Valli – Review

Title: Valli

Author: Sheela Tomy

Translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil

Publisher: Harper Perennial 2022

Pages: 407

“It is not the creatures in the forest that we have to fear, it is the creatures among us.” An Adivasi girl named Kali sings those lines in Sheela Tomy’s debut novel, Valli. That is the central message of the novel. Kali is a daughter of the forest.

The novel is the story of the degeneration of Wayanad, erstwhile abode of many Adivasis in Kerala. The so-called civilised people from the plains invaded the land of mist and mystery, forests and folklore and brought into it what is known in the mainland as ‘development’. A whole mountain vanished and tourist resorts came up in its place. Forests gave way to townships. “Brokers bringing booze, sex and other amenities into ‘homestays’ sauntered between the township’s grey buildings…” A whole culture that sustained the forests and the hills and the rivers died. It was killed. “Young women transformed themselves to suit the times, put on Kathakali costumes to dance clownishly in front of white-skinned, light-eyed tourists, opened wayside eateries, and waited on travellers whose hungry eyes ate up the letters on signposts and the stars in the village sky.” What a destiny for “a land where countless secrets (used to) sleep in the vast stone structures and deep caves left behind by Stone Age humans!” 

The forest is the real protagonist of the novel which is populated by numerous characters some of whom are defenders of the forest and the others are the ‘developers.’ Not all of those who defend the forest are Adivasis. There are many plainspeople who take the leadership for protecting the forests and the environment. But they have a tough battle to fight. And they lose out too. It is a tragedy. The forest and its sustaining factors like the hills and brooks are destined to become martyrs of ‘development’.

The novel spans a period of half a century from 1970 to 2020. We meet people from four generations. Those among them who are staunch supporters of ‘development’ are all shady characters, if not utterly wicked. Those who defend the forests are all heroic. Is that sort of a black and white classification of people a drawback of the novel? To say ‘yes’ would be too facile. The moment you perceive ‘development’ as a kind of rape of nature, some sort of black-and-white classification of characters becomes inevitable. Kali, the daughter of the forest, is raped and murdered midway of the novel. The symbolism is too obvious to miss. The rapist belongs to the richest family in the place. The rich have all the power. And power is seldom used for good purposes.

Even God is helpless in the world of the powerful human beings. God created man to be the caretakers of the earth. “But man began his own creation… Soon, man began creating gods, and the man-made gods began creating a new earth. They burned down heaven and built cities and forts. They put out the lights that lit the world. And then God began to sleep, lost in darkness and in sorrow.” 

God is helpless in the world of human developers.

Is the human species an error that God made? The novel does raise that suspicion at one place at least. There are many places where human evil is pitted against nature’s ways. Would the earth have been a much better place without human beings on it?

The novel is not misanthropic, of course. There are good human beings in it and plenty of them too. But they are far too feeble in a world of “proscriptions and regulations. Everything is policed – our words, our deeds, what we read and what we write, what we eat, even.” The forest weeps. This novel is the sad music of the weeping forest. When each one of us is able to listen to that sad music, when “the languages of the forest and the humans become one,” there will be more love on the earth and “the forest will bloom to the sound of human laughter, and it will tell us that every life, however small or delicate as the touch-me-not, is divine.”

Yes, this book is about that immense human potential for goodness. It is a plea to revive that dying potential. Listen to this plea, this sad music of the forest.

PS. All quotes are from the novel.