Why residents of Kerala's Thasarak village have been 'living' with fictitious characters for decades

In 1969, Malayalam writer OV Vijayan published his debut novel Khasakkinte Ithihasam, or The Legends of Khasak. The novel, which enjoys cult status in Malayalam literature, was later translated into English by Vijayan himself, in 1994, and into French and German.

The story of Ravi — a young university student who takes up a teaching job in Khasak, and his relationship to the village — the novel, it is said, was inspired by Vijayan’s stay in Thasarak in the ‘50s, with Khasak being “modelled on”, or being a “fictionalised version” of Thasarak.

“It had all begun this way,” Vijayan wrote in the afterword of The Legends of Khasak. In “1956 my sister got a teaching assignment in the village of Thasarak. This was part of a [Kerala] State scheme to send barefoot graduates to man single-teacher schools in backward villages… Since it was hard for a girl [woman] to be on her own in a remote village, my parents had rented a little farmhouse and moved in with my sister. Meanwhile, I had been sacked from the college where I taught. Jobless and at a loose end, I too joined them in Thasarak to drown my sorrows...Destiny had been readying me for Khasak.”

But though Vijayan moved on, from Thasarak, and The Legends of Khasak, going on to write other acclaimed works such as Dharmapuranam and Gurusagaram, before his death in 2005, for the people of Thasarak, the 1969 book continues to be the fulcrum around which their lives rotate.

The link was further crystallised in 2015 when the culture department of the Kerala government initiated the maintenance of the storehouse/granary/farmhouse where Vijayan had resided during his stay in Thasarak as a memorial to the author, enlisting a team of sculptors to assist in the project. A pond referenced in the novel, Arabikkulam, was refurbished and sculptures of the characters from the novel were installed along the pathway leading to it. A bust of Vijayan was installed in front of the memorial in 2017. The memorial is managed by the OV Vijayan Smaraka Samiti.

“We receive many visitors on weekends. We have three pavilions named after Vijayan's works, Gurusagaram, Dharmapuranam, and Madhuram Gayathi, which provide guests with tranquil areas for contemplation and dialogue,” explains Aravindakshan (identified by a single name), the memorial’s manager.

He adds: “The traditional granary (njattupura) where Vijayan resided during the late 1950s and 1960s while writing Khasakkinte Ithihasam now accommodates a photo gallery, cartoon gallery, letter gallery and video gallery.” The entrance to the memorial features an archway embellished with 140 granite sculptures, each carved by sculptors to represent characters from the novel, transforming the fictional realm into a tangible reality. The landscape around, featuring palm trees, a mosque, a burial ground, and tamarind trees, is intricately integrated into the story of the novel.

But the distinguishing feature of the memorial is not the galleries, however, the display, the sculptures or the landscaping, but the locals who linger around, eager to strike up a conversation with visitors, to claim familiarity with purported former residents on whom they believe Vijayan based the characters of Khasakkinte Ithihasam.

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Take, for example, the character of Appu-Kili; the villagers insist he was based on Kili-Annan, a person who lived near the granary in Thasarak during Vijayan’s stay there.

At times, the claims of familiarity transcend the immediate border of Thasarak. “There was an individual who lived here who resembled Mollakka from the novel,” says S Raju, a resident of Peruvenbu, a nearby village. “Because of his resemblance to the character, as children, we were convinced that it was he whom Vijayan had portrayed.”

On his first visit to Thasarak in 2009, Girish Nair, a Palakkad resident working as a marketing manager in Chennai, recalls hearing anecdotes about the characters in Khasakkinte Ithihasam. “A group of people I met near what is now the memorial asked me if I had read the novel. When I said ‘no’, they made fun of me. They then began recounting the story, asserting that most of the characters in the novel are still present in the village. I was somewhat sceptical of their assertion, however,” Girish says.

He adds: “During a recent visit to Thasarak, I realised that some people continue to believe that many characters from the novel once lived in their village.”

Are the villagers’ accounts accurate?

“Not at all,” insists P Gopi Narayanan, who collaborated closely with Vijayan in transcribing his literary works after the writer was afflicted with Parkinson's disease while residing in New Delhi during the mid-1990s.

Born in Palakkad in 1930, the son of an officer in the erstwhile Malabar Special Police, Vijayan spent some time teaching at colleges before becoming a writer and cartoonist for Shankar's Weekly. His cartoons have featured in leading newspapers such as The Hindu, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and the Statesman. The Legends of Khasak were published after 12 years of writing and revising and is credited for having introduced a new sensibility in Malayalam literature. His literary corpus includes five novels, eight collections of stories, seven collections of political essays and one volume of satire.

