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When the monsoon-darkened sky finally brightens up to illumine its daytime greenery, Kerala senses Onam in the air. There is moisture left from three months of June-August rain, but the tropical stretch bears freshness in its warmth. This turn of season typically adds to the beauty of the sight, sound and smell across the swathe between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats바카라as is evident from the opening a period novel released recently.
Shanti, which seeks to profile 20th-century life in the southern state, begins with a scene about a frolic-filled ritual for kids. 바카라A team of five girls climbed up the mountain-side, picking flowers. It was the month of Chingam and they filled little wicker baskets hanging from their necks with numerous flowers of the season to prepare pookkalam,바카라 notes the first paragraph of the 82-page work in English by Vijayan A.V, a retired professor.
For all the idyllic description, Shanti subsequently strays on to turbulent terrains, throwing light on the evolution of a human mind from childhood innocence that finds extension in youthful free-spiritedness, then hardens in the wake of a personal tragedy and mellows towards the climax. It바카라s, in a way, the journey of an average middle-class Malabar woman and her multi-stage existence straddling pre- and post-Independence era.
The protagonist바카라s story takes a dramatic turn when the mother of three becomes a widow in her prime, a decade after her marriage to a handsome and level-headed man in a village not very far from hers. The tragedy puts temporary brakes on the otherwise smooth life of Shanti, which is the central character바카라s name too. She slips into depression, but manages to recover. If the loss of her husband initially numbs her amid the knowledge that she is pregnant for a fourth time, the lady goes on to devise ways to fight the stalemate that lingers even after the delivery바카라and emerges strong enough to gain a local heroine바카라s status by middle age.
The looks of Kerala during the Onam-time Chingam month comes a second time in the novel, with the teenaged heroine noticing that it was the previous year, while collecting flowers to arrange them in the front yard of the house as a circular carpet, she had met her future spouse. 바카라The paddy had turned a golden hue and I loved going out enjoying the countryside decked out in all sorts of colours바카라바카라
Interestingly, this is from chapter five바카라and it is only the previous chapter that the novel turns into first-person account. And that coincides with the marital life of the protagonist. It delineates a night that can be defined 바카라adventurous바카라 even by contemporary Kerala standards: the newly-wed Shanti joins her husband Anandettan in his expedition to fish in the family temple pond down one corner of their sprawling sylvan compound with the broad Nila river adjacent to it. There is added excitement what with the couple chancing upon two men already busy in the tank바카라and the husband overpowering the thieves and returning with the stolen fish salvaged.
Shanti retains her tomboy spirit, what with running up and down the stairs, thus helping the maids transfer the harvested paddy from the courtyard to the granary, which is an attic on the third floor. It바카라s here that the string of words 바카라possibility of a miscarriage if I overstrained바카라 comes, leading the reader to realise that the woman is pregnant. The author had earlier skirted any hint at physical touch in Shanti바카라s wedding night, saying she 바카라fell in with the room almost immediately바카라 and then, the next morning feeling, 바카라thrilled by the spectacular view바카라 while peeping out through the window at paddy fields spread in all directions in the village near Kuttipuram.
If one mistook this for prudishness on the part of the novelist, Vijayan comes up later with a detailed foray into the woman바카라s changed attitude towards sex. Shanti바카라s gay abandon nature comes in greater clarity when she happens to compare the cultural differences between her own home and the one that has adopted her as a daughter-in-law바카라a perennial subject for most females in Kerala today as well.
It was in a trip to the Himalayas that Anandettan dies in a natural disaster. Shanti turns into a complete recluse, but sooner than later바카라courtesy her mother바카라s support바카라succeeds in breaking the self-built shell around her. Variety marriage proposals follow; there is even a womaniser relative chasing her once. A determined Shanti weathers all the troubles. The chapters narrating this phase of her life are (deliberately) longer than the previous ones.
The book, brought out by Authors Press and breezy as the Onam air, could have avoided a few typos and laxity in punctuations. Yet they don바카라t overall check the pleasure of the 21st-century reader to appreciate someone바카라s moral success in life바카라and a trip down fantasy lane banking on agrarian life, which is integral to Onam.
