Talk:Pathummayude Aadu

Untitled
"It is as difficult to categorize the book as belonging to any one kind of literature, as it is to find any other book remotely similiar to it." Nonsense. will do something about it. Also, humour is the overarching charateristic; but want is the underlying reality. the perennial half-starvation of women and children. only when the author stays home for a while and has a look into the household life of women while the men of the family are awy, does realise a lot of things.

skeleton of story
basheer wants mother not to work so hard, but he hates to begin a conversation, for it will either end in umma asking for money or asking him to get married. when money order arrives, everyone knows of it before basheer; basheer's umma: the only thing that can silence her is the threat: "i will go away".. unlike hanifa, basher will go if he says so; this is the same mother, the "amma" of amma from ormakkurippu hanifa maha arkkeesane; "i will go join the army.. stealing milk from the goat.. the two goats, pathummaa's and its daughter, belongs to anumma; the women get close to nothing to eat. they steal milk, so patthumma takes away the kid, thinking that the gaot will not milk.. the men of the house exploit the women; like hanifa and abdulkhaadar applying pressure tactics to make patthumma give them tea with milk everyday.. then.. basheer and the chaamba-maram.. for money he will give only small chaambaykka's ; for love he will give any number of them..

then childhood anecdotes about abdulkhaadar.. not just childhood. later too, hanifa's and his..

why the article looks messy
it is in a stage of active content addition for the moment. i do not know what i purpose to do about it. i have removed the bookstub template, should it be retained any longer? the story can be summmarised to as small a paragraph as one wants to make it. it is a compressible story, even perhaps seems a story-less story, but really it does have a complete logical connection and nature of a novel. one can finsh reading it in one sitting.

the novel is a neatly composed work without loose ends. there is one story thread which is set against the background of household chaos. then at places there are short flash-backs, where the author reminiscences a short anecdote from past, at an appropriate stage of the story, to put things in perspective by providing background info. e.g. with the school girls incident, he couples the flashback about another set of schoolgirls asking him to speak at a function at school. ; abdul khadar and hanifa anecdotes etc.

but, i wanted to write about how, as a whole, the overriding everpresent theme of the story is: motherhood (basheer wrote, that it was written by an ignoramus of a bachelor; wrote so later in his life, after he got married and became wise:"avivahitharil jnaanikalilla") about motherhood, but written by a man, who cannot personally experience motherhood: i wonder if any woman has ever written anything that comes close.

the motherhood connection
if one says that P.a. is a novel about motherhood, it might seem stretcing it too far; overanalysis and dissection invariably distorts the beauty of a work of art. perhaps not about the personal experience of a mother.. no, far from it. rather, indirectly deals with motherhood.


 * if you sift out the humour and look at the bare-naked story.. you'll get the motherhood connection. i am not sure if the motherhood connection was intended by basheer or whether it surfaced unconsciously during the writing of the book; but i do not doubt that the whole lenght of the book is interwoiven with the maternity theme. pregnancy, childbirth, suckling, child-rearing: this is what the story revolves around. in humans as well as animals. even inconsequnet details. unconnected to the story, basheer receives a letter from a friend who lives far away. he replies cordially, writing a letter and asking abu to send it.. by coincidence or intent, the letter happens to carry news of childbirth.. basheer congratulates his friend on becoming a father.

forgive me for now, but this article is badly written as of now; will do something about it.. since i am the sole editor of the article for the moment; and nobody seems very much interested in its content; will cleanup after this content addition stage is past. --Pournami

memoir vs. fiction
the events in the story are real, as are the human and animal characters. i've included some biographical stuff in the article that is not stated as such in the book, but mentioned in passing only: i was making a chronological connection. basheer lived through various kinds of life; the period of near-starvation in "sahitheesevanam" had a major impact on his literary works, so i thought it was relevant to mention.

about shabdangal being the subject of fierce criticism and about the mention of his first jayilvasam in ormakkurippu(probabbly he means the story amma)-that occurs in the book itself.. about janmadinam and kadhabeejam.. that is a personal inference; which i think is fairly accurate, from my experience of reading basheer. --Pournami 06:31, 29 October 2005 (UTC) somewhere near the end of the article.. must mention: that it was written when under treatment for paranoia--Pournami 10:08, 29 October 2005 (UTC) one small detail; i'm not really sure if Abdul khaadar of poovanpazham is Abdul Khadar the chattukaalan brother of author;

about kadhabeejam i'm not sure if it belongs to the same period as janmadinam; i don't mean date of publishing, but the date of happening of the story.-Pournami 09:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Kadhabeejam is a one act play, writen rapidfire in afew days (5-6) time for some sahitya parishad. it was written during the year 1945 towards the end of year, i think. incidentally, the date corresponds with the happenings described in kamukantediary; in the story there is mention of fountainpen, lover etc. but the lover is said to be dead; in the play; but if you refer to end of year 1945 in k.d. .. but before meeting devi: that was the period of starvation and hunger.. that is the period which forms the ithivritham of the play. the writing of the play was during a relatively prosperous period.. this transformation is mentioned in beginning pages of k.d.