Khasakkinte Itihasam

infobox book |
name = Khasakkinte Itihasam
author = O.V. Vijayan
publisher = D.C. Books, Kottayam
language = Malayalam
genre = Novel

Khasakkinte Itihasam is a path-breaking Malayalam novel written by O.V. Vijayan. First published in 1969 and generally referred to Khasak in literary circles, the novel has run into fifty reprints in the last forty years, making it the most popular and largest selling novel in South Asia. Khasak has also been translated into French and German. The English translation by the author himself was published in 1994 under the title The Legends of Khasak, though it differs substantially from the original in its sensibility. Most readers prefer to read it as an independent novel by Vijayan in English rather than seeing it as a translation of Khasak [P.P. Raveendran, "Translation and Sensibility: The Khasak Landscape in Malayalam and English", "Indian Literature" XLIII (3), p.177-186] .

Plot

Khasak does not have a single narrative plot. It is crafted in the form of the spiritual journey of an under-graduate dropout, Ravi, plagued by the guilt of an illicit affair he had with his stepmother. Ravi abandones a bright academic career and a research offer from Princeton University. He deserts his lover Padma and leaves on a long pilgrimage, which finally brings him to the small hamlet of Khasak near Palakkad. At Khasak, he starts a single-teacher school as part of the District Board’s education initiative. The novel begins with Ravi’s arrival at Khasak and his encounters with its people, Allappicha Mollakka, Appukkili, Shivaraman Nair, Madhavan Nair, Kuppuvachan, Maimoona, Khaliyar, Aliyar, and the students of his school like Kunhamina, Karuvu, Unipparadi, Kochusuhara and others. After some years, his lover Padma calls on him and Ravi decides to leave Khasak. He dies of snakebite while waiting for a bus at Koomankavu.

The novel has no story-line per se. It recounts the numerous encounters of Khasak from a spiritual and philosophical bent of mind. Through these encounters, Vijayan narrates numerous stories, myths and superstitions cherished in Khasak. He places them in opposition to the scientific and rational world outside, which is now making inroads into the hamlet through Ravi's single-teacher school. The irony of the interface between these two worlds occupies a substantial space in the novel. Through the myths and stories, Vijayan also explores similar encounters of the past recounted by the people of Khasak, enabling him to have a distinctly unique view of cultural encounters across time and space.

From Thasarak to Khasak

Khasak was inspired by Vijayan's stay at a village called Thasarak near Palakkad for an year. His sister O.V. Shanta was appointed as the teacher of a single-teacher school in the village. Most of the characters in Khasak were modelled after real-life characters whom Vijayan encountered in Thasarak. In an afterword to the English translation of the novel Vijayan wrote:

::: "It had all begun this way: in 1956 my sister got a teaching assignment in the village of Thasarak. This was part of a State scheme to send barefoot graduates to man single-teacher schools in backward villages.

:::"Since it was hard for a girl to be on her own in a remote village, my parents had rented a little farmhouse and moved in with my sister. Meanwhile O had been sacked from the college where I taught. Jobless and at a loose end, I too hoined them in Thasarak to drown my sorrows.... Destiny had been readying me for Khasak." [O.V.Vijayan, "Selected Fiction", Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1998, p.173] .

Vijayan took twelve years to complete Khasak. It was serialized in Mathrubhumi weekly in 1968 and published as a book in 1969.

Praise for Khasak

Sunil K. Poolani:

:::"So, who was Vijayan? For the uninitiated (which is really unlikely if you are a connoisseur of Indian literature, political cartooning or journalism) he is, to put it in one sentence, one of the greatest writers the world has ever produced. And what raised him to that pedestal is his first and best novel, The Legend of Khasak, which was published around the same time that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s path-breaking One Hundred Years of Solitude. Hence one could fairly conclude that two of the greatest of writers of the twentieth century evolved at the same time, changing the course of Malayalam and Spanish literatures respectively, making the two individual works the benchmarks in their own respective languages." [ [http://www.kabulpress.org/rahapen/RAHA_Opinion_Sunil7.htm RAHA PEN: Obituary: O V Vijayan by Sunil K Poolani ] ]

