#1: The Legends of Khasak, by OV Vijayan
The Legends of Khasak by O V Vijayan (trans. English by the author)
The Legends of Khasak, called Khasakinte Itihaasam in its original Malayalam (pub. 1969) is hands down the most famous modern novel to come out of Kerala. I can't read Malayalam, so finding the book, translated into English (as is much of the rest of his vast oeuvre) by the author himself, was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
I had my doubts. In any language, the problems one comes across with a canonical Grand Old Man Of Letters, the missteps of fabulist narratives and magical realism, and the frustrating importance given to the inner lives of straight able-bodied young men with emo to burn, are common ones. Well, Vijayan is a textbook Man Of Letters, and Khasak is a tale with elements of magical realism whose protagonist is a disaffected young man.
But Khasak, I found, is a moving and transformative experience. The travails of Ravi, the troubled young wanderer who arrives at the tiny village of Khasak in the hill areas of Palakkad, work as a framing device to the life of the novel. The narrative voice is quiet and watchful, turning away from its own preoccupations to thread through Khasak and its stories. Ravi's search for dissolution in this back of beyond, a place remote even from other villages, is not about egoism or isolation. It becomes a creative, spiritual journey, merging with the sustaining spirits of Khasak itself. Through him we learn the history of the village's Hindu and Muslim communities, entwined in a syncretic society in which religious divisions are yawning gaps across which people mix and mingle nonetheless. Through him we achieve the melting clock effect, where time loses its customary meanings and old stories and family ghosts are as alive as the toddy-tapper eating his breakfast and the School Inspector who takes a fatherly interest in Ravi. The world of the children Ravi teaches becomes one window into Khasak; that of their elders, among whom he makes friends and loses them, is another.
I think the book's biggest failure is in its inability to escape the Houri/Angel/Goddess trap that blights the portrayal of women throughout fiction and is especially hard to swallow in sensitive, introspective narratives that expect to be judged as psychologically truthful but never succeed in giving women a life beyond their sexuality or fertility. Khasak at least is a tale told with compassion and empathy for all its characters, and that rescues it partly from its sexism.
Khasak's geography will be recognisable to those who know their Macondo. Palakkad is a border district to Tamil Nadu, fringed by the tail end of the Western Ghats and home to the Silent Valley, and it is this ecosystem of deep forests and blue hills in which Khasak is set - a world that has the power to lock you in as well as lock you out, and not just in book form. It would be interesting to read an updated Khasak today, in which the ecological fragility hinted at in 1969 has become a full-scale concern, and where electricity and telecom have changed the way people connect to each other - or want to connect to each other - forever. Khasak is full of sadness, but it is neither angry, nor bitter. Its humour is sly and insidious, and its characters lovable and compelling. I think the translation itself is almost entirely successful - there is a poetic register to Malayalam writing that is not easily replicable in English without changing corresponding registers of class and sophistication, but Vijayan pulls it off with only a very slight loss of fluidity. I recommend it.
The Legends of Khasak, called Khasakinte Itihaasam in its original Malayalam (pub. 1969) is hands down the most famous modern novel to come out of Kerala. I can't read Malayalam, so finding the book, translated into English (as is much of the rest of his vast oeuvre) by the author himself, was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
I had my doubts. In any language, the problems one comes across with a canonical Grand Old Man Of Letters, the missteps of fabulist narratives and magical realism, and the frustrating importance given to the inner lives of straight able-bodied young men with emo to burn, are common ones. Well, Vijayan is a textbook Man Of Letters, and Khasak is a tale with elements of magical realism whose protagonist is a disaffected young man.
But Khasak, I found, is a moving and transformative experience. The travails of Ravi, the troubled young wanderer who arrives at the tiny village of Khasak in the hill areas of Palakkad, work as a framing device to the life of the novel. The narrative voice is quiet and watchful, turning away from its own preoccupations to thread through Khasak and its stories. Ravi's search for dissolution in this back of beyond, a place remote even from other villages, is not about egoism or isolation. It becomes a creative, spiritual journey, merging with the sustaining spirits of Khasak itself. Through him we learn the history of the village's Hindu and Muslim communities, entwined in a syncretic society in which religious divisions are yawning gaps across which people mix and mingle nonetheless. Through him we achieve the melting clock effect, where time loses its customary meanings and old stories and family ghosts are as alive as the toddy-tapper eating his breakfast and the School Inspector who takes a fatherly interest in Ravi. The world of the children Ravi teaches becomes one window into Khasak; that of their elders, among whom he makes friends and loses them, is another.
I think the book's biggest failure is in its inability to escape the Houri/Angel/Goddess trap that blights the portrayal of women throughout fiction and is especially hard to swallow in sensitive, introspective narratives that expect to be judged as psychologically truthful but never succeed in giving women a life beyond their sexuality or fertility. Khasak at least is a tale told with compassion and empathy for all its characters, and that rescues it partly from its sexism.
Khasak's geography will be recognisable to those who know their Macondo. Palakkad is a border district to Tamil Nadu, fringed by the tail end of the Western Ghats and home to the Silent Valley, and it is this ecosystem of deep forests and blue hills in which Khasak is set - a world that has the power to lock you in as well as lock you out, and not just in book form. It would be interesting to read an updated Khasak today, in which the ecological fragility hinted at in 1969 has become a full-scale concern, and where electricity and telecom have changed the way people connect to each other - or want to connect to each other - forever. Khasak is full of sadness, but it is neither angry, nor bitter. Its humour is sly and insidious, and its characters lovable and compelling. I think the translation itself is almost entirely successful - there is a poetic register to Malayalam writing that is not easily replicable in English without changing corresponding registers of class and sophistication, but Vijayan pulls it off with only a very slight loss of fluidity. I recommend it.