Skip to main content

Book Review: Nair Told & Untold by Mohan Nair

Writing short stories is a challenging proposition, especially for new writers. You have to build the set, describe the characters and their peculiarities, and then narrate a tale, that too all within limited pages. Not many authors rise up to this challenge, well Mohan Nair has done it wonderfully with his first book Nair Told & Untold, which is a collection of 15 short stories.


All these stories offer a fascinating insight into the lives of Malayali people, their culture and religious values that not only influence their daily life but thought process as well. The flavour of the stories may sound local because one character ‘Nair’ is made available persistently through all stories, though his roles differ from one story to another. In the first story, at Kabeer's Tea Stall, he is a silent spectator where one pessimist customer is made satisfied through product differentiation theory. Whereas, in Slaughtering Eyes, Nair is an intelligent commando who busts the secret training camp of a terror organization being run by a famous writer and human activist in the tribal parts of Periyar.

As a reader, you will never come across any awry point where you may feel that the author has plunged into banality with his stories. Rather, with optimum satirical angle, all stories sound fresh and try to spice up over all interest of readers.

The longest story is ‘What Really Mattered’, this story sheds light on strong family traditions and what possible conflict of interests arises when a white-skinned foreigner girl ties knot with a stereotype Keralite Nair. This story delicately unfolds family lineage and rituals, and when Kate, the American girl, takes firewalk, the event goes viral on FB. This is the same story that extensively details the Chamundi Pooja and other religious chores in a typical Nair family.

Other than the in-built behavior of Malayalis and culture of Kerala, these stories also didn’t miss a chance to shed light on wider themes of today's world, like women empowerment, typecast thinking, customer engagement through product differentiation, cultural gap that comes coherently in the case of inter-faith marriages, radicalization and terror spreading gangs and so on.

Despite the character ‘Nair’ being made omnipresent in all stories, none of the story looks repeated or dull at any point of time. Every story has something to tell about today's time. The author sounds at ease even after adding satirical angle to each story, nevertheless all the stories are presented with equal brevity and clarity.

The stories are written in such a simple and lucid way that you need not be a hardcore Keralite to get the most out of them. In these stories, the author's understanding and intuition into the Keralite people’s culture and religion is evident. Some stories are quite short, some are little longer, otherwise rest are of medium length. Well, they are all truly a delight to read.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should ...
68 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversatio...
65 comments
Read more

Character Sketch of Binya from ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond

The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond is a popular children’s story. It features Binya as the main character, though there are other important characters as well, but the story revolves around Binya and her little beautiful umbrella. The story is widely popular among children, thus it has also been included in the schools’ syllabus all across the country. Since it is often taught in the school, thus the character sketch of Binya is often demanded by students from year to year. Character Sketch of Binya from The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond Binya is the main character of the novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond. Her full name is Binyadevi. As in the hills or anywhere in India it is a kind of trend to call children with their short nicknames. Binya’s elder brother’s name is Bijju, whereas his real name is Vijay. Binya aged eleven is a hilly girl. She lives with her small family in the hills of Garhwal. Her father died when she was two years of age. For sustenance, the...
41 comments
Read more