aarachar book review in english

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Hangwoman [Book Review]

Hangwoman, by KR Meera is the intense and labyrinthine fictional story of a young woman who is appointed India's first female executioner.

Hangwoman, by KR Meera is the intense and labyrinthine fictional story of a young woman who is appointed India’s first female executioner.

Some books have to be read, others have to be experienced. This book falls under the latter category. KR Meera’s Hangwoman , originally “Aarachar” in Malayalam, and translated by J.Devika, is a complex and detailed saga of a woman who breaks free from the clutches of her controlling father, overcomes the manipulation of a man she both desires and detests, and comes into her own.

22-year-old Chetna is from the Grddha Mullick clan, a family of hangmen who trace their professional lineage back to 400 BCE, and have been witness to historical incidents over the centuries. The pride they harbour about their profession borders on arrogance. When the next rare opportunity of hanging comes along, her 88-year-old father, a veteran of 451 hangings is considered too old.

Since her brother, whose limbs have been chopped off, cannot take over the profession, the mantle of hangman is thrust upon Chetna’s shoulders.  Anyway Chetna has hanging in her blood – after all, she even came out of her mother’s womb tying a noose with her umbilical cord.

The narration is eccentric and complex. Rich with legends and myths about the Grddha Mullick ancestors, these stories alternate with current events in the novel, and form a wonderfully layered narrative, thick with symbolism. Imagination at its best. The novel also deals with poverty, gender, society, media manipulation, and is a study of the place of a woman in today’s society.

The characters are hauntingly well-etched, and present-day Kolkata is also a tangible character in the story. Death looms in every page, leaving a dark trail through the novel. But even something gruesome and depressing as hanging, and death, and details of the dead – is dealt with elegantly. It shocks, but doesn’t disgust.

A word about the translation. From experience, I know how difficult translation is, and how easy it is for the translated text to sound stilted. To translate a novel of this complexity and depth and to do justice to it is a remarkable achievement.  Except for a handful of unwieldy sentences in the beginning of the novel, the rest of the novel flows along like molten iron – all credit to J.Devika. This book brought home to me yet again how many gems we have in regional languages in India, and how invaluable translators are, without whom these treasures would be lost to the majority of us!

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The intensity of this book is sometimes overwhelming. But even when you feel you cannot bear to read another word, you just cannot set the book aside. Borrowing a metaphor from the novel, reading the book felt like I’d been subjected to the hangman’s noose myself.  At the end of the novel, I was breathless, and felt like the life was sucked out of me. Yet, it was deeply satisfying.

Publishers: Penguin Books

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About the Author

Shruthi Rao

Shruthi Rao is a writer and editor. read more...

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Death Becomes Her: Malayalam writer KR Meera on plotting the history of Indian women through Hangwoman

Hangwoman, the idea of which came to meera after watching joshy joseph's documentary one day from a hangman's life, traces the macabre universe of the first family of hangmen in kolkata..

When PK Parakkadavu, writer and editor at Madhyamam Weekly, a Malayalam cultural magazine, urged author and journalist KR Meera to turn in a manuscript, she found that the short novel she had planned, was going in directions she hadn’t intended it to. It led her to Kolkata, a city she wasn’t familiar with, and to Chetna Grddha Mullick, the 22-year-old protagonist of her novel Aarachar, the English translation of which (Hangwoman translated by J Devika, Penguin India) has recently been released to flattering reception.

Hangwoman, the idea of which came to Meera after watching Joshy Joseph’s documentary One Day from a Hangman’s Life, traces the macabre universe of the first family of hangmen in Kolkata . That destiny is bequeathed to Chetna when it is time to find a successor for her aging father Phanibhushan. By then, Chetna has already learned that there are “seven hundred and twenty-seven different ways” to hang a man, and that to break the neck effortlessly, the noose should be placed between the third and fourth vertebrae after measuring out the weight of the condemned and the hollow in his neck, so that death comes no later than five seconds.

Textured with violence, the novel alternates between quasi-historical events dating back to the Nanda rule over Bengal, “four hundred and twenty years before Christ”, and present-day Kolkata, with its thrust on instant gratification. “In all my works, what I have attempted as a writer is to narrate and record the way we evolve emotionally, culturally, politically and even spiritually. Hangwoman needed many historic and political references as it was recording the emotional history of the women of our country through the ages. Above all, I wanted to write a novel which would stand apart from the novels already written in Malayalam. I am paranoid about not repeating myself,” says Meera, 44.

A literary heavyweight in Kerala with works such as Meerasadhu, Moha Manja (translation, Yellow Is the Colour of Longing) and Ave Maria (which won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for the best short story collection between 2006-08) to her credit, writing had come to the Kottayam-based Meera early in life. The first piece of finished work was a travelogue, written when she was around 10, followed by poems and stories, but she was to realise the impact of it on her life much later, while working as a journalist with the Malayala Manorama. “I had scribbled some stories just for the sake of writing while I was on medical leave during pregnancy. Later, I happened to meet an old family friend…She handed me a notebook of stories and poems. I took the notebook home, but then she would call me every night to ensure that the book was safe. One night as I was entering our house after the day’s editorial work, the phone rang. She had called to ask me whether the book is safe. That night, I sat thinking about her…and about myself. I had a revelation that when I become old, I too would be obsessed about what I have written and not by family or children. I restarted creative writing that night,” she says. Her husband Dileep, also a journalist, found the stories on her computer and send them to various publications and by 2006, Meera had quit journalism to take up writing full time, writing short stories, novels, essays and even screenplays.

Her years as a journalist, however, still holds sway over her literary avatar. “The journalist in me always criticises the way the writer in me judges life. She demands innovation in form and content. She is obsessed with the accuracy of facts and figures used to impart credibility to imaginary situations. She has very strong ideas about the duty of the writer towards the society and demands absolute fidelity. The writer in me is scared of the questions the journalist in me asks – ‘what is new?’ or ‘what’s the big deal?’,” says Meera, adding, “I was more balanced and stronger while I was a journalist. But at this point, there is no going back. Once you grow wings, you can’t become a caterpillar again.”

