Daivamakkal by Sara Thomas

I have just finished reading Sara Thomas’s Daivamakkal. My attempt at a review will not be promising cause I took ages to finish it. So much so that the first pages now seem like a different book I read sometime ago! Anyway, the book is undoubtedly a must-read.

We have all heard of the perils of caste system of yesteryears (and to a big extent, even today). But those days, a little after independence the exploitations were at its extreme. No shelter, little or no food, forget about education! And yet Kunjikannan goes to school. Azhaki, his mother strives hard to take him to school, fighting all oppositions by herself. With a father who has left them long ago, the mother and kid are left to look after themselves.

All through the book Kunjikannan goes through a tortured mind, tortured by the cruel remarks and insults he had to put up with, by the inhuman attitude of the upper caste. A rare Zacariah Sir or a Jamal or a Krishnankutty or a Savithri stands apart from this crowd and lends him a hand to take him to bigger heights. Kunjikkannan studies hard. But even as he rose higher intellectually, he couldn’t help feel the shackles of misery handed down through generations.

Sara Thomas, through Kunjikkanan, takes us through a time when men and women were blinded so, by meaningless chains of caste, creed and colour. Its enough to boil the blood of any reader with a minimum sense of justice, that one could easily identify with the turmoil that Kunjikkannan and his friends go through. Each of them comes up with a different way to deal with their ill-fate and the fight continues – the fight for freedom, the fight for acceptance.

Through one mind, we see the sufferings borne by a big community of humans. Daivamakkal is a reminder to the cruel times our ancestors have been through to bring the world to what it is now. It is a reminder to us that the fight continues, and it falls upon our shoulders now to lift the human community to a world of no differences, no distinctions.