Thursday, November 03, 2005 ||
12:10 PM ||
The last three times I had been to DC, I was told that Nalini Jameela’s autobiography has been sold out. Had been reading so much about the latest bestseller, that I was disappointed. Yesterday hence, it seemed a big surprise, that when I was at DC to buy a copy of Coelho’s Eleven Minutes, I saw Jameela donning the bookshelves. And a huge coincidence that both the books deal with a similar theme, though set in distinctly different milieu.
‘Oru Laingika Thozhilaaliyude Aathma Katha’ would disappoint, if sex and sleaze is what one looks out for. For once, its all about tearing the mask off the average Malayali’s farcical face, leaving his warped psyche stark naked, to be dissected and analysed. Jameela impresses not with her lexical embellishments, nor does she put forward a fancy claim of being the most-promising-writer to have struck the Malayalam literary scene of late. Aided by I. Gopinath, she merely engages in an absorbing tête-à-tête with the reader, opening up a whole new world that is unfamiliar and seemingly uncouth to most of us. A world of lusty men and ruthless cops, shady goons and mindless gore, shabby brothels and shabbier lives, dreaded disease and lingering pain. She stuns us when she revels in selling sex, and dismisses the idea that she wouldn’t mind her daughter being a sex worker with an indifferent shrug. Amidst all these and more, Jameela lets us be voyeurs of her own life, as she transcends across variegated levels of human experience, and at the end of it all, declares without a second thought, that life is worth living.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I get to see quite a few screwed eyebrows all around me, gauging each and every morsel that has ever fallen out of Jameela’s mouth. I wouldn’t be astounded if they hold a protest march before her shack at Bangladesh Colony, Kozhikode, condemning the ‘profoundly negatory influence’ that she has had on their children. I wouldn’t be amused to see them bait for her blood, shocked at her unambiguously candid expositions. I wouldn’t be bewildered by their ever-growing concern regarding the ‘inevitable shattering of sacred family ties’ that we have for long, painfully hung on to. It wouldn’t amaze me to hear them murmur their dissent over her having shown the courage to deliver a slap where it has been long due.
And I wouldn’t be too much awed to see them rushing to the bookshops to grab a copy of her book, before it’s sold out again.
:-)