This scrutiny led her to throw herself into a period of intense research during 2011-12, when she was working on Hangwoman. For someone who had never lived in Kolkata or been to a prison, let alone witnessed a hanging, it was the steady stream of books she sought out and the city she roamed relentlessly that provided her with the minutiae. “The emotional investment is huge in all my stories… And it was extraordinarily high in Aarachar. I wanted to break free from everything and everyone, for the whole world seemed to be hostile to me. For the first time I realised what many writers over centuries had meant by the pain and agony of writing. Also, I found out how much writing meant to me. It was like someone putting a noose around my neck and dragging me all the way,” says Meera, who is now mid-way through a novel titled A Woman Clothed in Sun that is being serialised in a magazine.

She never expected the novel to be read by a “non-Malayali”, but as a vernacular writer, reaching out to a wider audience is never far from her thoughts. “Without translations, there is no question of reaching out to the wider public. In fact, there are excellent literary works in Indian languages which are available in English. But it’s sad that they are not available in our sister languages. It is very rarely that a Malayalam book is translated into Oriya or Assamese and vice versa,” she says.

While she shrugs off any attempts to tag her work as feminist — “A true writer is inherently a feminist, humanist, environmentalist and a socialist,” she says — she admits to a weakness for short stories, a love born out of practicality than sentimentality. The tradition of short fiction has always been vibrant in Malayalam and the normal course of growth for a writer from the region has been to begin with the form before graduating to novels. “I wrote most of my short stories during 2001-2005 and had a group of talented young writers like Priya AS, Benyamin, Subhash Chandran, Santhosh Echikanam, Manoj Jathavedaru, Sithara, Indu Menon for company…We were all writing short fiction so prolifically that alarm bells were sounded on the decline of the Malayalam novel,” she says with a laugh.

The group moved on to writing novels, but the rigour of the form stayed with her. “It is demanding and challenging because you can experiment a lot in the narration and craft. It fetches the attention of readers quickly. And most importantly, it takes only two or three days to complete. A writer who happens to be a woman is always short of time,” she says.

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Translation, Culture and the Loss of Meaning in K R Meera's Aarachar

2019, IJRTE

Translation, as a practice, has existed ever since the birth of civilization even though, its inclusion in the domain of scientific research did not take placeuntil the second half of 20 th century. The ability of translation to transcend the linguistic barriers has always been used to its advantage to promote traditions, practices and even ideologies. However, it is widely accepted that translation is incapable of the complete transference of meaning when the source culture and target culture are significantly divergent. The aim of the paper, therefore, is to analyze this loss of meaning through the comparative reading of K R Meera's Aarachar and its translation Hangwoman by J Devika. The source text was chosen for its significant contributions to the modern Malayalam literary tradition and the strong presence of cultural elements. Through this article, the researcher intends to trace the difficulties translator had to face during the process of translation and the extent to which the translator has succeeded in achieving an equivalence of meaning bound in a cultural setting. The concept of equivalence in translation defined by Nida andNewmark's and Vermeer's understanding of culture in translation is employed for this comparative reading.

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Translation from one language to another is a continual phenomenon but when translation takes place between regional literary texts and English, it tends to call certain translational choices at two levels. On the first level, to decipher out the nuances of the original, the translator has to delve deep to know more than what is written on linguistic level in the original and then the possible effective expression of it into the TL follows on the other level. The present paper analyses the same exemplifying the short stories of Maitreyi Pushpa, a Hindi author, who writes in dialectal variation of Hindi pertinent to the region where the stories have been set. Maitreyi Pushpa's fondness of using the varieties and derivations of kinship terms, reduplicated forms and compound words, regional cultural rituals and other specific lexical peculiarities etc. have been analysed in the process of translation and it is found that the conflict for finding the closest possible equivalents rat...

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Dr. Bishwajit Bhattacharjee

Translation is as old as creative writing itself. However, there are certain issues that sprout with the discourse of translation. The query arises on the translator’s reliability, on the intentions of the translator, on the issue of finding the appropriate equivalents etc. In this paper an effort has been made to study the translated work of Indira Goswami’s novel Nilakanthi Braja which is translated by Gayatri Bhattacharyya and published under the title The Blue-necked God. The issues that the paper focus is on the degree of subject-specific knowledge, degree of SL and TL proficiency, unconscious personal intrusion on the part of the translator, and difficulty in finding the appropriate equivalents that needs to be considered in the process of translation. The diminution of TL text’s ornateness is the immediate ramification of its flouting. Key Words: translation; source language; target language; equivalence; alien matter; inappropriate and incorrect transference; literal translation; semantical translation; untranslability

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Arunava Sinha’s translation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s “Heenger-Kochuri” is a pointer to the fact that translation in the Indian context is a multifaceted procedure. Not only does one translate the regional language into English but one has to include the distinct flavor of the region while translating to retain the true nature of the original piece. The title itself is a case in point. Sinha, who is a much celebrated translator, has chosen not to find an English alternative to the Bengali delicacy mentioned in the title thereby retaining its unique Bengali flavour. There are many other such instances in which the translator has stuck to the Bengali word instead of seeking out its English cousin. In Sinha’s case one may further observe that he has deliberately used a few Bengali words in his work in place of those alternate Hindi terms that are otherwise commonly used in Indian writing in English.

