MALAYALAM
Collection of essays
K. K. GOPALAKRISHNAN
KATHAPOLE CHILATHU SAMBHAVIKKUMBOL: S. Gopalakrishnan, DC Books, DC Kizhakemuri Edam, Good Shepherd Street, Kottayam-686001. Rs. 100.
LIFE SKETCHES, observations, unexpected incidentsand interactions during travel etc. are essayed in this anthology of 42 articles carried in a Malayalam periodical. Music, cities, tea, and the story of the national flag also figure among the themes.
The chapter that bears the title of the book tells us about the tastes of tea and the persons and thoughts associated with them etched in the writer’s memory. While the impression of the aged vendor on the outskirts of Mangalore railway station (1981) is evergreen in his mind for the taste that his tea gave, the image of the woman from whom he got his morning tea in 1992 at Darjeeling is linked with her catastrophic existence that, like fiction, he heard about after 12 years.
The article on ‘Ravindra Varma’ describes an episode from the writer’s rail journey and speaks about a rare politician (Ravindra Varma) who is down-to-earth and a Cabinet Minister. In the process, it profiles a typical representative of the contemporary political class.
While most articles are interesting and eminently readable, a few of them read more like text-book essays or seem to be just out of place in a collection of this sort.
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