Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai is the author of Chemmeen, and recipient of the Bharatiya Jnanpita Award (1984) and several other awards including the Sahitya Akademi Award (1957). This book is a collection of 14 short stories out of the 500 stories that he has written.
They are dark and sad. The first one 'In the flood' is about a dog that is abandoned by it's master in a flood and dies of hunger and thirst. I saw some message somewhere that said that it is now a law that one cannot abandon their pets in natural disasters (I hoped they included relatives too). 'The Tahsildar's father' is about the father of a tahsildar who is seen as an embarrassment to the son's high status and ill treated by the daughter-in-law - and the old man vanishes after that. 'Under the mango tree' is the tale of a friendship between a boy and a girl - and how it ends badly for the girl while the boy does well for himself. There is one about an orphan who becomes a soldier and who marries a girl of an old lady he meets and dies after that. There is one of an orphan's burial - he gets more in his death than what he got when he was alive. A story of a woman who has an illegitimate baby and they both die. 'The story of Kalyani' is the story of a woman who tries to make a life and how she is exploited by people. Two urchins, one of whom goes to Pakistan after partition while the other waits for him - and they finally do meet near a garbage dump. 'The Boundary Dispute' is about an unnecessary boundary dispute that claims the life of one neighbour while the attacker gets death by hanging and how the families pay a price for a small piece of land. The farmer is about a traditional farmer who loses everything to modern farming techniques except his loyalty to tradition. The last story is about a grandma and her fascination for her grand daughter's handbag - a sign of all that is modern and progressive.
Stories that will stay. Stories woven out of life.
They are dark and sad. The first one 'In the flood' is about a dog that is abandoned by it's master in a flood and dies of hunger and thirst. I saw some message somewhere that said that it is now a law that one cannot abandon their pets in natural disasters (I hoped they included relatives too). 'The Tahsildar's father' is about the father of a tahsildar who is seen as an embarrassment to the son's high status and ill treated by the daughter-in-law - and the old man vanishes after that. 'Under the mango tree' is the tale of a friendship between a boy and a girl - and how it ends badly for the girl while the boy does well for himself. There is one about an orphan who becomes a soldier and who marries a girl of an old lady he meets and dies after that. There is one of an orphan's burial - he gets more in his death than what he got when he was alive. A story of a woman who has an illegitimate baby and they both die. 'The story of Kalyani' is the story of a woman who tries to make a life and how she is exploited by people. Two urchins, one of whom goes to Pakistan after partition while the other waits for him - and they finally do meet near a garbage dump. 'The Boundary Dispute' is about an unnecessary boundary dispute that claims the life of one neighbour while the attacker gets death by hanging and how the families pay a price for a small piece of land. The farmer is about a traditional farmer who loses everything to modern farming techniques except his loyalty to tradition. The last story is about a grandma and her fascination for her grand daughter's handbag - a sign of all that is modern and progressive.
Stories that will stay. Stories woven out of life.
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