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Aarachaar (ആരാച്ചാർ)

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Aarachar (Malayalam) Kindle Edition

• Print length 819 pages
• Language Malayalam
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher DC Books
• Publication date November 3, 2016
• File size 7760 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
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• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01MSHNBIQ
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ DC Books (November 3, 2016)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 3, 2016
• Language ‏ : ‎ Malayalam
• File size ‏ : ‎ 7760 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Not enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
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ആരാച്ചാര്‍ | Aarachar by K.R. Meera

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• Reviews (2)

ആരാച്ചാര്‍ | Aarachar Review

മലയാള സാഹിത്യത്തിലെ ഏറ്റവും മികച്ച നോവലുകളിൽ ഒന്നായാണ് എനിക്ക് കെ.ആർ. മീരയുടെ ‘ആരാച്ചാർ’ വായിച്ചപ്പോൾ അനുഭവപ്പെട്ടത്. നീതി നിർവ്വഹണത്തിന്റെ ഒരറ്റത്തെ കണ്ണിയാണ് ആരാച്ചാർ. പക്ഷേ ആ ജോലി ചെയ്യാൻ വേണ്ടത് അചഞ്ചലമായ മനസ്സാന്നിധ്യമാണ്. കോടതി ഉത്തരവ് പ്രകാരമാണെങ്കിലും ഒരു പ്രതിയെ തൂക്കികൊല്ലുക എന്ന കൃത്യമാണ് ഒരു ആരാച്ചാർക്ക് നിർവ്വഹിക്കാനുള്ളത്‌. നീതി ന്യായ വ്യവസ്ഥക്ക് വേണ്ടിയാണെങ്കിൽ പോലും ഒരു മനുഷ്യന്റെ ജീവൻ ആരാച്ചാരുടെ കൈകളിലൂടെയാണ് ഇല്ലാതാകുന്നത്. പൊതുവേ ഇതിനുള്ള മനക്കട്ടിയും ആരോഗ്യവും പുരുഷനു മാത്രമേ ഉള്ളൂവെന്നു വിശ്വസിച്ചു കഴിയുന്ന ഒരു ലോകത്തിനു പ്രഹരമേല്പിച്ചു കൊണ്ടാണ് ചേതന ഗൃദ്ധാമല്ലിക് എന്ന യുവതി ഈ ധൗത്യത്തിനു തയ്യാറാക്കുന്നത് – ലോകത്തിലെ ആദ്യത്തെ പെണ്ണാരാച്ചാർ!

ജനനം, പ്രണയം, വിധേയത്വം, അധീശത്വം, ഫെമിനിസം(തുല്യത), മരണം… അങ്ങനെ ജനനത്തിനും മരണത്തിനും ഇടയിൽ ഒരു മനുഷ്യജീവൻ അനുഭവിക്കുന്ന ഒരുപാട് കാര്യങ്ങൾ ഈ നോവലിൽ കടന്നു വരുന്നുണ്ട്.

പ്രണയത്തിന്റെ പല മുഖങ്ങൾ നമുക്കീ നോവലിൽ ദർശിക്കാനാകും.. ആരാച്ചാരുടെ മകളായി ഒരു പരമ്പരാഗത ആരാച്ചാർ കുടുംബത്തിൽ ജനിച്ചതിനാൽ മരണം എന്നത് ചേതനയുടെ ഭവനത്തിലെ ഒരു സ്ഥിരം വർത്തമാനവിഷയമായിരുന്നു. എന്നാൽ പ്രണയത്തെ അറിഞ്ഞപ്പോൾ അവൾ സ്വയം മനസ്സിലാക്കുന്നത്, ‘ഭൂമിയിൽ മരണത്തേക്കാൾ അനിശ്ചിതത്വം പ്രണയത്തിനു മാത്രമേയുള്ളൂ..’ എന്നാണ്. അതു പോലെതന്നെ മറ്റൊരു കഥാപാത്രം ആയ ചേതനായുടെ ഥാക്കുമാ സ്നേഹത്തെ കുറിച്ച് പറയുന്നതും ശ്രദ്ധേയമാണ്.. ‘പുരുഷന്റെ സ്നേഹവും സ്ത്രീയുടെ സ്നേഹവും രണ്ടാണ്. ആഹ്ലാദിപ്പിക്കുന്നവളെ മാത്രമേ പുരുഷനു സ്നേഹിക്കാൻ കഴിയൂ. സ്ത്രീക്ക് അവളെ വേദനിപ്പിക്കുന്നവനെയും സ്നേഹിക്കാൻ സാധിക്കും..’ മരണത്തിന്റെ പല മുഖങ്ങൾ പോലെ സ്നേഹത്തിന്റെ പല മുഖങ്ങൾ നമുക്ക് ആരാച്ചാരിൽ കാണാം.

മുഖ്യ ആരാച്ചാർ ആയിരുന്ന ചേതനായുടെ അച്ഛൻ ഫണി ഭൂഷൺ ഗൃദ്ധാമല്ലിക് പറയുന്ന വാക്കും ശ്രദ്ധേയമാണ്, ‘മരിച്ചു കഴിഞ്ഞെന്നുറപ്പായാൽ പിന്നീട് അവരെ സ്നേഹിക്കരുത്. മരിച്ചവരെ സ്നേഹിക്കുന്നത് ജീവനുള്ളവരുടെ ചൈതന്യം നശിപ്പിക്കും..’

പല വികാരങ്ങളുടെ പല ഭാവങ്ങളാൽ സമ്പുഷ്ടമായ ഈ നോവൽ വളരെ വ്യക്തതയോടെയും ഒഴുക്കോടെയുമാണ് നിർമ്മിച്ചെടുത്തിരിക്കുന്നത്. അതിനാൽ വായാനയിൽ ഒരിടത്തും മടുപ്പ് അനുഭവപ്പെട്ട സാഹചര്യം ഉണ്ടായില്ല.

കഥാപാശ്ചാത്തലം കൊൽക്കത്തയാണെന്നതിനാൽ നോവലിൽ ഉടനീളം ചെറിയ ചെറിയ ബംഗാളി ഭാഷാപ്രയോഗം നമുക്ക് കാണുവാനാകും. ചില വാക്കുകൾ, അവ തനതു ഭാഷയിൽ പ്രയോഗിച്ചാലേ പൂർണത വരൂ എന്നുള്ളതിനാലാകാം കെ.ആർ.മീര ഇപ്രകാരം ചെയ്തിരിക്കുന്നത്. നോവൽ എഴുതുവാൻ എഴുത്തുകാരി നടത്തിയ അന്വേഷണങ്ങളെ അഭിനന്ദിച്ചേ മതിയാകൂ.. ഒപ്പം നോവൽ മുൻപോട്ടു വയ്ക്കുന്ന ചില പ്രസക്തമായ ചോദ്യങ്ങളും ചർച്ച ചെയ്യപ്പെടേണ്ടതാണ്..

