(lst_pst4) Sara Joseph's trilogy - Aalahayude Penmakkal, Matathy, Othappu

 Recently written.

Great art replenishes the soul. Half the joy of great art is the realization that you are in the process of enjoying one. My favorite genre of art, if it can be called that, is literature and the least favorite are the various moving picture variants. It is just a personal taste and can undoubtedly be a personal bias and a prejudice even.

  One, perhaps not enough acknowledged, fact about great art is that it is very rare. Still. There is a wrong assumption that due to the so called democratization of the tools, great art is now common.
 
  Not true.
 
  In fact, what democratization has done is that it has caused a deluge in the mediocre to good range and it is even tougher to find the 'great' ones from the bunch. Even some of the many hyped booker winners, while above average, and some even maybe closing on 'good, are not that special.
 
 I recently read a trilogy of books from Sara Joseph which undoubtedly is among the best literature I have read in a long, long time and would undoubtedly qualify as great.
 
 I should admit that though it was recommended highly to me, I was circumspect as I had found Ms.Joseph's 'social activism' pretty much all over the place, sort of reactionary and not well thought out. Sort of Arundhati Royish. Whatever that is, her literature is just great.
 
 They are written with such skill, such deft control over the language, with such humanity and with such deep understanding and empathy of the female psyche and soul that I don't think any man could have written that.
 
 Aalahayude Penmakkal, the most lyrical of the trio is the story of Annie, a six year old from Kokkanchira, a slum and a scavenger-colony on the outskirts of  Thrissur. The fears, the dreams, the hopes and the innocence of a six year old girl is expressed as beautifully as is the complex society with its adult inhabitants around her and in the same beautiful and original language, a dialect that Ms.Sara Joseph skillfully recreates.

 Matathy, the most sensitive of the trio, is the story of a young girl Susie who works as a maid in her aunt's house. It goes through the whole period in her life as she grows into a young woman. Her struggle to survive and her fierce determination to live a happy life in a world which doesn't care for her, which doesn't want her and which is openly abusive of her is written with such mastery and skill that would perhaps make this the most touching of the trio.

 Othappu, perhaps the most brooding one, is the story of Margaleetha. The content is scandal worthy and I am surprised why none of the super stupid organizations which abound in kerala have not asked for its banning. Margaleetha is the young nun who decides that the life she lives is a farce and that she can't pretend to like it like others seem to. She defrocks herself and shocks the society around her, her own family and even her lover who is not strong enough to take such a step. The struggles both within her and those she has to wage with the outside world bent on destroying her points at the costs and the integrity needed for non-conformism.

 Brilliant, wonderful.
 Highly recommended.