Assignment
Sri Aurobindo College
Modern Indian writing in
English translation
Submitted by : Babita Yadav
Roll Number : 4024
Course : B.A English hons ( 3 rd Year )
Submitted to : Mrs. Sukriti ma’am
Discuss Ravi’s journey to Khasak as an attempt
to escape his guilt ridden past; only to come to
the realization that there is no escape from
dictates of karma.
O.V. Vijayan, in full Oottupulackal Velukkutty Vijayan, (born
July 2, 1930, Vilayanchathanur, Kerala, British India [India]—
died March 29, 2005, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India),
Indian cartoonist, pioneering novelist and short-story writer,
and a leading figure in Malayalam literature.
The Legends of Khasak was written by O. V. Vijayan in
Malayalam, and was titled ‘Khasakinte Ithihaasam’. It was
translated into English by the author himself. Khasak is a story both about Ravi, an
under-graduate who takes up a job to teach in a village, and about a new world
he experiences in Khasak. It is set in Kerala in the middle of the 20 thcentury.
O.V. VIjayan was inspired to write this novel based on Thasarak, a village in
Palakaad (Palghat) in Kerala, where his sister was stationed as a school teacher.
Much of the novel is formed through phenomenological reality and though there
is no continuous story of external incidents, the novel articulates a social world in
a non-empirical way.
The various experiences and incidents that take place in the novel spin a web of
emotions. It is interesting to realize that the different incidents are perhaps
reflections of alter egos of people and their inner struggles. The constant
references of Ravi’s self-imposed alienation, his social position and his past, and
the way of life in Khasak give rise to a larger platform of conflict. Such subtle and
mysterious conflicts are the ones that make this book a masterpiece.
Ravi, the protagonist, lives at two levels, a mundane, instinctive level of lust and
longing and a transcendental meditative level of detachment and spiritual quest.
He is haunted by a sense of guilt for his past incestuous relationship with his
stepmother and his desecration of an ashram by committing a sin with a yogini
that prompts him to leave the peace of that shelter and walk into the blazing sun
of Khasak to run a single-teacher school in that remote village. An intellectual
who had tried to correlate astrophysics and upanishadic metaphysics and was all
set to go to the United States for higher studies, Ravi, was driven by his shame
and came to Khasak to expiate his sin. He is an alien among the rustic folk, seeing
them with a kind of philosophical detachment even while mixing with them at the
level of everyday experience, but here too, desire overwhelms him and at the end
of a series of events, facing the threat of suspension, he keeps his word to his
beloved Padma to leave Khasak.
Throughout the novel, Karma plays as a strong theme. Allah- -Pitcha, the mullah
of the madrasa, wonders at his new arrival and asks, “Innocent wayfarer, what
bond of Karma brings you here?” On the first day at school, Ravi also wonders,
“What Karmic bond has brought me here? What purpose, what meticulous pre-
determination?”
Ravi also narrates the story of rebirth and the evolution of human organism on
earth of two spores. When the small spore set out to explore the world, the
bigger spore asked it “Will you forget your sister?”. “Never,” said the little spore.
“You will, little one, for this is the loveless tale of Karma; in it there is only parting
and sorrow.” The bigger spore becomes a Champaka tree. When the little sister
comes to pluck flowers, the tree says, “My little sister, you have forgotten me!”
The impact of this story is greater on the teacher than the students.
The whole village of Khasak seems to be a citadel guarded by the bond of Karma
and the expectation of rebirth.
It is Ravi who learns the most over the course of the book, though Vijayan does
not present the book as an educational journey. Commendably, in many of the
episodes, Ravi is, at best, a peripheral presence. There does come a point, where
Ravi has to admit to his students: "I do not have the answer" -- and naturally his
students do, regaling him with the legends of Khasak.
His journey to Khasak, though made for official reasons, perhaps was his rational
way of escaping this reality pertaining to his life.However, even in Khasak he is
haunted by this fact of his life. But the village of Khasak provides him with a
resolution in the philosophy of karma, that the people there strongly believe and
find solace in the face of death. Towards the climax of the novel, it is therefore
that Ravi standing at the bus-stop to leave Khasak allows a snake bite him,
believing that death would deliver him from his guilt, and allow him to be reborn
and pay for his sins in the next birth. Thus, Ravi embarks on a new journey, that of
afterlife. This journey of Ravi from rationality to spirituality is yet again
remarkably suggestive of the transition of the colonized mind from the reluctance
to discard the identity imposed by the colonizer to recognition and acceptance of
a native one. Instead of escaping from his inner self, Ravi comes to terms with his
guilt from the past and thereby prepares for a new life. A colonized mind goes
through the same stages in the process of decolonizing and liberalizing himself
from the constraints of an imposed identity and embracing his native identity.
Conclusion:-
The village of Khasak, in spite of its ignorance, illiteracy and superstitions, comes
across as relatable and philosophical. The depiction of social, religious and
political milieu is very different from the modern world. The book represents the
search for the ultimate truth and balance between the scientific and metaphysical
that Ravi sets out to seek, but having failed at it, ends his life. Thought reflecting
on itself has a sublime beauty and the entire oeuvre of Vijayan manages to
capture that brilliance. The characters in the book circle each other’s lives,
peripherally, or inextricably at times. Ravi and those he meets do not find respite
from the spirits for whom Khasak is an age-old home, nor can they find solace in
the many parallel realities.
