‘Why did the kanikonna blossom? It shouldn’t have, knowing that no one would pay it heed anyway.’ This anthology answers the question raised by a voice within it.Selected from seven decades of dalit writing in Malayalam and presented in new translations by AbhiramiGirijaSriram and N. Ravi Shanker, these twenty-three stories, farcical and magical,terse and baroque, domestic and picaresque, reveal that the disregarded laburnum in the forest has blazed with beauty all these years, and we should be the poorer for neglecting it.
This is one of those books that come along once in a while like Tide arrives and leaves a swathe of sparkling white on a grimy shirt. I found it to be edifying. I had heard Dalit nomenclatures in Malayalam while growing up but never understood their true import. The book pays homage to those that lived and died by casteist invective. There are stories that lay bare the oppression that comes with being a Dalit, the omnipresent condescension of oppressors, the deliberate exclusion of Dalits fro...