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‘A garden of spring': Malayalam writers on breaking free from the West and finding their voice

(Written by Deepak Rajeev) 'I watched people get shot from my window,' said Benyamin, the celebrated Malayalam novelist, recounting the Jasmine Revolution in Bahrain. 'What moved me most was the raw hunger for freedom.' The JCB Prize-winning author of Jasmine Days and the Man Asian Literary Prize longlisted Goat Days was speaking at a panel titled 'Contemporary Malayalam Novels,' held at the Oxford Bookstore in Connaught Place on July 25. Organised by DC Books in collaboration with Red FM, the event brought together three of Kerala's leading literary voices, Benyamin, S Hareesh and E Santhosh Kumar, for a wide-ranging conversation moderated by the writer and critic S Gopalakrishnan. For Benyamin, the uprisings he witnessed first-hand became the catalyst for many of his most well-known novels. 'I was able to write many of these novels only because I had spent almost 25 years in the Gulf,' he said. 'From back home, people often see the Gulf as a place of wealth and luxury, especially when thinking of the Arabs. But when I was in Bahrain, I met social workers, politicians and communists who were against the autocracy. One day, from utter silence, Jasmine Revolution exploded, and these people took to the streets fighting against dictatorship. Through my window I saw the protest and people getting shot. I have the videos on my phone; one day, I intend to release it.' The discussion turned to the long arc of Malayalam fiction, beginning with its colonial-era roots. The form began in 1889 with O Chandu Menon's Indulekha, a novel already bearing signs of British influence. 'Madhavan, a key character in Chandu Menon's masterpiece, was a tennis player, living in the caste-infected society of greenery and paddy fields,' S Hareesh said. Subsequent generations of writers absorbed influences from French Realism, especially in the works of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai and P Kesavadev, while remaining grounded in the lives of Kerala's working class. By the second half of the 20th century, literary figures such as OV Vijayan and M Mukundan introduced currents of Existentialist thought, drawing inspiration from European philosophy and literature. But by the 1980s, Malayalam literature entered yet another phase of stylistic cross-pollination this time with Latin America. 'During the 80s, we went even further into the West, influenced by Latin American authors including Marques, Rulfo and Llosa,' said E Santhosh Kumar. 'But after this, a period came into being when all these authors were questioned and the profound onus of standing on one's own leg fell upon us. It is in this time-frame that Malayalam literature took a different route, striving to find an authentic voice.' He credits writer Sara Joseph for lighting the spark that shifted Malayalam literature away from external influences and toward something unmistakably its own. 'Her novels Aalahayude Penmakkal, which was published when she was 53 years old, and Mattathi, fuelled our literature forward, both in content and narration. Then, a whole new generation of authors started growing beside her into a garden of spring.' That shift has been shaped, in part, by the turbulence of the 21st century. Benyamin cited three cultural transformations that have impacted how writers think and work today: the rise of visual storytelling through new media; the explosion of information on the internet; and the proliferation of memoirs, biographies and autobiographies in the Indian publishing space. He described the present moment as a 'transaction period' one where writers are learning how to find their voices in a rapidly shifting cultural and technological landscape. That process is evident in recent works that blur the line between autobiography and fiction, memory and narrative invention. S Hareesh's Pattunool Puzhu tells the story of Samsa, a 13-year-old boy lost in sorrow and solitude, whose perceptions shaped by a ghostly encounter with a 'dead girl' drift between hallucination and reality. Subash Chandran's Samudrashila follows a woman named Amba caring for her autistic son and senile mother, with the author and people close to him appearing as characters in the narrative. Kumar's Thapomayiyude Achan unfolds as a series of diary entries from a man named Gopal Barua, grappling with guilt, displacement and a life severed from his roots. Benyamin's latest, Mulberry, Tell Me About Your Zorba, in which author Nikos Kazantzakis, his iconic character Zorba, a mulberry tree, and a parrot named Pinki are characters. At the close of the evening, the authors returned to the question of what makes literature 'contemporary.' The answer, they suggested, lies not in when a work is written, but in its emotional and moral resonance. 'Contemporary literature is that which interacts with every generation and age, irrespective of the time period in which it is written,' Benyamin said. 'Whether it is The Iliad or Mahabharata or OV Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak, great literature addresses universal human emotions and struggles, bringing about a change inside the reader like a flash of light moving through a prism.' 'If a work is read even after 20 years since its publication,' the writers agreed, 'if it impacts generations, then it can be considered as contemporary literature.' (Deepak Rajeev is an intern at The Indian Express.)