Novels in Translation from Each of India’s 28 States - KERALA - The Legends of Khasak by O.V. Vijayan
The fourth in my series — this time, it’s magical Malayalam - The Legends of Khasak by O.V. Vijayan
The Legends of Khasak by O.V. Vijayan
STATE: Kerala
Original Language: Malayalam
Title: Khasakkinte Itihasam
First published in 1969 in Malayalam.
Publisher in English — Penguin Random House
I’m so grateful that I began this series because it has brought me into contact with this book. “The Legends of Khasak” has instantly become part of my own personal canon. It rose at times to the heights that I had previously experienced with books that I consider great books, books like Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved.’
I had to set this book down at times to luxuriate in the beauty and mystery of what I was reading. How could so much be contained in words alone!
The Legends of Khasak is good, solid, good, and, then somewhere about two-thirds of the way through, it goes up a level — it enters a realm where every sentence is pure poetry but also trembling beauty and still yet, an investigation of what it is to be human.
That this book has flown under my radar is proof of personal failure; this is not an obscure novel. It’s credited with revitalizing Malayalam literature. And yet, I’d never heard of it.
Why am I so surprised that this book is this good? There are biases, conscious and unconscious, at play here.
It’s in a regional language; how could it possibly be universal like something like Beloved or Midnight’s Children.
I’ve never heard of it and aren’t I reasonably well-educated?
I hadn’t heard of the author either. Then he can’t possibly be as good as Borges or Chekhov, can he?
Nobody, no hipster, no classicist, had ever mentioned this book to me.
(So a massive thank you to Sid K (the one, the only) and an unnamed erudite, for this recommendation.
Because here it was all along! A book every bit as great as any work man or woman has ever produced.
Let me furnish you with the premise and the form.
Premise: A well-educated young man seeks out a position far below his station and becomes a village schoolmaster in a rural backwater of central Kerala. Through him, we come to know the life of this superstition-riddled village, and its many characters - women, children, the mullahs, the priests, the gossips, the drunkards —- through a web of inter-connected stories. You can call it ‘magical realism’ but that word reduces it; tonally, it’s both lyrical and matter-of-fact, humorous; it’s tragedy, comedy, and the whole spectrum of human experience.
The book was written originally, by O.V. Vijayan, based on his having spent a year in a village where his sister was a state-appointed “barefoot teacher” — a barefoot teacher was a well-educated young person who was sent to be the single teacher for a school in a rural village; Kerala has the best literacy rate in India (over 93%); it’s something that the residents are, rightly, fiercely proud of. And, one suspects, it’s state programs like these that led to that extraordinary statistic. Also, traveling in Kerala, one always notices how many students there are of both genders. Girls are strongly encouraged to stay in school. Say what you want about the Communists in that state, but their emphasis on women’s education is a unilateral good.
Incidentally, last year, I read a book by Can Xue, a famous Chinese contemporary author, entitled ‘Barefoot Doctor’ and it, too, was a novel of interconnected stories that told the story of one village, its myths and legends, as seen through a practitioner of Chinese medicine. It was a good book but it didn’t approach the realms that The Legends of Khasak occupies.
The English translation I read was translated by O.V. Vijayan himself, the author, and he’s done a magnificent job. The book in English is dripping joy. How must it be in Malayalam? I wish I knew. I think I will do an interview series to accompany this series; I must hear from people who have read these books in their original language.
Without giving spoilers, I will share some values that I thought elevated this book:
Communal Life — Look, so many books about India, try to capture its religious syncretism as well as its interplay of social strata, castes, the ways categories bend and extend. I used to think that Rushdie, specifically Midnight’s Children, Shalimar the Clown, and The Moor’s Last Sigh were the best exponents of this. However, I think The Legends of Khasak is….better at this, or at least, it’s more of an original take. It presents an entirely sui generis version of the syncretism. Here, Hindus and Muslims make fun of each other, undermine each other and other factions of their own religions, plot together, and coexist in a more honest way, I think, than yet another retelling of secular mutual respect. I’m reminded of how in Japan, they say that weddings are Shinto while funerals are Buddhist. In the village of khasak, there are births, deaths, epidemics and internecine conflicts, and different situations call for different interlocutors than your usual one.
Realism & Magical Realism — These words are limiting constraints and the book surpasses them. This book came out in the late 60s, around the time of A Hundred Years of Solitude, but where the Latin Americans chose to elide realism altogether, this book often darts between a sharp empiricism and and a greater-than-science mysticism….and, lastly, it takes a position. It doesn’t stay neutral. It takes a philosophical position but doesn’t do it on the backs of its characters and story; rather the position emanates from them. The narrator comes to learn and we learn it with him — the wisdom of The Legends of Khasak. It’s hard to say more without spoilers and I already fear that I’ve ventured too far into the abstract. Look, you’ll get your fill of the improbable and the magical as well as the rough-and-tumble of ordinary, hard-scrubbed reality.
Irrepressible lyricism paired with irreverent dialogue — the beginnings and endings of the chapters are often a brazen, rich, lyrical prose while the characters’ interactions are playful, down-to-earth dialogue — and this interplay of narration and dialogue is achieved with astonishing brevity; O. V. Vijayan populates a world, drapes it in poetry, and then lets the characters speak for themselves — it’s a masterful balance of the elements of fiction.
Movement and Time — what is the logic of a book? How do its characters make choices? How does a book take us through a day? Through months? Through years. Through flashback. Through memories. Through fantasies. Every move is a manipulation of space and time and this is where The Legends of Khasak excels; O.V. Vijayan speeds up and slows down time; some episodes are drunken rambles through the night; others are steadily unfolding village dramas; others still are stretched out between episodes, so that you have to wait and wait and wait for the payoff — but you feel, always, authorial mastery. It’s like being on a raft in an ocean but you know that beneath this raft, an enormous palm is guiding you through the water.
I can’t help myself. I may have overhyped this and now you’ll be like, “Good book but I don’t see the fuss.”
But, it’s a bad habit of mine. When I like something, I tend to proselytize a little too hard; still — read this book. I wish I was more familiar with the subtleties of life in Kerala. I’m sure many moments of humor and irony passed me by. But the book took me out of my life; it just ripped me into another world, a fantastical yet fantastically real world. I give it 500 stars out of 500.
Yours Warmly,
Raghav
Please share this post with discerning readers. I’m sure many, many people will enjoy having their lives enriched with this book.
Previous posts in this series
Tamil Nadu - PYRE - Perumal Murugan - LINK
Karnataka - SAMSKARA - U. R. Ananthamurthy - LINK
Andhra Pradesh - YASHODHARA - Volga - LINK
Bought!
500 stars!