For more than five decades, acclaimed Malayalam writer Paul Zacharia has been unsettling conventions, challenging certainties and reshaping the possibilities of the short story. Fittingly, this anthology of 50 stories written over the years provides a sweeping introduction to one of Indian literature’s most inventive and iconoclastic voices.
Zacharia’s forte is the short story. His work is genre-defying, blending dark humour, magical realism, surrealism, satire and philosophical inquiry into narratives that evade easy categorisation. Comparisons with Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges are not entirely misplaced. Zacharia, like Borges, delights in blurring the boundaries between reality and imagination, the sacred and the profane, the ordinary and the extraordinary.
This collection is a rich assortment of short and very short fiction — some translated by the author himself and the rest by A.J. Thomas, Gita Krishnankutty, Dr. S. Gayatri Devi, Dr. S.P. Ramesh and Anupama Raju. Here, everyday life effortlessly coexists with the bizarre. Conversations are held with the dead; historical figures and divine beings wander into contemporary locales; animals assume human characteristics and inanimate things come to life. Yet, the extraordinary is absorbed into the rhythms of daily life by the characters with typical sangfroid.
Beneath the whimsy, however, lies Zacharia’s sharp critique of politics, religion, power and human folly. His biting wit, irreverent humour and profanities can be both amusing and unsettling, exposing hypocrisies that society often glosses over.
Failed dreams and human desperation
The opening story, ‘Bhaskara Pattelar and My Life’, sets the tone for much that follows. It is a brutal exploration of power and servitude, chronicling the toxic relationship between a lower-caste worker and his sadistic landlord. The worker remains unquestioningly devoted to his master despite relentless humiliation and exploitation, even offering his wife at his command.
Equally poignant is ‘Two Theatre Stories’, which examines innocence, violence and the blurred boundaries between performance and reality. A young boy, watching his actress mother being assaulted on stage during a play, mistakes fiction for reality and rushes to her rescue. The resulting chaos culminates in an act of violence by his father, revealing the emotional scars inflicted by adult conflicts upon children.
In ‘The Train Robbery’, a poverty-stricken wannabe revolutionary devises an amateurish plan to rob train passengers, employing a papaya wrapped in newspaper as a fake bomb. What begins as farce gradually transforms into a touching reflection on failed dreams and human desperation.
As a Catholic who grew up in Kerala, Zacharia frequently draws upon Biblical imagery and Christian traditions. An example is ‘Who Knows’, a deeply psychological tale set against the backdrop of King Herod’s massacre of infants. Narrated through the eyes of a soldier haunted by his participation in the killings, the story explores guilt, trauma and redemption. His encounter with a prostitute, herself burdened by suffering, lends the narrative extraordinary emotional depth.
Similarly compelling is ‘The Death and Funeral of Sr. Alphonsa’, a magical-realist reimagining of Kerala’s beloved saint. Watching her own funeral unfold, Sr. Alphonsa seeks forgiveness from those she leaves behind. Through satire, tenderness and surreal imagery, Zacharia reflects on how an ordinary woman marked by illness and suffering is transformed into a revered spiritual figure.
In ‘Till You See the Looking Glass’, traditional Christian assumptions are challenged through a strikingly human portrayal of Jesus Christ, while stories such as ‘Before I Go to Bed’ and ‘A Christmas Story’ seamlessly blend the sacred with the mundane.
Reflections on survival and mortality
The anthology also showcases Zacharia’s mastery of the epistolary form. ‘A Complaint About the Public Library at Yesupuram’ unfolds as a letter from a distressed life member lamenting the decline of a once-vibrant institution. Likewise, ‘A Day’s Work’ uses correspondence to explore ageing, loneliness and the commodification of caregiving, as a son details the exhausting responsibilities involved in looking after his elderly mother.
Among the philosophical and fable-like tales, ‘Once Upon a Time’ and ‘Reflections of a Hen in Her Last Hour’ stand out. In the former, a group of frogs devises a strategy to preserve its lineage from a predatory cat; in the latter, a hen awaiting death contemplates her fate while admiring the jackal that will consume her. Both stories are profound reflections on survival, mortality and the complex relationship between victim and oppressor.
There are also stories about love, desire, romance, anxiety and the absurdities of everyday life in Kerala but not all burn bright.
Yet, this is a rich collection from a master storyteller whose imagination remains wild and fearless as ever, evoking mixed emotions but profoundly human at its core. The stories demand to be savoured slowly and reflected upon rather than rushed through.
50 Stories
Paul Zacharia
Aleph Book Company
₹999
The reviewer is a Bengaluru-based independent journalist.