T.P. Rajeevan:

:::"It might be the author's truthful "self-dissent" during the course of the writing that made Khasak, which otherwise would have ended up as a mundane village romance, a seminal work that addressed some of the deeper issues of an enlightened individual's personal and social existence in the post-independence period. Everything in this novel — the theme, the characters, the language, the style, the narration, the way myth and reality, realism and fantasy mix — was ingenious and unprecedented in Malayalam." [ [http://www.hindu.com/lr/2005/05/01/stories/2005050100050100.htm The Hindu : Literary Review : Spiritual outsider ] ]

Lukose Mathew:

:::"The Legends of Khasak stands out in the collection for its originality and depth. In this book Vijayan succeeded in universalising his personal experience which is the hallmark of great works of art." [http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/india/vijayan1.htm The Legends of Khasak - O.V.Vijayan ] ]

Tarun Tejpal:

:::"Critics point out that there are plenty of established literary giants whose works have been reasonably well translated. Foremost among them is O.V. Vijayan, whose Malayalam-language masterpiece, The Legends of Khasak, arguably ranks alongside Rushdie's own output. The story line may not leap across continents and ages, as Rushdie's works do. But the book contains the same magical realism that has made Rushdie an international celebrity."

K. Satchidanandan:

:::"This novel literally revolutionised Malayalam fiction. Its interweaving of myth and reality, its lyrical intensity, its black humour, its freshness of idiom with its mixing of the provincial and the profound and its combinatorial wordplay, its juxtaposition of the erotic and the metaphysical, the crass and the sublime, the real and the surreal, guilt and expiation, physical desire and existential angst, and its innovative narrative strategy with its deft manipulation of time and space together created a new readership with a novel sensibility and transformed the Malayali imagination forever." [ [http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/fline/fl2208/stories/20050422003113200.htm A sage and an iconoclast ] ]

Khasak in English

Vijayan published his English translation of Khasak in 1994, long after he experienced an epistemological break after meeting the monk Swami Karunakara Guru [see the dedication in "Gurusagaram", D.C.Books, Kottayam, 1987] . The early Vijayan was marked by deep philosophical doubt and skepticism, but the later Vijayan upheld certitudes. [Raveendran, op.cit.] The Legends was written by the Vijayan of certitudes, which makes it a very different novel in its sensibility, in spite of being a translation. One critic makes the following comparison between Khasak and The Legends to prove this point. [Ibid.] A literal translation of an important passage in Khasak reads:

:::"What is the truth about him?" They asked one another.
They recalled the spell that the Mollakka had sought to cast on Nizam Ali. It had no effect on him.
"The Khazi's truth," they said, "is the Sheikh's truth."
"What then of the Mollakka's? Is he untrue?" They were puzzled.
"He too is the truth."
"How can that be so?"
"Because truths are many."

In The Legends, Vijayan rendered this passage thus:

:::"What is the Khazi's truth?" The troubled elders asked one another.
They recalled the spell the mulla had tried to cast on Nizam Ali.
They had seen the spell fail.
"The Khazi's truth," they told themselves, "is the Sheikh's truth."
"If that be so," the troubled minds were in search of certitude, "is Mollakka the untruth?"
"He is the truth too."
"How is it so?"
"Many truths make the big truth."

References

External links

*http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/fline/fl2208/stories/20050422003113200.htm
*http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/india/vijayan1.htm
*http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/07/22/stories/1322067f.htm
*http://www.hindu.com/lr/2005/03/06/stories/2005030600230400.htm
*http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/30ov1.htm
*http://bradley.bradley.edu/~tjp/mlpost.html
*http://www.keral.com/celebrities/ovvijayan/
*http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/31intera.htm
*http://dannyreviews.com/h/Legends_Khasak.html
*http://www.literaturfestival.com/bios1_3_6_615.html
*http://www.experiencefestival.com/o_v_vijayan_-_khasakinte_itihasam_the_legends_of_khasak-_1969.

See also

O.V. Vijayan