Skip to main content

Goat Days


The original Malayalam version of the novel, Goat Days, is celebrating its hundredth reprint.  The novel tells the story of a young man named Najeeb who goes to the Gulf from Kerala in the 1990s in pursuit of his dreams for a better life: a decent home, a TV with a VCP, some gold ornaments for the family... What he gets, however, is a solitary life with a herd of goats somewhere in the Arabian deserts.  He is trapped inescapably between the burning desert sands and the freezing lonely nights.  Every attempt of his to explore beyond the enclosure assigned to him is met with inhuman punishments.  The goats eventually become his friends, the only friends, so much so that he consummates the bond by mating with a she-goat one night.  His dreams do not die, however.  He is innocent enough to dream endlessly.  His innocence and the dreams born of that innocence help him to escape finally.

The novel is based on the experiences of a real person who is still living in Kerala, having returned home after his escape from his “goat days”.  The man still retains his innocence, says the author in the epilogue to the Malayalam version I read three years ago.  Penguin published the English translation three years ago, but I preferred to read the original Malayalam version and a friend in Kochi was generous enough to send me a copy.

Courtesy The Hindu
Certain judicial verdicts made in the present India reminded me strangely of Najeeb and his innocence.  People with political power, financial clout or some such influence can escape punishment in India, it seems, whatever their offence.  Evidences disappear miraculously for such people.  Or scapegoats carry their sins and go to prison.  Or their crime is trivialised to such an extent that they become the victims ostensibly more pathetic than the real victims.

The balance is highly tilted.  Social Darwinism has not only become the norm but also gained respectability.  Those who have clout of any sort can do anything at all and get away with it, however inhuman the deed.

Religious leaders can encroach upon reserved forests with the full support of the government and the judiciary.  Land mafia groups can subvert every law regarding acquisition of agricultural or other lands.  Educational institutions can disappear overnight to pave the way for shopping malls or tourist resorts.  Venal goons masquerade as moral guardians of the society.  Gods are peddled on the streets like cheap toys.  

Yet I dream.  Maybe, I’m a bit like Najeeb of Goat Days.  Maybe, I’m a fool.


Comments

  1. As I read the first paragraph, I thought the book will be similar to 'The Alchemist'.
    Then I learned, it is about India. And when it is about our country, the story obviously will have something deeper and darker.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The novel is about the Indians and, by extension other Asians, who work in the Gulf countries. But my reflections are about India.

      Delete
  2. I feel all this is happening because of judicial shenanigans...That's it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But our judiciary used to enjoy enviable respectability

      Delete
  3. It's remarkable how you always relate the books you read with the current affairs in the country!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sreesha, even i'm not able to understand how my memory works. It makes connections which are not always desirable....

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...