Revisiting the Literature in my own mother-tongue Malayalam

When I was a teenager, I was kind of an amphibian voraciously reading (but not always retaining the details) of good books in English as well as Malayalam, my mother-tongue. I could even read in my national language Hindi though nowadays I find it hard to decipher even the alphabets (which I have tried by reading the film news in Navbharat Times).

Regarding Malayalam classics, my tastes more or less revolved around these major writers in Malayalam- Madhavikutty, T. Padmanabhan, MT Vasudevan Nair and Vaikkom Muhammed Basheer. These were the writers whom I loved to read again and again. My mother always brought new books by these writers to replenish my reading list from her office library.

We were a curious mother-daughter duo for in most serious aspects of life and we have always differed from other in principles or just for the difference of it; but regarding books, she is the one who has guided my reading tastes in Malayalam literature. Now, she has turned religious and reads only the Bible and prayer-books but there used to be a time when I could listen spell-bound to the stories that she recounted from the books she has read.

Well, back to my love of Malayalam literature. Though I have read only a few Malayalam books these ten years since I became an English literature student- a few like Khasakinte Ithihasam, Short stories of Madhavikutty, Jeevithanizhalpadukal and Balyakalasakhi by Vaikkom Muhammed Basheer and MT Vasudevan Nair's Randamoozham- the fact that recently I was teaching in a place where Malayalam literature was taught for MA as well brought to light that love of good literature written in Malayalam.

What followed was a gobbling up of Complete works of Madhavikutty now followed by Complete Works of Vaikkom Muhammed Basheer as well as a few works of MT Vasudevan Nair. Greatly amazed by Basheer and well as by MT, I feel like a curious child who is still in the process of joining together a jigsaw puzzle.That means that you, my dear readers will soon be bombarded with reviews and stories of the books I have encountered in Malayalam literature soon! 

Shashi Deshpande

Self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real you never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces. SHASHI DESHPANDE

It's unfortunate that I got introduced to the works of Shashi Deshpande through her novel, The Dark Holds No Terrors. It was part of my BA Syllabus and somehow I disliked this classic of Indian feminism that openly attacked the patriarchal values of repressing women.

Now almost a decade later, I read her novels Moving On and Roots and Shadows. To my own amazement, the books were well-written and very readable though her books follow a particular structure and form just like all the thrillers of Dan Brown are made of the same mould.

Somehow I felt betrayed as a literary student when I realised that what I studied as a student was one of her earlier works written in 1980, while Roots and Shadows belonged to 1983 and Moving On was published in 2004.

Though so late, I have become a fan of her writing and is happy to find that can keep the suspense of the story intact till the end while writing in a simple yet precise style.Written mostly in the stream-of-consciousness technique, the novels reveal the inner lives of women who try to liberate themselves from the shackles of family and society.

An open mind

Window

I Love You

I am a wanderer.

Lusty for life
Often aimless
Vistas numerous
Endless journeys.

You are my dream.
Only destination
Unless you disagree.

Imperceptible

Today, imperceptible is the word that comes to my mind when I think about the few days that we spent together. For the last few months, since our first introduction on that narrow staircase by a common friend, our world was bound together by successes and failures of an opposite kind. 

Our failures and successes made a grand total; for it was strange how you won where I failed and I won where you failed. No two people could be so different in their attitudes to life; a pair of opposites in every single detail. Yet yesterday when you walked out of that door, I felt that the world has changed for me. 

The world that we built up with our daily chatter, quiet confidences and silly laughter exists in memory and there’s no way I can shed tears on my fondness; for that will make it too different from what I have known. Yet the whole credit goes to you, my dear friend, in making the world alive, all these unforgettable months.

Solace

In a different life made of walls and despair, you were my way of stepping into the future.Often I walked out of the walls and despair by travelling into time and dreaming of the future. 

You were a  pair of little feet walking beside me always giving me comfort . It was from your eyes that I learnt the magic of innocence and unconditional love. Still you cling to my hand as we walk together in the street, though you are grown up and hate to be called "baby".

You do not know much each and every word of yours mean to me. More than anything, all the silly rambling talks that we share- on the metaphysics of nothingness- have meaning than all the conversations on making a living or following dreams.

From the first time, I saw you and held your tiny form in my hands, you have remained with me as a treasure, a whiff of home and childhood that makes my heart flutter and wants to tease you forever with all those silly recountings of your countless mischiefs.

Sanctuary

Once we sat under the shadow of the red rock;
When we were wanderers across the fields
That night, we weaved dreams out of light,
Broke boundaries and wrote a life together.

We rode out together into the dark night,
Counting the stars and then stopping only
For brief respite and then starting again;
You singing with your shining eyes on me.

We dived into those cool soothing waters,
We slept under the canopy of those trees;
We quenched the thirst of these long years
With our hearts full and souls replenished.

When I woke up, scared of what I will see,
You were lying next to me smiling at me.

Gershom

You lie awake in your scanty room waiting for morning to take away the blues in a city full of strangers. I'm a stranger in a strange land, your heart whispers every now and then. Your thoughts are full of frail arms somehow hold the key to your destiny. Morning and night, you await her voice that tells you that there are worlds in time, just beyond an unopened door.

