Ala turns eight, reflecting on a year of new writing, translations, workshops, collaborations, and milestones.
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Latest Posts
What does it mean to be a hero at sea? Reading Keralam’s littoral imaginations
For a piece of land that has a historically rich oceanic history and relishes in the cultural connectivity of its coastline, why can’t Kerala’s popular imagination think of a Malayalee sea hero? It is this question that Ambika M S asks and answers by presenting three characters from two Malayalam novels–Thakazhi’s Chemmeen (1956) , and Soman Katalur’s Pulliyan (2022).
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കുട്ടികളുടെ മാത്രം ലോകം: ‘സ്കൂൾ ചലേ ഹം’ എന്ന സിനിമയുടെ ആശയപരമായ വായന
ഫോക്ലോറും സ്കൂൾ വിദ്യാഭ്യാസവും കുട്ടികളെ സാമൂഹികവൽക്കരിക്കുന്ന രണ്ട് വ്യത്യസ്ത സംവിധാനങ്ങളാണ്; എന്നാൽ ഇവ രണ്ടും കുട്ടികളുടെ ഭാവനയോടും സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യത്തോടും വ്യത്യസ്ത രീതികളിലാണ് ഇടപെടുന്നത്. ഈ വാദത്തെ അടിസ്ഥാനമാക്കി ‘സ്കൂൾ ചലേഹം’ എന്ന സിനിമയെ വായിക്കുകയാണ് ലേഖകൻ .
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Ee Kadaltheeram Aarudethu? Whose Beach is it?
Shruthi Ramesh delves into the politics of public space at Payyambalam Beach, exploring how access and the right to shape it remain unequal, shaped by labour, gender, climate change, commerce, and institutional power.
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Sacred versus Profane: A History of Pooja Rooms in Kerala’s Savarna Homes
The ‘pooja room’ seems to be a universal fact of Hindu life in Kerala, but is in fact a very modern invention. Drawing on observations of his own milieu, Gautham examines the history and implications of how the ‘pooja room’ became a standard part of modern dominant-caste homes.
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The Dismissal of an Office Clerk in Late Colonial Malabar
Clerks occupied an ambiguous position in the colonial middle class and left almost no writing of their own, except when a disciplinary charge forced them to explain themselves. This essay reads one such case from the Kozhikode Regional Archives to ask what a colonial clerk’s dismissal file can, and cannot, tell us about his life.
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Constructing Youth Dissent: Malayalam Cinema’s Representation of Student Politics
From satirical humour to violent campus clashes, Malayalam cinema has engaged with youth dissent in various ways to capture what[…]
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Beyond the ‘Temple-like’ Narrative: A Different (Hi)storytelling for Kerala’s Religious Architecture
What does it mean to call a mosque, church, or synagogue in Kerala “temple-like”? In this essay, Percy Arfeen-Wegner challenges this familiar framing. She explores Kerala’s religious architecture as a shared and contested world shaped by people living in the same landscape, working with the same ecology and climate, while giving different meanings to the world they built together.
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Untouched Dining Tables and Casseroles: Serving Caste in Malayalam Cinema
From separate tumblers to inaccessible dining tables, Silpa Anirudhan examines how Malayalam cinema archives the everyday life of caste in Kerala’s domestic spaces. By reading culinary practices across films from different decades, she reveals how untouchability survives not as spectacle but as an ordinary, intimate, and enduring social order.
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The Fourth Ala Writing Workshop is Here – Apply Now!
Join us for a free two-day writing workshop to work on a popular article, to learn about the fundamentals of research, writing and editing, and to discuss pathways to popular publication!
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