A Kerala Studies Blog
What are the joys and challenges of translating Malayalam literature to English? To know more, Ala spoke to Prabha Zacharias, whose translation of V M Devadas’ 2010 novel, Pannivetta, titled The Boar Hunt, was published this July by Hachette India.
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Was foreign soap a luxury product or an everyday commodity in early-twentieth-century Kerala? Greeshma Justin John follows the interesting history of soap as a commodity at this time, examining how it became a popular staple commodity in the region.
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We rarely take much note of mushrooms that crop up in the dirt. Drawing on his locale, Abdul Basith shows how mushrooms, in fact, shape and reshape the relationships between people, property and nature.
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Renovated ancestral homes have become a mainstay of tourism in Kerala. Soumithra investigates how ancestral homestays not only draw from existing caste and class hierarchies, but also play a role in sustaining these in the era of the supposedly free market.
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Through oral narratives collected during their fieldwork, Shibina and Anjitha delve into the obscure history of a bonded labour system that was practiced in the Valliyurkaav temple of Wayanad.
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In anticipation of Deepa Das Acevedo’s forthcoming book, The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), Ala spoke to Deepa about the nuances of the case, and the meeting of the old and the new in this heavily mediatised legal battle for women’s entry into a temple.
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Pulp fiction in Kerala remains a genre that does not receive much attention, despite the significant role it has played in cultivating a reading culture in Kerala. Serialised novels in Malayalam weeklies had readers hooked for decades. Shibu B S delves into the rich world of painkili (‘songbird’) novels in Kerala.
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With streaming services bringing transnational attention to Malayalam cinema, it becomes important to examine the nature of Kerala’s “new gen” cinema and to locate it in a longer history. C S Venkiteswaran, film critic, Don Palathara, film director, and Jolly Chirayath, actor, feature in Ala’s first audio essay on cinema in Kerala.
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At a time when working from home, adopted at the height of the pandemic, is being presented as offering added flexibility for women in the workplace, G S Divya delves into the lived experiences of Malayali women in the IT sector to examine the patriarchal implications of ‘work-from-home’.
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K J Baby’s 1991 novel, Mavelimantam, is the story of the resistance of the Adiyor community against centuries-old slavery at a historical point where feudalism was joining hands with emerging colonial forces in India. Mileena re-reads the novel with reference to the concept of Dalitisation by Kancha Ilaiah.
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