A sweet tiny face gives music to your solitude and makes you want to run forward in time by a few years. You listen to your friends tell you what to do everyday; for every one of them has a love-story that they tell you with happiness and one that they never talk about. The unspoken one are full of silences and lessons that you can learn from.

For even your heartbeats know that only she can make a difference to your life; like the way she has and you know that she's the soul-mate you'd dreamt about. You wait for the dawn in the hope that this is the day that she will love with the same passion and energy that exists in your heart.

Only another listener, I hope that the dawn of love is nearby when you can tell all your longings and dreams without fear. A few shifts in time and we will all cheer you on the day of bliss, when dressed in red and bedecked in jewels, she will stand next to you smiling, when you will realise how this dream has turned out to be true.

Roots and wings

Open heart

Dreams in Prussian Blue

Dreams in Prussian Blue (2010) by Paritosh Uttam captures the life of some Fine Arts students in Mumbai. It was recently in the news because Shyam Prasad’s new movie Artist is based on it.

Naina Trivedi, a fresher at Fine Arts College meets Michael Agnelo and his friends Abhinav and Ruchi. Michael’s passion for painting and his charisma sweep her off her feet and she realizes that she has fallen in love with him. To the dismay of her conservative Brahmin family, she leaves home to have a live-in relationship with Michael. The initial plan is that she will write and he will paint. But when they start living together, the responsibility of running the household falls on Naina as Michael does only what he is promised to do- to paint and nothing else.

Caught up in a situation from which there is no turning back, she creates a website for his paintings and calls prospective buyers and art galleries. Michael refuses to turn up for one such meeting with the owner of an art gallery and Naina calls and threatens him with a break-up. Unfortunately, Nicheal meets with an accident on the way and loses his eyesight. It is Abhinav who helps her with the bills and with Michael.

Abhinav and Ruchi live the middle class dream of a secure job, a posh apartment, plans for starting a family and having a car. Naina is distraught that Michael who used to be the best of all has come to nothing while the others are thriving. Inspite of his blindness, Michael continues to paint and she has to work hard to pay the rent and buy new canvases and paints. Abhinav advises her to give Michael used canvases and gives her a box of Prussian Blue that was there at his house.

Michael finishes 24 pictures that depict the history of painting and his exhibition draws people because of the publicity that is given to his blindness. However, Abhinav’s deceit does not stop with the Prussian Blue and Naina is caught up in a fix because of her love for Michael and gratitude for Abhinav. Will she be able to fix her strained relationship with Michael?

Yann Martel: The Apostle of the Other

If you are an Israeli, you should imagine yourself a Palestinian. Then you will understand why the Palestinians are angry. If you’re a Palestinian, you should make the effort of imagining yourself an Israeli, and then you will understand why the Israelis are afraid. If you’re a man and you become a woman, you understand. If you’re white and you imagine yourself black, etc. 

Yann Martel can rightly be called the Apostle of the Other because through his writing he has tried to explore the Other. He says that “in meeting the other that you start to understand, first, that you are different, and then how you are different”. His fiction has always been an attempt to travel through the strange consciousness of the Other with the aims to understand and to empathise.

Born in Salamanca in Spain in 1963 as the son of Canadian diplomats, Martel spent his childhood in Costa Rica, Spain, Mexico and Canada. After graduating in philosophy, he worked as a tree planter, dishwasher and security guard till he took up writing as a full time career. Now he has settled in Montreal with his partner Alice Kuipers and son Theo.

For Martel, storytelling is a way in which the human experience of living in this world is communicated to one’s fellow beings through the unique human tool of language. Without sharing of experiences, a human has no identity; without love, there can never be stories. As Martel says in the Big Think Interview, “the saddest thing in human terms, is to have a human being who has no stories” as “the human who has no stories is someone who has not been loved and has not been able to love”.

His fiction focuses a great deal upon the people who are robbed of their basic dignity. However, he extends his concern to animals as well because he denies the anthropocentric view of Western religion and culture. He points that the Other is important in defining what is normal and also for locating one’s own identity in the world.

His first book was collection of short stories Seven Stories in 1993 but though it was not a grand success, one of the stories was awarded the Journey Prize. Later this book was edited and republished as The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios and Other Stories (1993). There are four stories in this collection namely “Manners of Dying”, “The Mirror Machine”, “The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American composer John Morton” and “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”. They are strange stories that deal with the modern experience of life in the midst of illness, death and grief.

Self (1996) was Martel’s first novel and it had for its protagonist a nameless boy who wakes up one morning to find that he has become a woman. However, the protagonist is still attracted to women and is confused by the shift in gender. However, after remaining a woman for seven years, the protagonist turns back into a woman when raped by a neighbor. Martel sympathises with women who undergo a very personal holocausts called rape, which robs them of their basic human dignity. However, Martel explores the gendered Other and also the question of whether the mind has any gender.