• വധശിക്ഷ എന്നത് ഒഴിവാക്കേണ്ടതാണോ അല്ലയോ?
• സ്ത്രീപുരുഷ തുല്യത പുരുഷൻ അംഗീകരിക്കുന്ന അളവുകോൽ വച്ചല്ലേ ഇപ്പോളും തിട്ടപ്പെടുത്തിയിരിക്കുന്നത്?
• നിയമത്താൽ തുല്യത ലഭിച്ചാൽ തന്നെയും ചിന്താഗതിയിൽ തുല്യത സാധ്യമാണോ??

നോവൽ വായിച്ചു കഴിയുമ്പോൾ നാം നമ്മിലും സമൂഹത്തിലും ചൂഴ്ന്നു നോക്കി ഉത്തരം കണ്ടെത്താൻ ശ്രമിക്കേണ്ടുന്ന മേല്പറഞ്ഞതല്ലാത്ത ചോദ്യങ്ങളും ആരാച്ചാരിലുണ്ട്. ചോദ്യങ്ങളുടെയും ചിന്തകളുടെയും ഒരു കുടുക്ക് എഴുത്തുകാരിക്കു നമ്മെയണിയിക്കുവാൻ കഴിയുന്നു എന്നതിനാൽ തന്നെയും ആരാച്ചാർ വളരെ പ്രസക്തമായ ഒരു നോവലാകുന്നു.

ആരാച്ചാര്‍ | Aarachar Summary

ആരാച്ചാർ – ഒരുപാട് അവാർഡുകൾ കിട്ടിയ ഈ എഴുതിയത് കെ ആർ. മീരയാണ്. കൊൽക്കത്ത നഗരത്തിന്റെ പശ്ചാത്തലത്തിൽ ആരാചാർ കുടുംബത്തിലെ അംഗങ്ങളായ ഫണീഭൂഷൺ ഗൃദ്ധാ മല്ലിക്കിന്റെയും മകൾ ചേതന മല്ലിക്കിന്റെയും കഥയാണ് ഈ പുസ്തകത്തിലൂടെ പറയുന്നത് .

വധ ശിക്ഷക്ക് വിധിക്കപെട്ട യതീന്ദ്രനാഥ് ബാനർജിയുടെ ദയാഹർജി ഗവർണർ തള്ളിയെന്ന വാർത്തയോട് കൂടിയാണ് ഈ കഥ ആരംഭിക്കുന്നത് . നൂറ്റാണ്ടുകളുടെ പഴക്കവും ചരിത്രവും ഉള്ള ആരാച്ചാർ കുടുംബത്തിലെ അവസാനത്തെ കണ്ണികളാണ് ചേതന മല്ലിക്കും അവരുടെ പിതാവ് ഗൃദ്ധാ മല്ലിക്കും .

യതീന്ദ്രനാഥ് ബാനർജിയുടെ വധ ശിക്ഷ തള്ളിയതറിഞ്ഞ് ഗൃദ്ധാ മല്ലിക്ക്‌ വളരെ സന്തോഷവാനാണ്. ഏറെ കാലത്തിനു ശേഷം താൻ എപ്പോഴും അഭിമാനത്തോടെ മറ്റുള്ളവരോട് പറയാറുള്ള “നീതി നടപ്പാക്കുക ” എന്ന തന്റെ കുല തൊഴിൽ നടപ്പിലാക്കാൻ സാധിക്കാനിടയുള്ളതിനാലായിരുന്നു അതിനു കാരണം . ജനാധിപത്യത്തിൽ വധ ശിക്ഷ കുറവായിരുന്നതിനാൽ ഗൃദ്ധാ മല്ലിക്കിനെ സംബന്ധിച്ചു ഇത് ഒരു സുവർണാവസരമായിരുന്നു. പ്രായാധിക്യം മൂലം ഉള്ള തന്റെ അവശതയെക്കുറിച്ച് അദ്ദേഹം ബോധവാനായിരുന്നു . ആരാച്ചാർ ജോലി നിർവഹിക്കണമെങ്കിൽ തന്റെ മകൾ ചേതനക്ക്‌ സർക്കാർ ജോലി കൊടുക്കാൻ വ്യവസ്ഥ വെച്ചു . തന്റെ മകളെ സർക്കാരിന്റെ ഔദ്യോഗിക ആരാച്ചാരായി നിയമിക്കണമെന്നതായിരുന്നു ഗൃദ്ധാ മല്ലികിന്റെ ആവശ്യം . ഗൃദ്ധാ മല്ലിക്കിനെ ഇത്തരത്തിലൊരു ആവശ്യത്തിലേക്ക് എത്തിച്ചത് സഞ്ജീവ് കുമാർ മിത്ര എന്ന മാധ്യമ പ്രവർത്തകനായിരുന്നു . 22 വയസുള്ള ഒരു സ്ത്രീ ആരാച്ചാർ ആവുമ്പോൾ ഉണ്ടാകുന്ന വാർത്ത പ്രാധാന്യത്തിന്റെയും മാധ്യമ ടെലിവിഷൻ റേറ്റിംഗ് ആണ് സഞ്ജീവ് കുമാറിന്റെ ഈ താല്പര്യത്തിനു കാരണം. ആദ്യം സർക്കാർ ഈ ആവശ്യത്തോട് മുഖം തിരിച്ചെങ്കിലും പിന്നീടുള്ള പല സംഭവ വികാസങ്ങളും (സ്ത്രീ പുരുഷ സമത്വം പോലുള്ളത് ) കണക്കിലെടുത്ത്‌ ചേതനയെ സർക്കാർ ആരാച്ചാരായി അംഗീകരിക്കുകയായിരുന്നു . ഇതോടു കൂടി ചേതന ലോകത്തിലെ ആദ്യത്തെ വനിതാ ആരാച്ചാരാവുകയും തന്റെ ജോലി നിർവഹിക്കുകയും ചെയ്യുന്നിടത് ഈ പുസ്തകം അവസാനിക്കുന്നു .

