Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Published on: 01/10/19 7:48 AM

Book review: The Town That Laughed by Manu Bhattathiri

THE TOWN THAT LAUGHED, ALEPH BOOK COMPANY.

Manu Bhattathiri`s debut novel is so steeped in a kind of malayalitvam, that if you are from God`s Own….,  you start to substitute Malayalam words for English ones, as you read!

People remembered the times when unemployment was quite a pleasure. The times when young men woke up early in the morning, bathed, shaved, put on well-ironed and starched clothing, smeared turmeric paste on their foreheads, and then stood in groups under big banyan trees at nodal points in town, their arms on each other`s shoulders, judging and evaluating passers-by. Unemployment had meant day-long gatherings even as the shadows of the trees moved around them. When maidens passed by, they made edgy and radical suggestions as evidenced by the coy smiles on the girls` faces as they hurried away.

If the above passage doesn`t resonate with every Malayali, resident/visiting/NRI, I`ll  forswear my pazham pori for the near future, I will!

The tone is unaffected, even light though the matter is anything but light. Bhattathiri paints a graphic picture of a small village/town somewhere in Kerala that goes by the name of Karuthupuzha, which first appeared in the author`s Savithri’s Special Room and Other Stories, and after a lengthy, somewhat clunky start, the reader gets down to knowing everything there is to know about all the denizens.

There is the good-natured barber Sureshan, the town drunk Joby, the retired police inspector Paachu (Yeman), his successor at the station Janardhan.

There is the colony of black ants who live under the jackfruit tree in Janardhan`s compound, the spiders that lurk and observe everything most keenly in Paachu`s house, the lizard in the police station, Joby`s faithful companion, the dog Lily. There are the oddball love stories, the piquant might-have-been love stories, the developing relationships like between Joby and little Priya, all of it covered in a thin coating of sardonic humour.

And here and there, little bits of weltanschauung. You wonder why I drink so much, the drunk soliloquises in earshot of the little girl. It`s good to be in a stupor…see, my problem is with reality. Reality never lives upto my expectations. So I put arrack between me and reality.

 

Aleph BooksfictionKaruthupuzhaKeralaManu Bhattathirisardonic humourThe Town that Laughed

Sheila Kumar • January 10, 2019


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