Skip to main content

A Crazy Novel

Jayasree Kalathil, Sandhya Mary, and the book

Book Review

Title: Maria, Just Maria

Author: Sandhya Mary

Translator: Jayasree Kalathil

This is a crazy novel. It is hard to find a normal human being in it. There is more than one place in the narrative where we are told that every human being is insane to some degree. I won’t disagree with that. However, there are certain standards or wavelengths which are generally considered to be ‘normal’ if not sane and it is that normalcy which keeps the world going. Sandhya Mary’s debut novel flings a huge question mark on that normalcy.

As I was reading this novel, I was constantly reminded of a joke that Albert Camus narrates in his brilliant essay on the meaning of life, The Myth of Sisyphus. A madman is sitting by a swimming pool with a fishing rod in hand. Seeing his serenity, his psychiatrist [I think in Camus’s own version it’s just a passerby – but I find the psychiatrist more appropriate] asks him whether he has caught any fish. The madman’s answer: “No, you fool, this is a swimming pool.”

Nothing can illustrate the absurdity of life as best as that anecdote. Maria, the protagonist of Sandhya Mary’s novel, is just like that madman in the story. She has no idea what she wants from life, but she will keep fishing in a swimming pool knowing that there is no fish in there.

The novel describes the childhood of Maria in about half of its pages while the rest is a look at Maria at about the age of 30. Unlike her siblings, little Maria was brought up by her grandparents, especially Geevarghese, her grandfather, who is little more than a drunkard. Maria has seen all the sordid world of Geevarghese and his like, including the toddy shop where he spends much of his time. Maria liked that sordidness of life much more than the orderliness at school and other such places.

Maria’s mind roams around in a surreal world populated by a speaking dog, speaking parrot, Saint George who goes on a world tour, a Jesus who has gone black and is ready to fight for another revolution… Even the real people in that world are not quite normal. Look at Kuncheriya, Maria’s great grandfather whose only ambition is to live a ‘good’ life and thus ensure a seat in heaven. But he wants to live to a hundred; heaven can wait. Moreover, his religion has nothing to do with doing good to others; it’s all about his own heaven – both here on earth and there in the next life.

Mathiri, the great grandmother of the family, wants to rewrite the Bible. But she doesn’t know to write. She learns it eventually and the first thing she does after that is to rewrite the Bible on the walls of the house using charcoal pieces. Her thinking is highly ecumenical: it merges characters from Hindu mythology with those in the Bible. For example, Kumbhakarna becomes biblical Jonah in her story.

When Kumbhakarna was travelling in a boat, he fell asleep. All he ever did in his life was eat and sleep. Since he was as huge as an elephant, the boat capsized. A whale mistook him for an elephant and swallowed him. But the whale could not digest him; it developed an acute stomach ache. A doctor performed a surgery and took out Kumbhakarna who then claimed he was really Jonah. A curse had transformed him into Kumbhakarna.

The novel distorts everything. Every character in it is a distortion.

Who is sane in this world? That seems to be a fundamental question that the novelist raises. Is the ruler who attacks a neighbouring country in order to capture its lands sane? Are people who make national borders which pit some people against others sane? Are our gods and saints sane? Are our religious and moral stories sane?

Life, for Maria and most others in the novel, is as chaotic, irrational, and meaningless as portrayed by Kafka, Beckett, and Camus in their works. We, the readers, are provoked out of our comfort zones into a highly disturbing milieu which, we soon realise, is not entirely fictitious.

The novel made me laugh a lot; it has plenty of humour, dark though it is. But the novel also disturbed me not a little. It is a highly unsettling novel. I’m not sure, in the end, whether I would like to read the next novel by the author notwithstanding the fact that I liked this one. 

