There have been many novels tracing Kerala’s social history. Kayar (Coir) by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai is a stellar example, where the socio-economic transformation of Kerala is captured through the wetlands of his Kuttanad. Perhaps less prodigious, but equally ambitious, is Binoo John’s canvas of his village of Vettukad against whose backdrop he tries to chronicle his The Last Song of Savio de Souza.
The novel is a chronicle of a village and its people at the turn of the century. The characters have diverse callings: Silvy de Souza, who joins the nun’s order against her will but goes on to the Vatican as Sister Regina; Savio, the village urchin, who transforms himself into a leading singer and ultimately gives up his life at an epiphanic moment of the fulfilment of his love. The process of making karimkurangu rasayanam, an ayurvedic concoction made from the innards of a black monkey, is depicted with the same wry humour as the torrid love lessons imparted by Sumati, the “revolutionary”. One is reminded of Thakazhi’s other novel, Chemmeen (the songs from the film based on the novel are cited in the book), where the lovers’ union happens in the backdrop of the engulfing storm that claims them.
The author takes the reader through visionary sequences in three spaces— Vettukad, Velankanni and the Vatican—infusing them all with the imagery of Kerala’s landscape and its colloquial idiom. Richly imaginative, the book could have done with tighter editing. An interesting debut.