Talking about the Legends of Khasak, Narayanan, author of OV Vijayan Orujeevitham (OV Vijayan, A life), which reflects on his two decades of experience as a transcriptionist for Vijayan, adds: “While the geography of Thasarak depicted in the novel is indeed real, the characters themselves are fictional. There are assertions that characters such as Appu-Kili, Allah-Pitcha Mollakka, and Maimoona once lived in the village, but this is not the case.”

In fact, on a later visit to Thasarak, Vijayan himself recalled being stopped by locals who spoke of the characters in his debut novel as real inhabitants of the village.

“As I walked into the reception long years after my eventless stay in Thasarak, a Muslim youth crushed me with a hug, he was crying. ‘Kili-Annan, he sobbed, is dead’. My character Appu-Kili, a prop of the novel, was created after no Thsarakkian model. He was the embodiment of a childhood memory. But I did not want to violate the villager’s boon of love… Practically every villager has identified some situation which gives him or her entry into the fictional personae,” he wrote in “An Afterword” to The Legends of Khasak.

According to Muneer (identified by first name only), a Thasarak resident, Vijayan’s work gives the villagers a sense of identity. Perhaps it is this that explains their insistent claims of familiarity with the characters in the book. “Although I was exposed to numerous stories related to the novel during my growing-up years, I could only truly appreciate the brilliance of the work after I read it myself. It instilled in me a sense of identity, despite the fact that the characters within the novel are entirely fictional.”

Muneer adds: “I have read many other novels since, but The Legends of Khasak continues to be the finest in my collection.”

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Indeed, attachment to Vijaya’s work has drawn many to Thasarak, with some like PV Sukumaran even going on to buy a house in the village. A bilingual author and translator, who has published more than 20 books, mostly translations from Tamil to Malayalam, 66-year-old Sukumar named the house Appu-Kili, after the character in the novel.

“I have been a frequent visitor to Thasarak since the 1980s, driven by my profound love for the book. I bought the house from a Muslim family. I did not undertake any significant renovations; just minor adjustments. I go there whenever I sense the presence of the novel's characters around me,” says Sukumaran, who already owned a house just six kilometres from Thasarak when he bought the house here in 2014.

He adds: “Nowadays, people visit me primarily because I own a house named after Appu-Kili. The local villagers still hold the belief that it was the actual house of Appu-Kili, as they consider Kili-Annan, from whom I purchased the house, to be Appu-Kili. It is not correct.”

The association with Thasarak has also come to his aid, at times, helping him forge a bond with other fans of Vijayan. While at a government office once for some work, he says, “As soon as I mentioned Thasarak, the officer expedited the process and completed my task in ten minutes. He was an admirer of OV Vijayan.”

For D Manoj Vaikom, a resident of Kottayam district, exposure to Vijayan’s novel helped him find purpose in life; trying to express the content of the book through photographs of the village. “I select two significant lines from the novel and take a fitting photograph to express them. I have captured over 3000 such images, encompassing the region. It serves as a recollection of the novel’s pages,” says Manoj, whose collection of 50 photographs is permanently displayed at the OV Vijayan Memorial.

Having visited Thasarak “more than 22 times”, he says his “intention is not merely to photograph a specific image or object. With some striking lines from the novel, I traverse from one end to the other. I have visited the location in every season to capture the prevailing mood”.

Last year, when the Kerala state government initiated a ‘Literary Tourism Circuit’ in Kerala, it incorporated the OV Vijayan Memorial in it.

“The tourism potential of Thasarak is big. Visitors from various places come to the village as part of the Literary Tourism Circuit. Numerous cultural events occur regularly, which aid in raising awareness among the villagers regarding Kerala’s literary history," says K Sulaiman, a travel guide based in Palakkad.

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Some argue, however, that the memorial doesn’t contribute enough to the lives of the residents in Thasarak, unlike some places where tourist footfall has helped boost the local economy by either providing jobs or resulting in a surge in hospitality-related businesses. Most residents of Thasarak earn a living selling fish.

“I am certain that many in the village have not read Vijayan’s novel, yet they are familiar with its story. The memorial committee should organise more programmes in collaboration with the villagers; only then will it truly assist the locals,” insists Mukundan (identified by a single name), an activist from Peruvembu in Palakkad.

Meanwhile, Aisha is still talking about Mimoona to any visitor who will stop long enough to listen. “The house where she resided no longer exists today.” The Thasarak resident has never read Khasakkinte Ithihasam, but adds, “I am familiar with the story and the key events described in the novel, which I learned from various people. I don’t think I need to read it since I already know the story.”

It is a confidence shared by many others in Thasarak.