A Reader's Diary: In Love With Khasak, Haunted By Thasrak

Khasak/Thasrak

I, like my father before me, like my generation and the generation before me, like the generations after me will be, am in love with Khasak1.

The first time I heard of Thasrak was when my family had just decided to move into Palakkad. As we were packing, Dad mentioned to me this was going to be our own innings in Thasrak. When I asked him what Thasrak was, he told me about a tiny village in the outskirts of Palakkad that transformed into Khasak in O.V. Vijayan’s novel, Khasakinte Ithihasam. Like Ravi, who went from the metropolis that was Madras to Khasak in order to start a single teacher school, Dad was leaving an institution of sufficient antiquity and legacy in Alappuzha for a smaller and newer institution in the far outskirts of Palakkad.

The two years that I lived with my parents in Palakkad, we’d spent exploring the places and people around it. These outings had taken us to centuries-old ancestral homes in which centuries-old people lived. To priests, artists and aging revolutionaries. To temples, archeological sites and places Dad simply felt we should go.

When another mention of Thasrak came up later during the stay in Palakkad, I asked him if we should be visiting the place. “No,” he said, “The magic will be lost.” I was not surprised, because a year earlier he’d gone on a visit to Dehradun after a gap of 30 years and returned heartbroken, saying, “It is not my Dehra.” For my part, I also did not insist we go to Thasrak because Khasak was yet to grow on me: I was trying not to transform into an insect when I woke up from uneasy dreams; I called myself Ishmael and was dreaming of lions; Cartier-Bresson had just hung a picture of Camus on my wall; no, I did not insist on going to Thasrak.

Many years later, I am to remember that distant afternoon when my father did not take me to discover Thasrak. Memories of my melancholy whores have worn out. There are no exiles and kingdoms but immigrants and chat groups in which I am not the Admin. Will I go to Thasrak now?

“Never meet your heroes,” they say. And, never go to the sets of a movie you are in love with—Sergio Leone’s El Paso, Tucumcari and Sweetwater are in Spain. Space, the final frontier, is made in a Hollywood basement.

Unlike Khasak, Thasrak is not inoculated from the torrents of time by the mythical Sheikh of its hills. Though there is real njattupura and arabikkulam, it will have mobile towers and tourist taxis. Though I will meet real people who inspired Vijayan’s characters, there will be unverified claims to the legends, too. Orson Welles puts it, “I left Kenosha when I was three weeks old and never made it back. But I’ve got people who remember going to school with me in Kenosha.” Though Thasrak will be working too hard to be Khasak, it will not be my Khasak.

Expectations are hard to please.

Memories are harder to please. Because memories grow, they become false memories.

Literary Magic

For Khasak, Vijayan was not simply profiling the people and logging the events in Thasrak. Khasak is Vijayan’s false memory of Thasrak. Khasak is not Thasrak.

Still—I want to sneak into Thasrak. Why?

Magic lies not in the output but in the sleight of hand between what the artist saw and his output. To investigate the intentional falsification of Vijayan’s and Thasrak’s memory, I want to go there, wearing the cloak of an academic, a private-eye. What may reveal could be the recipe for literary magic which hoping against hopes I would replicate some day.

No one knows Dad’s failings as I do. That does not make him any less dear to me. On the contrary, that makes him dearer. I imagine—in my investigation, I may meet Maimuna in Thasrak. She may be old, but I will perceive blue veins beneath her translucent skin. Though fading, I will see the generosity of those curves of her body that render ornaments worthless. That will only make her dearer.

My false memories of Thasrak will only add to the existing legends of Khasak. Through attempts at demythification in Thasrak, Khasak will become even more mythified. That will make Khasak dearer.

Dad died four years ago (or was it yesterday?). But his trees still grow in Dehra. As winds swell in the fronds of Khasak’s palmyra trees, I’m yet unsure—to go or not go to Thasrak.

1. In 1968/69, Khasakinte Ithihasam (The Legends of Khasak), fondly referred to as ‘Khasak’, a novel by O.V. Vijayan, cleaved Malayalam literature into pre-Khasak and post-Khasak.

Rithwik Bhattathiri is a writer, translator and art curator

This article appeared in Outlook’s April 11 issue titled ‘ Warlord’ that focuses on the aggression unleashed on Iran by US President Donald Trump and the repercussions that are being felt across the globe with no end in sight.