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As a writer Akbar Kakkattil has not received the critical attention he deserves in
Malayalam literature. Akbar emerged in Malayalam literature as a fictionist to be
reckoned with in the late-Seventies when the tide of Modernism had abated. Today he is
generally categorized as a postmodernist although his texts are not marked by the
characteristics which are generally identified with postmodernism. In fact one of the
most obvious features of Akbar’s stories and novels is that they are readerly texts. It will
not be too far off the mark to suggest that Akbar belongs to the group of writers who
brought back to fiction the readers whom modernism had alienated.
The readerliness of Akbar’s fiction does not take away anything from the
significance of the serious intervention it has made in contemporary Kerala culture,
giving expression to the bewilderment, sense of alienation and existential dilemmas of
Malayalees at the turn of the Twenty First century. More than anything else, Akbar’s
propensity to draw his themes and contexts from his native Kadathanadu region sets him
apart from many other writers of his generation. So much so that Punathil Kunhabdulla,
a fellow-Kadathanadan of the previous generation would gladly surrender the title of ‘the
chronicler of Kadathanad’ to Akbar.
Though Akbar has largely steered clear of the modernists’ craft, his fiction
abound with themes and concerns that would be instantly recognized as the staple of
modernist fiction: the individual caught in situations which are bewildering and absurd,
the looming shadow of authoritarian power, or the experience of sexuality as a descend
into a labyrinth or as a compulsory disorder. Perhaps these are not typical modernist pre-
occupations. The modernists can, at best, be credited with examining them more
comprehensively and diligently than their predecessors.
Minus their humour, many of Akbar’s stories would probably pale into
insignificance. Akbar’s fiction abounds with quibbles and wisecracks, many of them
homegrown and carrying unmistakable Kadathanadan marks. But they never become
‘fatal Cleopatras’ for which Akbar is ready to lose his fictional world. Unlike in the
stories of VKN (who has been given the title ‘the patriarch of laughter’ by his doting
admirers) the narrator in Akbar’s fiction is not the feudal baron who uses and abuses
language as he would a prostitute. Rather, he is a mischievous child who plays with
language, as the infant Krishna did with his mother Yasoda. Moreover (this often goes
unremarked) Akbar’s humour is often tinged with pathos. Like Sanjayan (M R Nair), one
of the most powerful and most popular humourists of all time in Malayalam, Akbar is a
master of the kind of hilarious laughter that trails off into tears.
Vadakku Ninnoru Kudumba Vrithantham (A Family Tale from the North) which
won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2003 is a typical Akbar novel in many ways,
except that there are shades of an idyllic world in which the tension and dilemmas of
Kerala’s social transformation in the second half of the Twentieth Century are only
vaguely refracted. The fairy-tale union of Kadeesa ‘Kurup’ and Alikkutty Kakka will
linger in the reader’s mind for a long time. So would the metamorphosis of Kadeesa into
Kadeesa ‘Kurup.’The ‘pre-teen’ love of Kadeesa and Alikkutty has a flavour that is ever-
fresh and renewed by every one of the innumerable narratives in Malayalam starting with
Basheer’s Balyakalasakhi. The witticisms scattered throughout the novel are, however,
typically Akbaresque. Kadeesa’s answer to the moulavi’s question at the madrasa which
became the turning point in her life almost matches the famous answer Majeed, the
protagonist of Balyakalasakhi, gave to his mathematics teacher on adding one and one.
Modernity is not the only intrusive force in Akbar’s idyllic world. Haseena is a
typical ‘New Woman’ by the standards of the Kadathanadan Muslim community. She has
had a college education, has ‘new fangled’ notions about women’s rights and wears a sari
and a blouse that exposes her midriff. Kadeesa is intolerant of her new fangled ways
from the beginning. Things reached a head when Sulaiman, Haseena’s brother-in-law
wrote to Kadeesa about the video cassette of Haseena’s wedding with Hassan which
created an uproar when it was shown to his friends. Haseena looked like a film star in the
video, Sulaiman wrote, exposing much more of her chest and midriff than was considered
decent for Muslim women. Kadeesa’s response was to order Haseena to put on a purdah
when she went out “as was befitting a woman of our community.” Kadeesa’s
observation about Malayalee Muslim women’s dress is not grounded in facts. Kadeesa
herself (typically like Muslim women in Malabar a generation ago) wears a kachimundui
with dark greenish-blue borders, a long-sleeved penkuppayam and a white loose veil, like
a nun’s, thrown loosely back from the forehead. The purdah became widespread in
Malabar only during the last quarter of a century.
Social transformation in the novel is marked not by struggle and resistance, but by
accommodation and compromise. Life with Kadeesa ‘Kurup’ is misery for Haseena. But
she decides to put up with it stoically till Hassan takes her to UAE. Occasionally she
teams up with Aysha, her fellow-sufferer to outwit Kadeesa. This, in spite of the fact (as
the dramatic scene in the last chapter shows) that Kadeesa is only a paper tiger when
confronted. The well-deserved slap that Haseena administers Kadeesa in the last chapter
may have other messages as well. Faith and tradition cannot subjugate women forever.
Haseena’s slap is, perhaps, as politically resounding as Nora’s slamming of the front door
of her doll’s house in Ibsen’s epoch-making play. Somewhere, an explosion is brewing.
Those who miss or ignore the foreboding signs are going to be terribly sorry.