PS. I read the Malayalam original


Comments

  1. Hari Om
    Given the real life shenanigans just now, I'm not sure I would read something so close to the bone... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. this was a title of a portuguese radionovel of 1973 which seems quite similar https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplesmente_Maria_(1973)

    ReplyDelete
  3. It made you think. That's always good of a novel.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whispers of the Self

Book Review Title: The Journey of the Soul Author: Dhanya Ramachandran Publisher: Sahitya Publications, Kozhikode, 2025 Pages: 64 “I n the whispers of the wind, I hear a gentle voice.” Dhanya Ramachandran’s poems are generally gentle voices like the whispers of the wind. The above line is from the poem ‘Seek’. There is some quest in most of the poems. As the title of the anthology suggests, most of the poems are inward journeys of the poet, searching for something or offering consolations to the self. Darkness and shadows come and go, especially in the initial poems, like a motif. “In the darkness, shadows dance and play.” That’s how ‘Echoes of Agony’ begins. There are haunting memories, regrets, and sorrow in that poem. And a longing for solace. “Tears dry, but scars remain.” Shadows are genial too occasionally. “Shadows sway to the wind’s soft sigh / As we stroll hand in hand beneath the sky…” (‘Moonlit Serenade’) The serenity of love is rare, however, in the collecti...

Jatayu: The Winged Warrior

Image by Gemini AI Jatayu is a vulture in Valmiki Ramayana. The choice of a vulture for a very noble mission on behalf of Rama is powerful poetic and moral decision. Vultures are scavengers, associated with death and decay. Yet Valmiki assigns to it one of the noblest tasks of sacrificing itself in defence of Sita. Your true worth lies in what you do, in your character, and not in your caste or even species. [In some versions, Jatayu is an eagle.] Jatayu is given a noble funeral after his death. Rama treats Jatayu like a noble kshatriya who sacrificed his life fighting for dharma against an evil force like Ravana. “You are blessed, O Jatayu!” Rama tells the dying bird. “Even in your last moments, you upheld dharma. You fought to save a woman in distress. Your sacrifice will not go in vain.” Jatayu sacrificed himself to save Sita from Ravana. He flew up into the clouds to stop Ravana’s flight with Sita. Jatayu was a friend of Dasharatha, Rama’s father. Now Rama calls him equal to ...

Mandodari: An Unsung Heroine

Mandodari and Ravana by Gemini AI To remain virtuous in a palace darkened by the ego of the king is a hard thing to do, especially if one is the queen there. Mandodari remained not only virtuous till the end of her life in that palace, but also wise and graceful. That’s what makes her a heroine, though an unsung one. Her battlefield was an inner one: a moral war that she had to wage constantly while being a wife of an individual who was driven by ego and lust. Probably her only fault was that she was the queen-wife of Ravana. Inside the golden towers of Ravana’s palace, pride reigned and adharma festered. Mandodari must have had tremendous inner goodness to be able to withstand the temptations offered by the opulence, arrogance, and desires that overflowed from the palace. She refused to be corrupted in spite of being the wife of an egotistic demon-king. Mandodari was born of Mayasura and Hema, an asura and an apsara, a demon and a nymph. She inherited the beauty and grace of her...

Karma versus Fatalism

By Google Gemini The concept of karma plays a vital role in the Ramayana. You will get the consequences of your actions – that’s what karma means in short. Dasharatha, a king who followed dharma quite meticulously, committed a mistake in his youth. While hunting, he killed a young boy mistaking him for a deer because of a sound. Dasharatha was genuinely repentant of what happened and he went to the blind parents of the boy to atone for his karma. But the understandably grief-stricken blind father of the boy cursed Dasharatha: “Just as we are dying in sorrow caused by the loss of our son, you too shall die grieving the separation from your son.” So, Dasharatha’s death during Rama’s exile was a consequence of his karma. It was predestined, in other words. Immutable fate. Ravana’s karma brings upon him the disastrous end he has. He has lived a life of adharma altogether. Interestingly, it was his fate too following him from another existence altogether. He was destined to live the l...

Nala, Nila, and Ram Setu

Nala and Nila are architects of faith. They built a bridge between the mortal and the divine, a bridge that mortal creatures built for an immortal god, a bridge between human effort and divine purpose. Ram Setu, aka Adam’s Bridge today, connects India with Sri Lanka, from Rameswaram to Mannar Island. It is a 48-km-long chain of limestone shoals, sandbanks, and islets that run across the Palk Strait. The ocean is quite shallow in the region: 1 to 10 metres deep. Science tells us that the ‘bridge’ is a natural formation, resulting from a combination of coral reefs, sand and sediment deposition, tidal and wave actions, and rising sea levels over thousands of years. Some surveys also suggest that the top layer contains stones resting on a base of sand, which is unusual and could indicate human intervention. Moreover, the bridge was reportedly walkable until the 15 th century.  In the Ramayana, the bridge was built by the Vanaras under the guidance of Nala and Nila, sons of Vishw...