വർത്തമാന കാലത്തിലെ രാഷ്ട്രീയ, സാമൂഹിക, സാമുദായിക അവസ്ഥകളും പൊള്ളത്തരങ്ങളും ഈ പുസ്തകത്തിലൂടെ എഴുത്തുകാരി നമ്മെ ഓർമപ്പെടുത്തുന്നു. സമകാലീന വർഷങ്ങളിലെ മാധ്യമ പ്രവർത്തനത്തിന്റെ അഴുകിയ പിന്നാമ്പുറങ്ങളും മനുഷ്യത്വ രഹിതവും നീതീകരിക്കാനാവാത്തതുമായ പ്രവർത്തനങ്ങളും സഞ്ജീവ് കുമാർ മിത്ര എന്ന മാധ്യമ പ്രവത്തകനിലൂടെ നമുക്ക്‌ കാണിച്ചു തരുന്നു . തീർച്ചയായും ഏതൊരു മലയാളിയും വായിച്ചിരിക്കേണ്ട പുസ്തകം.

ആരാച്ചാർ I Aarachar I Book Review

About the K.R. Meera

മലയാള സാഹിത്യത്തിലെ ഒരു എഴുത്തുകാരിയാണ്‌ കെ.ആർ . മീര . ആവേ മരിയ എന്ന ചെറുകഥക്ക് 2009-ലെ കേരള സാഹിത്യ അക്കാദമി പുരസ്കാരം, ആരാച്ചാർ എന്ന നോവലിനു 2013-ലെ ഓടക്കുഴൽ പുരസ്കാരം , 2014-ലെ വയലാർ പുരസ്കാരം, 2013-ലെ കേരള സാഹിത്യ അക്കാദമി പുരസ്കാരം, 2015 ലെ കേന്ദ്ര സാഹിത്യ അക്കാദമി പുരസ്കാരം എന്നിവ ലഭിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട്.

1970 ഫെബ്രുവരി 19 ന്‌ കൊല്ലം ജില്ലയിലെ ശാസ്താംകോട്ടയിൽ ജനിച്ചു. കമ്മ്യൂണിക്കേറ്റീവ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷിൽ ഒന്നാം റാങ്കോടെ ബിരുദാനന്തര ബിരുദം. 1993 മുതൽ ‍ മലയാള മനോരമയിൽ പത്രപ്രവർത്തകയായി ജോലിയിൽ പ്രവേശിച്ചു .പിന്നീട് മനോരമയിൽ നിന്നും രാജിവച്ചു ഇപ്പോൾ സ്വതന്ത്ര പത്രപ്രവർത്തകയും മുഴുവൻ സമയ എഴുത്തുകാരിയും. ആരാച്ചാർ എന്ന ഇവരുടെ നോവൽ മാധ്യമം വാരികയിൽ പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചിരുന്നു.

ആരാച്ചാര്‍ | Aarachar

മലയാള സാഹിത്യത്തിലെ ഏറ്റവും മികച്ച നോവലുകളിൽ ഒന്നായാണ് എനിക്ക് കെ.ആർ. മീരയുടെ 'ആരാച്ചാർ' വായിച്ചപ്പോൾ അനുഭവപ്പെട്ടത്. നീതി നിർവ്വഹണത്തിന്റെ ഒരറ്റത്തെ കണ്ണിയാണ് ആരാച്ചാർ. പക്ഷേ ആ ജോലി ചെയ്യാൻ വേണ്ടത് അചഞ്ചലമായ മനസ്സാന്നിധ്യമാണ്. കോടതി ഉത്തരവ് പ്രകാരമാണെങ്കിലും ഒരു പ്രതിയെ തൂക്കികൊല്ലുക എന്ന കൃത്യമാണ് ഒരു ആരാച്ചാർക്ക് നിർവ്വഹിക്കാനുള്ളത്‌. നീതി ന്യായ വ്യവസ്ഥക്ക് വേണ്ടിയാണെങ്കിൽ പോലും ഒരു മനുഷ്യന്റെ ജീവൻ ആരാച്ചാരുടെ കൈകളിലൂടെയാണ് ഇല്ലാതാകുന്നത്. പൊതുവേ ഇതിനുള്ള മനക്കട്ടിയും ആരോഗ്യവും പുരുഷനു മാത്രമേ ഉള്ളൂവെന്നു വിശ്വസിച്ചു കഴിയുന്ന ഒരു ലോകത്തിനു പ്രഹരമേല്പിച്ചു കൊണ്ടാണ് ചേതന ഗൃദ്ധാമല്ലിക് എന്ന യുവതി ഈ ധൗത്യത്തിനു തയ്യാറാക്കുന്നത് - ലോകത്തിലെ ആദ്യത്തെ പെണ്ണാരാച്ചാർ!

Author: K.R. Meera

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2 reviews for ആരാച്ചാര്‍ | Aarachar by K.R. Meera

Aby Chacs – March 6, 2021

Publishing date is given as 1970 Pls correct

Aksharathalukal – March 7, 2021

Thanks for the correction.