Life of Pi (2001) that fetched him the coveted Booker Prize in 2002 is a fantastical tale of Piscine Molitor Patel, a sixteen year old Indian boy who travels with his family to Canada by sea and is shipwrecked in the Pacific along with a spotted hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, a female orangutan and a 450lb Royal Bengal Tiger. There are also two versions of the same story of cannibalism, one with animals and one without them. The animal version is a fantastic one; but the real version is grim and terrible. However, Martel used animals as characters solely for artistic purposes but then began to get interested in animals for their own sake and also for the wonder that they provide.

We Ate the Children Last (2004) is a collection of short stories that deal with medical breakthroughs and their consequences. The environmental Other is considered in this work as human experiments such as an animal to human transplant operation can wreck the environment in unforeseen ways. The stories are dark glimpses into the advances in science and technology juxtaposed against the need for protecting the environment. He advocates prudence in animal-human experiments as the products of these could be more devastating to the world at large.

Beatrice and Virgil published (2010) is a postmodernist novel in which the writer Henry L’Hote meets a taxidermist named Henry, who gives him a manuscript of a play featuring Beatrice, a donkey and Virgil, a howler monkey living on a large shirt in the shape of country. The shirt on which they live is affected by what they call the Horrors. As they travel around the shirt, Beatrice and Virgil tell each other little stories and folk tales, share experiences of food and try to find the right words, expressions and signs to represent the Horrors. The novel is an allegory that works at a primary level to mean the Holocaust and at a deeper level to mean cruelty to animals. Martel condemns both genocide and the killing of animals as both violate the right to live.

Martel’s attempts at being an Apostle of the Other was not limited to his fiction. He was also involved in a book project What is Stephen Harper Reading? from 2007 to 2011, in which he sent the Prime Minister of Canada one book every two weeks with his letters, book selections and responses received to a website devoted to the project. He made his intentions clear when he said in the Big Think Interview that “to lead you must read, because that nourishes your vision”. Though the Canadian Prime Minister did not respond in any way to Martel’s project, consolation and encouragement came in an unexpected manner when the American President Barack Obama sent Martel a handwritten note describing how Life of Pi has greatly influenced his life.

A tryst with Food: Salt n Pepper Movie Review

The story of romance of the not-so-young, the delicacies that come in one scene after the other ( young viewers, I am not talking about Asif Ali or Mythili) and the unusual songs (I mean AanaKallan), Salt and Pepper , directed by Aashiq Abu is a trendsetter. It combines culinary adventure and realistic depiction of  a love affair that happens  from a misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding is the shortest cut between two hearts, Kahlil Gibran has said . Maya and Kalidasan are unmarried, passionate about food and lead quiet lives. Until a misdirected call connects Maya and Kalidasan and they start talking to each other about their lives and their passion for food.

As the conversations progress, they decide to meet. But both of them are in their late 30s and not so happy about their appearance and decide to send in their young friends. As both of them do the same thing, this twist adds to the comic element resulting in an affair with Manu and Meenakshi, the young friends who come disguised as Maya and Kalidasan.

The songs are amazing especially “Kanamullal” and “Premikumbol”. The most interesting part of the movie, however is how the two foodies share a recipe for baking a multi-layered cake known as Joan’s Rainbow, which was cake made by a loving wife who waited patiently for her husband to come back from WW II. As he was delayed by the four days, she made three layers of strawberry, pistachio and orange flavours and melted the chocolates he brought and poured it on the top. This is the rainbow of love that they had created and which they infuse into the two lovers who create the rainbow magic individually.

The stunning Swetha Menon and the realistic Lal have acted superbly. One unforgettable moment of the movie is when Kalidasan goes for a pennukanal and brings home a cook, played by Babu who has managed to break out of his  villain stereotype.

A tryst with food, Salt and Pepper has a feel good effect about it! Hope, for the sake of my friend Swapna from Hyderabad, who loves Kerala food and can’t understand Malayalam, the movie gets remade in Hindi soon so that she can tell me, “Yeah Suni, stop raving about that movie. I have seen it too!”

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

My sole thought while reading the climax of By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept was whether this would turn out to be a happy ending love-story or not. I was so anxious (I don't think I have even bothered that much about my own lovestory) that the words nail-biting or on the edge of my seat would have described me perfectly.

Like most of Paulo Coelho's novels, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept is also about spiritual self-discovery and forgiveness, mostly about forgiving the self for the decisions it has taken, for the mistakes that it has made and the people it has hurt during this process.

But like most Coelho novels, it has too many connecting threads of thought, about individualism, life, destiny, decision-making, love and the concept of soulmate.The female character Pilar is 29 years old and Catholic. She has been through many experiences in the past and is reunited with a nameless childhood friend who has special spiritual powers.

Her search is to find true happiness and in the process understands that she longs to be with her childhood friend who is a spritual guide. He helps her discover who she is and to accept her needs as a person.

They find that they have fallen in love with each other and though they can bear separation,  they have to live together in order to understand the true nature of happiness. It is when the last page is finished and the characters decide to tie the knot that I, the poor anxious reader (whose lovestory had a botched ending anyways)  is relieved and happy! :-)

A child

The present

Water

Desire

Mindfulness