The Dance and the Trance of Kerala

Book Review 

Title: The Dance and the Trance

Author: Deepti Menon

Publisher: H&C Thrissur, 2023

Pages: 163

 

Deepti Menon’s The Dance and the Trance is much more than a story about a Velichappadu, the traditional oracle, who dances in ecstatic devotion before a village deity. It is a novel that enters the cultural memory of Kerala and gently reveals the world that surrounds the oracle – the village, its children, festivals, hidden hierarchies, and, above all, the enduring goodness that survives within ordinary human beings.

The figure of the Velichappadu is often viewed from a distance, as an exotic relic of a fading tradition. Mani, the protagonist, takes up the mantle of the oracle because he has no other choice. Deepti Menon does something subtle after that, which is what elevates this novel above mere feel-good fiction.

Menon places the oracle within the living fabric of the village and allows us to see him not merely as a ritual performer but as a human presence woven into the emotional and spiritual life of the village community. The ritual which is a dance and a trance becomes a symbol of a deeper connection between faith, ordinary village life, and collective identity.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its portrayal of children. Through their eyes, the village becomes a specimen of Kerala’s unique culture. Their curiosity, friendships, fears, and discoveries give the narrative a freshness that prevents it from becoming a nostalgic account of a disappearing world. Childhood in this novel is not sentimental; it is the lens through which social realities are gradually understood.

The book also offers a quiet but perceptive glimpse into the caste system embedded within traditional Hindu society. Menon does not preach or reduce her characters to symbols of any ideology or politics. Instead, she shows how caste shapes relationships, opportunities, and dignity in ways that are both visible and invisible. The critique emerges naturally from lived experience, making it more powerful than overt polemic. Curiously, there are too many benevolent characters who make it easy for the children to overcome their hurdles many of which are creations of the adult society.  

Equally memorable is the novel’s celebration of Kerala’s cultural traditions like Vishu, Onam, temple rituals, seasonal rhythms, and village customs. These are not decorative cultural markers inserted into the narrative for local flavour; they are the emotional architecture of the characters’ lives. The reader comes away with a sense that festivals are not merely celebrations but repositories of memory, continuity, and belonging.

Yet what lingers in the end is not the anthropology of Kerala society but the humanity of its people. Beneath the social divisions and personal failures, Menon discovers compassion, generosity, and moral resilience. Her characters are not particularly heroic; they belong to the rural landscape of the state. They are recognisably flawed, often vulnerable, but capable of unexpected kindness. The novel suggests that the deepest truths of a community are found more in the ordinary acts of care that sustain human relationships than in its religious rituals.

The Dance and the Trance lingers in the reader’s heart because it refuses easy binaries such as tradition vs modernity, faith vs reason, and innocence vs experience. Instead, it inhabits the rich ambiguities of village life and invites us to listen to the quiet music beneath the noise of history.

At a time when many countries including India are going through radicalisation of religion and its rituals, Deepti Menon offers something rarer: a compassionate understanding of how faith, culture, suffering, and goodness coexist within the same human heart. Her novel is a graceful tribute to Kerala’s cultural landscape and a reminder that, despite all our social fractures, the human breast still shelters reservoirs of unexpected goodness.

 

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