RAZAL NOUSHAD – December 24, 2023

ഒരുപാട് പ്രതീക്ഷകളോടെയാണ് ഞാനീ പുസ്തകം വായിക്കാനെടുക്കുന്നത്. അതിനാല്‍ തന്നെ ഉള്ളിലൊരു തോന്നലും ഉണ്ടായിരുന്നു ഇതെന്റെ പ്രതീക്ഷകള്‍ക്കൊത്ത അനുഭവം തരാതിരുക്കുമോ എന്ന്. വായിച്ച് കഴിഞ്ഞ് കുറച്ച് സമയത്തേക്കും ഈ പുസ്തകം ഞാന്‍ ആസ്വദിച്ചോ എന്ന് എനിക്കു സംശയമുണ്ടായിരുന്നു. സ്ത്രീകളോടുള്ള ഇന്ത്യന്‍ സാമുധായിക വ്യവസ്ഥകളെ നിശിതമായ സംഭവങ്ങളിലൂടെ എടുത്ത് കാട്ടിരിരിക്കുന്നു. ഒരു സ്ത്രീ എന്ന നിലക്ക്, ഈ പുസ്തകം എന്നെ ഒരുപാട് വ്യസനിപ്പിച്ചു എന്നും കൂടി കൂട്ടിചേര്‍ക്കേണ്ടിവരും. ശതകോടി വര്‍ഷങ്ങള്‍ മുന്പ് തൊട്ട് തുടങ്ങിയ അടിച്ചമര്‍ത്തലും അവഹേളനവും മൂലം സ്വാഭിമാനം പോലും നഷ്ടപ്പെട്ട ഒരു സ്ത്രീ സമൂഹത്തിന്റെ ബലഹീനതകള്‍ പലതും ചേതനയുടെ സമര്‍ത്ഥമായ പതിമൂന്ന് കെട്ടുള്ള തൂക്കുകയറിനെ പോലെ എന്നെ ശ്വാസം മുട്ടിച്ചു. ചരിത്രവും വര്‍ത്തമാന കാലവും ഇടകലര്‍ത്തി ഉള്ള എഴുത്ത് ശൈലി പരാമര്‍ശിക്കാതെ വയ്യ. നമ്മുടെ സ്വഭാവം നാം ജീവിതത്തിലൂടെ കടന്ന് പോയിട്ടുള്ള പല സംഭവ വികാസങ്ങളാല്‍ സ്വാധീനപ്പെട്ടതാണ് എന്ന് പലപ്പോഴും കേട്ടിട്ടുണ്ട്. എന്നാല്‍ നാമോരോരുത്തരും ജീവിക്കുന്ന ജീവിതവും ചെയ്യുന്ന ഒരോ പ്രവര്‍ത്തിയും നമുക്കുമുന്നെ മണ്ണടിഞ്ഞ് പോയ അനേകായിരം തലമുറകളടങ്ങുന്ന നമ്മുടെ പിതാമഹന്‍മാരുടെ കര്‍മങ്ങളാല്‍(നല്ലതും ചീത്തയും) സ്വാധീനപ്പെട്ടിരിക്കുന്നു എന്ന് എഴുത്തുകാരി പറയാന്‍ ശ്രമിക്കുന്നത് പോലെ തോന്നി. പാഴ് ചരിത്രം എന്നൊന്നില്ല. ചരിത്രം മറന്നുകൊണ്ട് മാനവരാശിക്കൊരു നിലനില്പുമില്ലതാനും. ചിലയിടങ്ങളില്‍ ചരിത്രം പറച്ചില്‍ ഒരല്പം കൂടിയോ എന്നും ഓര്‍ക്കുകയിണ്ടായി. എങ്കിലും ലളിതമായ അവതരണ ശൈലിയിലോടെ എഴുത്തുകാരി എന്റെ മനം കവര്‍ന്നു. ഇനി എനിക്കു പറയാം. ഞാനീ പുസ്തകം വളരെയധികം ആസ്വദിച്ചു.

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AARACHAR Paperback – 1 January 1970

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• Reading age 7 - 14 years
• Print length 552 pages
• Language Malayalam
• Dimensions 23.4 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm
• Publisher DC Books
• Publication date 1 January 1970
• ISBN-10 812643936X
• ISBN-13 978-8126439362
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ DC Books; 37th edition (1 January 1970); DC Books
• Language ‏ : ‎ Malayalam
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 552 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 812643936X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8126439362
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 7 - 14 years
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 599 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 23.4 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ India
• Net Quantity ‏ : ‎ 2.00 Piece
• Generic Name ‏ : ‎ Books
• #131 in Classic Fiction (Books)

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Chemmeen to Aarachar: Ten Legendary Malayalam Novels You Must Read!

While it is near impossible to round down to one for the vast diversity showcased by the authors in Kerala, here are some of the finest literary works ever produced in Malayalam.

W ith its unfathomable contribution to Indian literature, Kerala has carved itself a niche position in the literary circles with works that often reflect deep introspection through its unprecedented storylines and ingenious narrative styles.

From simplistic writings of legendary Vaikom Muhammad Basheer to microcosmic narratives of O.V. Vijayan and works of contemporary authors like K.R. Meera and Benyamin, the writers have never failed to captivate both readers and critics alike with their skill of crafting unforgettable tales.

While it is near impossible to round down to one for the vast diversity showcased by the authors in Kerala, we have tried our hand in sieving out some of the finest literary works ever produced in Malayalam.

Here are ten best works in Malayalam literature – along with their translated English counterparts – ranging from the early 1940s to the present decade that you must not miss out for the pure love of reading:

1. Chemmeen (1956) by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai

One of the biggest cult classics to have been ever written in Malayalam, Chemmeen (Prawns) is a saga revolving around the myth among the fishermen communities in Kerala—that of a married woman’s chastity.

Penned with great emotional detail about the customs, taboos, moral boundaries and day-to-day instances of the community while trudging through toils of life and existence, the novel went on to win the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, India’s second highest literary prize, in 1957.

The book was adapted into a feature film by the same name in 1965, which is considered to be one amongst the greatest Indian films ever made.

2. Khasakkinte Ithihasam (1969) by O.V. Vijayan

One of the most unforgettable books ever written in Malayalam, Khasakkinte Ithihasam continues to mesmerise its readers with a surrealistic visualisation encapsulated within the settings of a sleepy little village that has a microcosm of its own.

The novel, which is considered to be O.V Vijayan’s masterpiece, has been reprinted more than fifty times, making it one of the most best-selling novels in South Asia. Inspired by a real village called Thasarak near Palakkad, the novel does not have a single straight narrative which makes it all the more gripping – as one walks through the spiritual journey of an under-graduate dropout, Ravi.

