in their mohallah, Vanity Bagh, of which Bushra Jabbari, the mother of the narrator of this story had said,”The moment the rikshaw stopped, your abba had said, This is Vanity bagh, where we will build our home and make it heaven-like”. She would later speak of the row of dusty green colonaded structures with balconies made of wood and railings of wrought iron, “In my memory these buildings haven’t changed a bit in thirty years”.

Bushra Jabbari and her husband, the Imam of the local mosque , would never have foreseen that their son, Imraan Jabbari, would be incacerated for fourteen years , having been judged guilty of having triggered off the deaths in the 11/11 scooter bomb blasts. Neither had Imraan Jabbari and his five other friends expected the twists in the tales of their macho manhood that they were scripting for themselves. Yes , they had names of famous Pakistani personalities …Imran, Zia, Zulfikar, Jinnah, Yahya and Nawaz Sharif. Yes, their Mohallah had earned the nickname “little Pakistan” after a riot had broken out outside the hair-dressing salon of Sharif Khan, when he and some others had started to celebrate Pakistan’s victory in the world cup by bursting crackers. But all that these youngsters had wanted, was to do what Abu Hathim had done when he was their age,”guarding their mohallah, being saluted by the mohallah-wallahs, collecting haftah, being salaamed by the mohalla-wallahs, making a fortune, being salaamed by the mohallah-wallahs , beating up the mohalla-wallahs , being salaamed still more by them ” and so on. Jihad was not on their minds.

It is indeed a feat to handle a subject ,so sensitive in these times, in a way that even the grimmest of situations is presented thus, that makes you smile.The narrative is interspersed with quotes from members of the mohallah and from the English films that the youngsters watched, mostly on the VCD, after Nawaz Sharif’s Abba pulled down the shutters of the salon for the day, which chips away at the darkness of the situation and lends a lightness , even as it evokes discomfiture in the reader.

And then there is Shair Shoukath , who deliciously steals lines from others and makes it his own , with a flourish , much to the grief of Professor Suleiman Ilahi and Rustom Sahib, the other members of the local Poetry club..

“Cowards die many times before their death. The valiant never taste of death, but once”-Shair Shoukath
“Now you are stealing from Shakespeare.That’s improvement.”-Professor Suleiman
“That’s Shakespeare? Sure? I thought Majrooh Sultanpuri wrote that” -RustomSahib.

I had watched the film “Shahid” , last night , produced by Anurag Kahsyap and directed by Hansal Mehta. It is based on the real life story of Shahid Azmi, who had enrolled himself in a jihadi training camp after witnessing a riot in which many of his community had been butchered and burnt alive , but had fled from there , unable to assimilate the violence the jihadis professed and practiced. He was imprisoned for his suspected terrorist links and spent many years inside. He picks up his life however, goes on to become a lawyer and decides to take up cases of innocents who are jailed on the flimsiest of reasons under the TADA. Shahid himself was murdered. In the short time that he had practised as an activist lawyer, he had acquired eleven acquittals.

The film had many undertones as does this novel, both pointing to a situation that has loads to despair about. But while the film never for a moment lets go of the seriousness of its tone, albeit very well executed, ” Vanity Bagh ” grips your attention with a kind of seeming flippancy which in fact adds to its poignancy.

The figure that remains starkly etched in my mind is that of the Imam , Imran Jabbaris’ father.

“The only time he wanted to be a human bomb was when Ammi came back from Haja stores on the eve of Eid with too many shopping bags and a Chiese umbrella. He frowned at the bags and announced it was time he took Khomeini sahib’s fatwa seriously and blew himself up when Rushdie was around so that Ammi and the rest of us could wallow in the same degree of luxury Mr. Mir sahib’s wife and children were spoilt with “, narrates Imran Jabbari.

He, who rendered the azan in his own inimitable style “that made the mohallwalahs wonder whether to laugh or complain to the Muslim Welfare Board” , had later on started to dread it. ” He dreaded the azan, something he used to love so dearly and with his own sense of rhythm that Wasim and I used to blush when the muezzin’s call drifted across the mohallah. He now feared his voice would be met with boos from the street. He had five three minute ordeals to live through everyday”.

That kind of summed up the tragedy of religion gone awry, of ghettoisation, of politics that fanned hatred , of our loss of empathy and inclusiveness , of the mistrust on both sides, of the resultant belligerance.

It is not a story of hope, Anees Salim had warned us. It isn’t .