What Lies Beneath: Review of Paul Zacharia’s ‘50 Stories’

Paul Zacharia demonstrates a rare courage to take intellectual risks. In his novels and short stories, he emerges as a storyteller who makes the strange feel natural and the surreal seem ordinary. He unsettles the familiar boundaries of Indian literature, moving beyond its comfort zone and offering something new. His recent collection, 50 Stories (Aleph Book Company), features narratives that question established familial and social structures by placing them in alternate realities, yet, without severing their connection to everyday life. The surreal element in his writing is not overwhelming. It appears suddenly, prompting readers to pause and reflect. Even within these moments, Zacharia anchors his stories in a recognisable reality, ensuring that his characters, however displaced, continue to speak with an immediacy that feels familiar.

In ‘Bhaskar Pattelar and My Life’, Zacharia portrays rural India with a quiet restraint, keeping overt politics in the background. The narratives moves through its characters, revealing how power operates, how a dominant, cruel figure subjugates those marked by caste or poverty. Pattelar’s excesses, from debauchery to the casual destruction of lives, are pushed to an extreme in the opening, establishing the moral weight of the narrative. The narrator guides us through Pattelar’s actions, becoming a lens through which the realities of rural life are observed. Zacharia introduces the mythical not to evoke the divine, but to gesture toward what lies beyond easy comprehension. Yet, the story remains grounded. Without overcomplicating its form, it presents a resistant victim, an oppressor burdened by guilt, and women who assert ownership over their bodies and desires.

In ‘Who Knows?’ Zacharia draws on the fear of Herod the Great, his anxiety over the infant Jesus Christ who is destined to undo him. The story shifts its focus away from power to conscience. It follows a soldier from Herod’s ranks after the killing of infants, dwelling noton the act alone but on what the act makes of him. Zacharia explores the inner life of the soldier with restraint, showing how violence lingers as self-recognition. This reflection deepens through his conversation with a sex worker, herself subject to social surveillance and marginalisation. Their exchange expands the moral space of the story, turning it into an inquiry into guilt, complicity and survival. The narrative does not openly condemn Herod. Instead, Zacharia lets his intentions unfold within the reader’s mind, allowing the moral judgement to emerge without instruction.

In ‘A Complaint About the Public Library at Yesupuram’, Zacharia draws the reader into a story framed as a letter, a ‘complaint’ written by a book to the Master of the Yesupuram Public Library. While the device is not unfamiliar, Zacharia gives it a touch of originality: here, the community of books speaks with a collective voice, expressing more than what is usually said about a library as a space. He suggests that books, like people, are vulnerable. They seek not only physical care but also attention to their inner lives, their stories, their voices, especially when they lie unread and forgotten. This simple premise becomes a gentle reflection on neglect, memory, and existence. The surreal element in the story is subtle and humane. It does not distance us with strangeness; instead, it reveals a world that feels close, almost ordinary. Zacharia’s vision is not of an unfamiliar realm, but of a space that already surrounds us waiting for our notice or attention.

In ‘The Garden of the Antlions’, Zacharia offers a provocative meditation on solitude, seen through a darker lens. Here, solitude appears as a kind of privilege yet it quickly edges into loneliness. The story stretches this idea across possibilities, allowing its characters to echo the voices of a farmer, a rebel, or even someone who has withdrawn from life with nothing left to lose. The protagonist may seem distant, even cold, but beneath that surface lies a quiet warmth and a voice shaped by experience. As Zacharia introduces elements of the supernatural, he also reveals how people respond to vulnerability, how they falter, adapt, and sometimes collapse in moments of crisis. The story ultimately conveys the reflection of a society that presses upon individuals who seek only to exist, to live and to be accepted.

Zacharia is known for his willingness to engage with what society often finds uncomfortable, approaching such themes with wit and authorial control. In ‘The Visitor’, he turns to the unsettling subject of suicide, presenting it as a topic of conversation among a group of friends. The story opens with stark, almost graphic descriptions, but gradually shifts toward a broader reflection on death. The provocation here is not softened; it remains deliberately uneasy, drawing the reader into a space that is both disturbing and compelling. Zacharia understands that subjects the society prefers to avoid become more charged precisely because of their familiarity. By allowing the discussion to unfold through his characters, he resists moral instruction, inviting readers to confront and interpret it on their own terms.

In ‘A Lady Story-Writer is Abducted’, Zacharia weaves sensuality with fantasy and surrealism to shape a complex female figure. The protagonist is strong and self-possessed, yet carries a quiet longing for attention, intimacy, and emotional anchoring. Around her, owls, spiders, flies, and watchful eyes create an atmosphere that is at once intrusive and reflective, sometimes observing, sometimes engaging, sometimes leaving only traces behind. The lone human presence she encounters remains uncertain, possibly imagined, yet her bodily awareness makes that presence feel real. Zacharia suggests her strength through subtext, allowing her vulnerability to surface without contradiction. In a life marked by solitude, denying vulnerability would only deepen the isolation. The story’s erotic undertone enriches the emotional landscape. What emerges is a narrative that is both unsettling and liberating, drawing the reader into a space that is intimate, ambiguous and deeply human.

In ‘Annamma Teacher: A Memoir’ , Zacharia reflects on the resilience of the human spirit under constraint while quietly affirming how simple it is to choose kindness. Jasmine, in contrast, turns to change by tracing the many shifts a life undergoes and suggesting that each transformation carries equal weight and meaning. With his characteristic dark humour, Zacharia roots these narratives in memory but allows them to move beyond the ordinary, opening up space for the unexpected. In ‘The Publicity Cat of the Film Itha Ivide Vare Sets Out’, he expands this approach further, using the framework of a film to traverse Indian landscapes. The story bends time, stretches beyond the script and presents images that unsettle conventional description.

Beneath these varied forms lies Zacharia’s intention to sketch a clear blueprint of society, showing how storytelling can liberate characters without distancing them from lived reality.

The stories in the collection, translated from Malayalam by many translators, including Gita Krishnankutty, A.J. Thomas and Zacharia himself, challenge the set norms of literature. The translators retain the voice of the society each story addresses. Certain words remain untranslated, preserving the cultural and linguistic texture of the original. The translations are precise and restrained and they carry the author’s wit and clarity. 50 Stories invites reflection, asking the reader to pause, to engage, and to sit with the questions it raises long after they finish reading the book.

Kabir Deb is a writer, reviewer and translator based in Karimganj, Assam.