The plot begins with the man’s arrival to the village and how things are never the same again. The Legends of Khasak was translated by the author himself in 1994 and has often been lauded for its extensive depth in characters and unprecedented narrative style that would have otherwise been rendered as a mundane village romance.

You can buy the book  here .

3. Balyakalasakhi (1944) by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer

One of the finest writers in the history of Malayalam Literature, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer or simply Basheer is more popular for his works like Pathummayude Aadu , Mathilukal and Ntuppuppakkoranendarnnu .

But it is his Balyakalasakhi (Childhood Friend) that has managed to captivate its readers with its simple yet heart-wrenching story of two childhood friends who go on to become lovers till fate decides otherwise.

Believed to be an autobiographical work, the novel showcases love in its truest form—sometimes the one that remains unfulfilled. One of the noteworthy aspects of the story is the way the author disguises a trace of poignancy in the light narrative style and brings humour even during situations of abject tragedy.

You can buy the book here .

4. Aarachaar (2013) by K.R. Meera

Set in Chitpur, Kolkata, the narrative revolves around the ancient legacy of the Graddha Mullicks, a lineage believed to go back four hundred years before Christ. Having been the creators of fate with the noose in their hands, the twist in the plot comes when the last heir is grudgingly handed over the title—and its a woman!

The original, Aarachaar (An Executioner) went on to bag Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for 2013, followed by Odakkuzhal Award in 2013, Vayalar Award in 2014 and Sahitya Akademi Award in 2015, making K.R. Meera one of the best literary writers in Malayalam. ‘Hangwoman: Everyone loves a Good Hanging’ is translated by J Devika.

You can buy both book  here .

5. Randamoozham (1984) by M.T. Vasudevan Nair

With a revisionist narrative of the epic Mahabharata, this book is one of the most widely read Malayalam classics ever produced. What makes the novel an engaging and pensive read is the protagonist—Bhima. Considered to be M.T Vasudevan Nair’s masterpiece, the work won the prestigious Vayalar Award , given for the best literary work in Malayalam, in 1985 and Muttathu Varkey Award in 1994.

Diverging from the timeworn narrative involving divine elements, Randamoozham (Second Turn), give its due share to the actual draftsman behind the victory of Pandavas. Translated by Gita Krishnankutty as Bhima: Lone Warrior in 2013, the book continues to enjoy a cult status in the state and will soon be adapted as a mega-budget feature film.

6. Verukal (1966) by Malayattoor Ramakrishnan

Believed to be semi-autobiographical, Verukal (Roots) is one of the best works of Malayattoor Ramakrishnan. Bagging the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967, the narrative revolves around the life of a family of Tamil speaking Iyers who had settled in Kerala generations ago and sheds light on the drastic effect of modernism and how it has the ability of uprooting one’s heritage.

Originally settled elsewhere, the protagonist comes to his native village with the sole intention of selling his ancestral property. However, over the period of his stay, he ends up treading down memory lane and hits a realisation that forms the crux of the story. Resonating with those who left their native towns in search of employment and other pursuits, it is a story of homecoming that strikes a chord, right in the heart.

The English translation of the book which goes by the name Roots was published in 2002.

7. Aatujeevitham (2008) by Benyamin

First published in serial form in Mathrubhumi Illustrated Weekly, Aatujeevitham (Life of a Goat) illustrates the life of an abused migrant worker in Saudi Arabia written by Bahrain-based Indian author Benyamin.

It is the hard-hitting story of a gulf-aspirant who, upon finally reaching his dreamland, ends up leading a slave-like existence herding goats in the middle of the Saudi desert. Based on real-life incidents, the novel goes through a series of incidents that illustrate the journey of a man through extreme adversity and loneliness, pushing the man to hatch a life-threatening scheme to escape his desert prison.

The English translation of the novel, Goat Days, found its way into the long list of Man Asian Literary Prize 2012 and was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2013. Touted as one of top best-sellers of present-day Malayalam Literature, Aatujeevitham was also the recipient of Kerala Literary Academy Award for the year 2009. The book is also part of the syllabus in Kerala University, Calicut University, Bharathiar University, Pondicherry University and 10th standard for Kerala State syllabus.

You can buy both the books here .

8.  Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil (1974) by M. Mukundan

Set in the erstwhile French enclave of Mayyazhi or Mahe, the plot is a mélange of shimmering French elegance and rustic native myths and legends and captures a period of transition of people still stuck in the entrapments of the colonial era.

A masterpiece by one of the celebrated authors in Kerala, M. Mukundan’s Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil is a tale of love, frustration and decay that the author has woven amidst the idyllic backdrop of the Arabian Sea and the Mayyazhi river.

Journeying through trials and tribulations of two families bonded by friendship but complete juxtapose to one another, one goes back in time as the narrative seeps through the spectre of the territory’s independence movement.

On the Banks of the Mayyazhi which is the English translation by Gita Krishnankutty, manages to retain the soul of Mukundan’s narrative and engages the reader as much as the original.

9. Oru Desathinte Katha   (1971) by S.K. Pottekkatt

Recipient of both Kendra Sahitya Academy in 1973 and Jnanpith Award in 1980, Oru Desathinte Katha (The Story of a Locale) is one of the best works of writer S. K. Pottekkatt. Set in the village of Athiranippādam, the plot takes the readers on a journey that begins from the village of Athiranippādam to North India and as far as Africa and Switzerland, stretching over a period of 55 years.

Believed to be a fictionalised autobiography, the protagonist’s character sketch seeks inspiration from the author himself, who beautifully yarns a story that incorporates an interesting concoction of street gossip, fairy tale and recorded history.

Igniting a sense of nostalgia and longing, the novel comprises various characters and instances end up rendering a feeling of déjà vu amidst  readers—of people they have met, conversations they have had, places they have seen and people they may know. The English version was translated by Sreedevi K. Nair and Radhika P. Menon and was published as Tales of Athiranippādam in 2013.

