Open Sesame

Today’s blog is on M. Mukundan again. The book is his Oru Dalit Yuvathiyude Kathana Katha (trans. The pathetic story of a Dalit girl). The title is a misleader. The book tells not the pathetic story of a dalit girl , but a city bred, white skinned lady. Or this is not a book of a girl or girls: This is more a postmodern treatise in the lines of Baudrillard.   On the media which ultimately decides on how things should be or how it should reach the masses. And the truth gets buried somewhere. This is the story of a group of people who wanted to stage a drama which tells the story of Bhagavanthi , a dalit girl and a victim to the feudal lord. (not much details are provided in the novel of the plot). The drama ends with Bhagavanthi exposed before the villagers, her dress being snatched away by the Gudencha, the land lord. The actress, supposed to play the role of Bhagavanthi steps out as she cannot play the nude. Vasundara steps in (her brother – Mukesh and boyfriend...

Academicians in the west have started talking about the death of Postmodernism and what after,  long back. As with all other western theories, it ll take sometime for them to reach our parts of the country and be the most often referred topic of the Doctoral Thesis. In India can we anticipate the rise of postmodernism or is it already here? Browsing through the net, one can find a couple of articles on pomo (hereafter ll be referred so) from the research scholars of India . Some of them ve probed into the roots of pomo here... Can pomo shake the Indian scenario as it did with the western world?? No b'cos Indians are postmodernists since ages. Never ve we believed in univocal truths, we never had 'author gods', our metanarratives were made of 'micro narratives'.. The things which i may be referring here can sound as clichés to many.. But here in the context of pomo those features sounds amazing. 1) No univocal truths : ...

My first blog in Vayanaa is dedicated to M. Mukundan. I belong not to the generation who started using drugs, inspired by his works. So, is there a generation gap between me and his works. Answer - a big No. Because even though am in the midst of theories of postmodern world and technology, I can still can identify with what this little man writes in the pages of Pravasam or Delhi Gathakal or Dinosaurukalude Kalam Today was the day of Pravasam . Started reading it couple of days back. Finished the last page today. Wonderful reading.. Being a reader with postmodern lenses, this book satisfied my appetite. There was everything that belonged to postmodern generation in this book from the author of ‘high modernism’. Pravasam is the story of three generation of pravasis or N.R.I s (not sure of the usage.. what can be the English equalent of pravasi? Diaspora?? ) Of Kottyathu Kumaran who went to Burma , Sudheeran and others who went of Gulf countries and Asokan whose...