Khassakinde Ithihaasam, Book Review -- Icarus.
Icarus
1]
Book Review:The Legends Of Khassak
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O.V. Vijayan’s First Novel “Khassakinde Itihaasam” was first
published in Malayalam by Current Books (Trichur) in 1969 and
the work was translated into English by the author and published by
Penguin India in 1994.
I managed to persuade a colleague to bring back the English
translation from Bangalore on a recent trip. It is a small book, some
208 pages long.
The book is the story of Ravi, a spiritual wanderer who is looking
for higher truths, trying to escape from the entrapments of maya and
the consequences of bad karma. We meet him for the first time,
leaving an ashram, in the early hours of morning, bidding a hasty
farewell to the Swamin [the wife of the Swami who was the master
of the ashram] with whom he has been presumably sharing more
than secrets, as he has wrapped her saffron mundu around himself
in his haste to get away.
He is bound for Khasak, a village set in the area around Palghat in
Kerala, where he has been appointed as the head of the new one-
teacher school that the Sarkar [ The Government ] had set up there.
Most of the book revolves around various events that happen to
him in this village where myth and reality seem blissfully inter-
mingled and inseparable.
Vijayan’s style is fascinating. He is obsessed with the whole idea of
Story Telling. In one of the earliest chapters the Mullah of Khasak,
entreats his God:
‘I have sung the Bismi,
I begin my verse,
Allah give me grace,
To sing of the Prophet’s Battles’
And in another place when Ravi offers to tell a story, a little girl in
his class gets up and
“‘Saar, Saar...’ she said, then grew shy.
‘A Story without dying, Saar!’
Ravi laughed, ‘What’s your name, child?’
‘Kunhamina’
Ravi listened to the ballad of Khasak in her, its heroic periods, its
torrential winds and its banyan breezes. There was no death but
only silver anklets and her eyes sparkling through the surma. Ravi
looked deep into those eyes; the story would have no dying, only
the slow and mysterious transit. He began in the style of the ancient
fabulist.
‘Once opon a time ....’ “
At times it is quite clear to the reader of “The Legends of Khasak”
as the English version is called, there has been some amount of
magic lost in the translation. There are ideas that are untranslatable
and sounds that add to the sense of mystery in Malayalam that
never make it to the English version.
And yet there are passages that are stunningly evocative even in
translation. When Ravi offers to have clothes made for the two
children of the Muslim woman who does the cleaning at the school:
“
‘Sorry little one,'’ Ravi said, ‘ I left you out. Ill tell Madhavan Nair
to make some frocks for you.’
‘Don’t want.’ Chandu Mutthu lisped.
‘Don’t want the frocks ?’
‘Give it to the boy.’
‘Don’t you like frocks with printed flowers ?’
‘Let the boy grow up fast.’
Chand Umma stood watching, listening. She broke into a shrill
laugh, then wiped away her tears. She said, ‘ It is her nature.’
“
The stark reality of poverty and the love that must transcend the
wants of the self in favor of the wants of the loved, is so poignantly
conveyed here. At the same time Vijayan has captured the child’s
persona in three sentences.
“The Legends of Khasak” is written in the style of Magic Realism.
David Lodge in his masterful book: “The Art Of Fiction” describes
Magic realism succinctly : ‘when marvelous and impossible events
occur in what otherwise purports to be a realistic narrative.’
Lodge’s further explains: ‘All these writers [ of Magic realism ] have
lived through great historical or personal upheavals, which they feel
cannot be adequately represented in a discourse of undisturbed
realism.’
Magic Realism is the stuff myths are made of.
And there are plenty of myths that march through the narrative of
Vijayan’s book. There is a tree in Khasak that is the residence of a
lady spirit that bears delicious fruit that everyone wants to eat, but
only those whose wives are faithful to them can climb the tree
unharmed by the giant ants and bees that guard it.
In another part of Khasak there is a well that has crystal curtains
that beckon the weary.
Vijayan’s ironic sense of humor and deft touch for rendering
physical situations is evident in Maimoona the seductress
when she has decided to sleep with Ravi, takes off all her clothes
and stand before Ravi, with only a talisman around her waist on a
black charaddu:
“
‘As long as this talisman is around my waist no harm can come to
me.’
Ravi smiled as he undid the knot to her talisman. She did not resist.
“
One of the central characters in this book is Appu-Killi a cretin who
carries a dragonfly trapped in a lasso of thread around with him
wherever he goes. In an ironic twist, Vijayan explains, in his
afterward, when he returned to the village of Thrasak on which he
had based the story, a certain Muslim youth embraced him and
cried out that Appu-Killi had died. Vijayan writes that Appu-Killi
was invented out of his imagination but he didn’t want to upset the
youth, so he said nothing and grieved with him for Appu-Killi who
never had been. Vijayan explains that Thrasak in reality has
become something of a tourist spot, with its citizens claiming they
were the inspiration for some character or the other in the book.
If I had wished for something more in “Legends of Khasak” it
would be more volume. Many characters and threads are dropped
without being developed in any detail. Thakazhi on the other hand I
found to be very thrifty about introducing new characters into the
story.
Vijayan, in keeping with the existential maya eluding nature of the
hero, has written a book with a passive protagonist who allows
things to happen to him rather than making things happen.
There are some jarring notes here and there, but I thought “Legends
of Khasak” a great book.
“The Legends Of Khasak” -- O.V. Viajayan.
208 pages.
Penguin Books, India.
125 rupees. (~ 4 dollars in India)
ISBN 0-14-015647-X
- Paul Chemmanoor.