A Conradian Saga
K. Latha
ISLAND OF LOST SHADOWS (ANDHAKAARANAZHI) by By Santhosh Kumar . Translated by P.N. Venugopal Niyogi Books, New Delhi, 2015, 371 pp., 395.00
June 2016, volume 40, No 6

Reading Island of Lost Shadows takes one compulsively back to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. A century and a half after the publication of Conrad’s masterpiece, here is another novel, set in Kerala, a continent away from Conrad’s Africa, that probes the ability of power to corrode the human soul. A boat journey across a river, a headless trunk of a pig washed down the stream, the mysterious figure of Karadi Papa (more a myth than a man), the impaled head on the gates of the Meledathu tharavadu, the tribal Paniyas with their chants, songs, and rituals—all bring to mind a Conradian world of darkness, mystery and, more than anything else, horror.

Two stories, those of Sakuntala and Sivan, weave in and out of each other during the course of the narrative. Sakuntala is seeking some final and definite information about her missing poet-husband Sreeni. Hers is the story of many women in conflict zones—be it Sri Lanka or the North East—where women spend a lifetime just looking for information of loved ones gone ‘missing’. It is not that Sakuntala hopes for Sreeni’s return; she would just like to have some certainty. Like the blank letters Chitrabanu, another revolutionary turned informer, receives, not knowing whether her husband is alive or dead seems to carry more misery—and a certain element of menace—than his death would. Sivan is the last person to have seen Sreeni alive and Sakuntala’s quest to reach Sivan is fruitless since by the time she gets a message across to him, he is steeped too deeply in his megalomaniac rule in the island to care.

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