Maria, Just Maria: Life of a Syrian Christian woman in Kerala, beyond madness and reason

Maria, Just Maria tells the story of a neglected little girl born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, and growing up in a world which is divided into strict binaries. Maria has not made a strong enough impression or singled herself out to demand the attention of her parents who are too occupied with her three siblings. The responsibility of bringing her up passes on to her maternal grandparents, Geevarghese and Mariyamma. She lives at Kottarathil Veedu, the ancestral home, where she is left to her own devices.

While Maria might be the titular character and the narrative largely unfolds through her viewpoint, she is not the sole central figure in the novel. In fact, there are chapters where she does not appear at all. Mary has intentionally structured the novel to be “unsystematic… something that would reflect the thoughts and writing of a scattered mind”. As such, chapters read more like isolated vignettes that cohere towards the larger story without filling in all the gaps.

Still, there is some organisation. While the first part is seemingly set in the present with an institutionalised Maria who has begun to regain her memories and is writing her story. The second part follows her childhood with her grandparents and ends with her being returned to her parents. The third and last part is set in the intervening years after she leaves home, gets married and then divorced, and finds herself at ease in a band of fellow ‘mad’ people, before Geevarghese dies and she adopts a personal vow of silence.

Living life, on their terms

In the same interview, Mary asserts: “Society will very easily brand you mad or crazy just because you don’t live according to its norms and conditions, or it sees you as being different from its conception of normal or from so-called normal people.” Maria has a Marian point of view. While it is not explicitly stated, she could be neurodivergent, possibly on the autism spectrum. She struggles with tasks and aspects of life that others might take for granted.

She delights in playing games that she has invented, fooling around with her dog, or accompanying Geevarghese on his regular excursions to toddy shops. She is easily distracted, unsure about herself and her place in the world. After a point, Maria has to grow up and out of the carefreeness of childhood but that does not mean she must embrace the conventions of adulthood. She continues to tread her own path and be different.

Maria is not the only female character who transgresses boundaries in the novel. Anna Valyamma, a poor distant relation, is given shelter at Kottarathil Veedu as a child by Mathiri, the paternal grandmother of Geevarghese. Anna is brought up, grows old, and dies there. She remains unmarried, through no fault of her own, but she knows how to take her pleasure into her own hands: “Anna never knew a man, but right from her youth, she knew her own body. She partook in its pleasures, immersed herself in its possibilities, with a passion that a man could never have satisfied.

For Anna, her body was an instrument that would take her to the heights of intoxication.” She might have been dismissed by the world outside as stupid and largely forgotten, but she still carves out a space for herself. Another such character is Kali, a servant and one of Geevarghese’s companions on his drinking binges. She was his favourite, his ‘weakness’: ‘Kali sent the customs and the rules of the land flying in the wind, slept with any man she fancied despite having a husband, lay down by the wayside after drinking toddy with Geevarghese and Kelan and Velayudhan.’ Kali chooses to live life on her own terms and the narrative does not drastically punish her for ‘immorality’.

The othering of the mad

Sandhya Mary’s other characters are fantastic(al) as well. Take the case of Chirammel Kathanar, an old ancestor who was once a renowned magician-priest whose name is now lost to history. There are also all the family ghosts Maria sees at Geevarghese’s funeral. More than that, it is the legendary Christian figures who leave a mark. Geevarghese Sahada, or St. George the Martyr, after whom Maria’s grandfather was named, is the patron saint of the land pained by the complete disregard for his welfare and comes in the dreams of his people.

Karthav Eesho Mishiha, Christ Jesus the Messiah, unlike his popular depictions is a man with very dark skin and beard. When he starts visiting Maria, she declares him “a new leader for the marginalized all over the world” and conspires to start a revolution of the people with him at the centre as the figurehead. The most endearing character though is not a human but a dog. Chandippatti is a mongrel of ‘preternatural intelligence’ who lords over other animals in the area, philosophises at length, has airs befitting his personality, and converses with Maria and Geevarghese in full sentences, although no one else can hear them. It is these bits of scattered surrealism that make the novel stand out, larger than life, and a treat to read.

Maria, Just Maria was originally conceived and initially written in English as it began as a compilation of Mary’s thoughts when her language of thinking was English. When she realised that it could be a novel, she switched to Malayalam. As a result, many sections were actually translated from English into Malayalam. This was a daunting prospect for Kalathil while she was translating the book as it made her “agonize over my own English”.

Her decision to translate the novel was based on her personal, professional, and political interest in “madness”. As she points out, literary representations of madness tend to give the narrative voice to someone who is ‘normal’ or ‘sane’. The mad person is then turned into the other, subject to stereotype. By telling the story through the viewpoints of Maria, and to some extent Geevarghese, Sandhya Mary decentres ‘sanity’ and champions other ways of looking at, and moving in, the world beyond the ideas of madness and reason.