Hriday Sarat

I did know of the strand of leftist idealism that pervaded the zeitgeist of 1950s and 1960s Kerala but what prompted me to read this book was the iconic photo of the captured Smt Ajitha displayed in a barbaric manner by the police. That it is a deeply disturbing image is an understatement. A young girl, hardly an adult displayed like the spoils of war. Hence I wanted to know what prompted the people behind the Thalaserry Pulpally attacks especially the then young lady who is the author of this work. Reading the book was heart breaking. It is clear that these revolutionaries had a deep conviction in their beliefs and in relief for the oppressed. But they come across as naive, misguided men and women with no cohesive abilities. Their lack of planning, leadership and naivete belie their heart felt idealism. Yet, the reason we know that they bumbled is the authenticity of Smt Ajitha and her unwillingness to obfuscate their flaws and rewrite history. Never an apostate, she sticks to her beliefs which have cost her dearly. In fact, she venerates her parents who were the genesis of her beliefs; while all along I had wondered on the morality of her parents in such indoctrination. I have oft faulted my parents for not being more prescriptive in the way they raised me. Now I can see the other end of the continuum. What does the state do if you are young and idealistic but foolish enough to take up arms against the state? Brutalise you, Torture you, and strip you of every comfort and all dignity. The book reinforced my distrust of both the government apparatus and also the common people, after all they were the very same locals whom she was working for who betrayed her and her comrades whether out of foolishness or due to misinformation that these revolutionaries were robbers and thugs. Smt. Ajitha is large hearted enough to treat the locals with grace and also steadfast enough in her beliefs to not fault the locals and concede a lack of groundwork on the part of the revolutionaries in spreading their ideas among the impoverished tribals and locals; I am not similarly inclined. Perhaps as was said by that degenerate poet Bukowski, " You save the world one person at a time. Everything else is politics." Lastly, another way to look at it is the one said by another poet at heart, albeit more of a novelist, Ben Okri and I paraphrase these lines from a 20 year old memory. "I had given it all my heart but in life as in art the heart itself is not enough." Maybe Smt. Ajitha's redemption is in her having given it all her heart, no matter how flawed.

I must warn the reader this would be more of a meditation than a review. I picked up Khasak in a bid to repossess some of my cultural legacy as a Malayali. With parents who were nomads and spent more time in Kashmir and Punjab than in Kollam I felt a need to educate myself on my cultural forebears. Khasak is a work which contrary to my expectation was as Indian in essence as Latin American in aesthetics and Arabian in the narration. Time is elliptical in Khasak and the Cartography vague, both are functions of memory and not physics. Vijayan's Malabar with its "clattering black palms", myths and sorcery is oneiric and simultaneous in fact almost coterminous with Marquez and Rufos magisterial description of Latin American utopias. Time moves in a sinuous, writhing orgasmic manner going back and forth seamlessly as the reader is entranced by the lapidary prose which is spare yet elegant enough to bring tears to your eyes. Khasak denied aesthetics as practiced by most Indian writers, and proceeded to bring a schism in the way literature was before and after its publication. Reading Vijayan's work for the third time was not tedious as one expected but rather revelatory in his skill at foreshadowing and total lack of mimesis. Where does Ravi come from? Where does he go? The idea of a purpose to the written word is purposeless. Or at least supplementary to beauty itself. One wonders that when in the preface the author writes of his failed romance with communism forcing him to recast Ravi as a spiritual wayfarer and not a revolutionary,; whether the author realised how much richer the work is for that decision when he started out. Or was it too a post hoc realization of how Ravis journey was that quintenssentially of an Indian mystic and not that of a Marxist revolutionary? This book has been a pilgrimage for me. I am European in my humanism, Russian in my hope of being egalitarian,. African in my myth making, Latin American in my aesthetics, and yet Indian by soul and spirit. The same can be said about Khasak. As a pilgrim the journey was arduous but despite all the hardships I can vouch the deity did bless me, and gift me with something that is ineffable.