10. Agnisakshi (1976) by Lalithambika Antharjanam

A social reformer best known for her literary works in Malayalam, much of Lalithambika Antharjanam’s writing dealt with the role of women in society, and how societal norms often ended up being an obstacle for a woman to explore her individuality.

More famous for her short stories and poems, Agnisakshi was the only novel written by Lalithambika, who penned it down during the twilight years of her life. Having received both Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award and Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award, the novel enjoys the status of a classic in Malayalam fiction.

With an insight into the Namboodiri community of Kerala, the narrative is structured around three characters—Thethikutty, Thankam Nair and Unni Namboodiri and strings together themes like choice, detachment, renunciation, love and devotion as they trudge through different phases in life. The English version was translated by art critic Vasanthi Sankaranarayanan in 1980.

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An Appraisal

Alice Munro, a Literary Alchemist Who Made Great Fiction From Humble Lives

The Nobel Prize-winning author specialized in exacting short stories that were novelistic in scope, spanning decades with intimacy and precision.

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By Gregory Cowles

Gregory Cowles is a senior editor at the Book Review.

The first story in her first book evoked her father’s life. The last story in her last book evoked her mother’s death. In between, across 14 collections and more than 40 years, Alice Munro showed us in one dazzling short story after another that the humble facts of a single person’s experience, subjected to the alchemy of language and imagination and psychological insight, could provide the raw material for great literature.

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And not just any person, but a girl from the sticks. It mattered that Munro, who died on Monday night at the age of 92, hailed from rural southwestern Ontario, since so many of her stories, set in small towns on or around Lake Huron, were marked by the ambitions of a bright girl eager to leave, upon whom nothing is lost. There was the narrator of “Boys and Girls,” who tells herself bedtime stories about a world “that presented opportunities for courage, boldness and self-sacrifice, as mine never did.” There was Rose, from “The Beggar Maid,” who wins a college scholarship and leaves her working-class family behind. And there was Del Jordan, from “Lives of Girls and Women” — Munro’s second book, and the closest thing she ever wrote to a novel — who casts a jaundiced eye on her town’s provincial customs as she takes the first fateful steps toward becoming a writer.

Does it seem reductive or limiting to derive a kind of artist’s statement from the title of that early book? It shouldn’t. Munro was hardly a doctrinaire feminist, but with implacable authority and command she demonstrated throughout her career that the lives of girls and women were as rich, as tumultuous, as dramatic and as important as the lives of men and boys. Her plots were rife with incident: the threatened suicide in the barn, the actual murder at the lake, the ambivalent sexual encounter, the power dynamics of desire. For a writer whose book titles gestured repeatedly at love (“The Progress of Love,” “The Love of a Good Woman,” “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage”), her narratives recoiled from sentimentality. Tucked into the stately columns of The New Yorker, where she was a steady presence for decades, they were far likelier to depict the disruptions and snowballing consequences of petty grudges, careless cruelties and base impulses: the gossip that mattered.

Munro’s stories traveled not as the crow flies but as the mind does. You got the feeling that, if the GPS ever offered her a shorter route, she would decline. Capable of dizzying swerves in a line or a line break, her stories often spanned decades with intimacy and sweep; that’s partly what critics meant when they wrote of the novelistic scope she brought to short fiction.

Her sentences rarely strutted or flaunted or declared themselves; but they also never clanked or stumbled — she was an exacting and precise stylist rather than a showy one, who wrote with steely control and applied her ambitions not to language but to theme and structure. (This was a conscious choice on her part: “In my earlier days I was prone to a lot of flowery prose,” she told an interviewer when she won the Nobel Prize in 2013. “I gradually learned to take a lot of that out.”) In the middle of her career her stories started to grow roomier and more contemplative, even essayistic; they could feel aimless until you approached the final pages and recognized with a jolt that they had in fact been constructed all along as intricately and deviously as a Sudoku puzzle, every piece falling neatly into place.

There was a signature Munro tone: skeptical, ruminative, given to a crucial and artful ambiguity that could feel particularly Midwestern. Consider “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which — thanks in part to Sarah Polley’s Oscar-nominated film adaptation, “ Away From Her ” (2006) — may be Munro’s most famous story; it details a woman’s descent into senility and her philandering husband’s attempt to come to terms with her attachment to a male resident at her nursing home. Here the husband is on a visit, confronting the limits of his knowledge and the need to make peace with uncertainty, in a characteristically Munrovian passage:

She treated him with a distracted, social sort of kindness that was successful in holding him back from the most obvious, the most necessary question. He could not demand of her whether she did or did not remember him as her husband of nearly 50 years. He got the impression that she would be embarrassed by such a question — embarrassed not for herself but for him. She would have laughed in a fluttery way and mortified him with her politeness and bewilderment, and somehow she would have ended up not saying either yes or no. Or she would have said either one in a way that gave not the least satisfaction.

Like her contemporary Philip Roth — another realist who was comfortable blurring lines — Munro devised multilayered plots that were explicitly autobiographical and at the same time determined to deflect or undermine that impulse. This tension dovetailed happily with her frequent themes of the unreliability of memory and the gap between art and life. Her stories tracked the details of her lived experience both faithfully and cannily, cagily, so that any attempt at a dispassionate biography (notably, Robert Thacker’s scholarly and substantial “Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives,” from 2005) felt at once invasive and redundant. She had been in front of us all along.

Until, suddenly, she wasn’t. That she went silent after her book “Dear Life” was published in 2012, a year before she won the Nobel, makes her passing now seem all the more startling — a second death, in a way that calls to mind her habit of circling back to recognizable moments and images in her work. At least three times she revisited the death of her mother in fiction, first in “The Peace of Utrecht,” then in “Friend of My Youth” and again in the title story that concludes “Dear Life”: “The person I would really have liked to talk to then was my mother,” the narrator says near the end of that story, in an understated gut punch of an epitaph that now applies equally well to Munro herself, but she “was no longer available.”

Read by Greg Cowles

Audio produced by Sarah Diamond .

Gregory Cowles is the poetry editor of the Book Review and senior editor of the Books desk. More about Gregory Cowles