In the Author’s Preface, Parthasarathy presents his play as exploring the ‘theme of mutually contradictory dispositions of the various characters’ going beyond ‘a mere narration of historical events’.
The first piece in the present collection of articles on Chennai was written in 1998 and the compilation in Tamil, Oru Parvaiyil Chennai Nagaram (‘Chennai at a Glance’) took shape gradually over the years.
The novel’s supreme virtue is in its thesis that devolution alone will bring about a turnaround for the evils inflicted on any land and its inhabitants. Also noteworthy in the novel is the role of Father Felix Mullakkattil, the officiating priest of the whitewashed Church of the Virgin Mother at Kalluvayal.
Benyamin weaves a poignant narrative about a taxi driver contemplating robbery, only to be confronted by a passenger’s gripping tale about his own father’s honourable choices as a taxi driver.
Consider this description of a woman’s mental state, as she contemplates her reluctance to lie on a bed that she had slept on alongside a man, in the past. It seemed to her ‘like a thin film of dust that collects on the surface of a table…
The novel’s bedrock is formed by the resilient and formidable friendship between its titular characters; indeed, the bite and brio of this relationship shape and colour every other bond, filial or otherwise, making it one of the great renditions of women’s solidarity in Malayalam literary tradition.