As a diplomat and writer, Shashi Tharoor has explored the diversity of culture in his native India. In reaction to his works The Great Indian Novel and Show Businesss, Tharoor has been referred to as "one of the finest writers of satirical novels currently operating in English" (Shashi Tharoor). His most recent work, India: From Midnight to Millennium, is a nonfiction account of India's past and projected future inspired by the 50th anniversary of India's independence.

"Daughters  of  Kerala"  is  a marvellous collection of first-rate stories, skilfully  translated  by  Achamma  Chandersekaran,  which  marks a welcome addition   to   the  English-speaking  world's  appreciation  of  Malayalam literature. The quality of the writers (many of them legends in the field), the  range  of  their  concerns  (all dealing creatively with women in 20th century  Kerala  society) and the accessible directness of the translations (by  an experienced collaborator of the eminent R.E. Asher) make this book a particular pleasure to read."

Good  luck  with  it.  I trust you will try to ensure the publication of an Indian  edition,  and  I do hope that my endorsement may help you to find a publisher.
with all good wishes,
yours sincerely,

Shashi Tharoor

Braj Behari Kachru has written more than a dozen influential books and coedited the trailblazing journal, ‘World Englishes’, he is a Jubilee Professor and serving as the head of the Linguistics Department and director of the Center for Advanced Study. His research specialty is sociolinguistics. Achamma Chandersekaran combines the skills of a perceptive linguist and a sensitive literary craftsperson in ‘transcreating’ in English 25 Malayalam short stories written about the daughters of Kerala.

The collection provides a touching chronicle of the contexts of women’s experiences, frustrations, and struggles in the changing social order of that exciting part of India. The vivid translations open a window for non-Malayalam speakers in India and beyond to yet another regional facet of the world of Indian women.

We are indebted to Ms. Chandersekaran for this literary initiative in addition to her continued social activism and commitment to social and political causes. I hope this laudable and welcome translation is soon made available to South Asian readers by a publisher in the region.

To immerse one-self in these stories is to be drawn into a strange magic. Part of the strangeness is the juxtaposition of matter-of-fact modernity with a quality of absolute timelessness, arising in part from ancient Hindu mythology but drawing also on a deep-rooted poetic sensibility still un-self-consciously present in the people described here--especially the lovers. And their poetry makes the book sing. The intensity of feeling in these stories is the deeper, perhaps, because of the quietness of their prevailing tone. Love in all its variations is the pervasive theme, yet no two stories are alike, from the magical and haunting :"Arya Reborn" to the brief, almost Tolstoyan morality tale, "The Devil's Jacket." Achamma Chandersekeran is to be congratulated for bringing these stories from a little known province of her native India to the attention of American readers through her sensitive and skillful translations.

Lyn Richmond 

Translator, Geoffrey Chaucer: The Parliament of Birds.

An extra ordinary translation of Malayalam short stories comes out of Achamma Chandersekaran's magical touch of translation. The great literary tradition of Malayalam which is one of the richest of Indian languages, finds its way into world literature through this re-creation of some excellent short stories. This anthology embraces the works of some outstanding writers of Malayalam literature dealing mainly with the problems of women of this beautiful land in the southern part of India. Achamma has selected stories of passion, social marginalization and unknown planes of human relations. They must be considered as a profound expression of women's predicament presented through a feminine perspective. The stories are beautifully translated without losing the perfume of some of the great writers of Malyalam literature.

Vaikom Murali 
Literary Columnist Darsanam,
Maveli Nagar Cochin University P.O.
Kerala 682022, India

Achamma Chandersekaran's latest work "Daughters of Kerala" is one part an impressive anthology of Kerala women's whirl into the 21st century and another part an artfully distilled essence of the crème de la crème of prose fiction in contemporary Malayalam literature. Portrayed in twenty five lushly crafted and skillfully translated short stories and centering on the trials and tribulations of women caught on the cross purposes at work within families, this literary feat illustrates the cultural evolution of a populace ,elegantly presented with finesse. It is hard not to be reminded of Al gore's compliments to the demographic transition of Kerala and the tributes he paid to the impressive rate of literacy among Kerala women, eloquently documented in his celebrated work "Earth in the Balance". Achamma has done a commendable job in this scholarly pursuit preserving the thematic richness of the passionate and intelligent narratives while introducing a new sense of style to trans cultural literary translation. "Daughter's of Kerala" is sure to be received as a brilliant and evocative literary work by connoisseurs of prose fiction and may very well be the harbinger of similar books waiting in the wings.

 M.V.Pillai.M.D

Daughters of Kerala offers a rare insight into the innermost beings of Kerala women and their relationship with men in a context not easily available in the West. Chosen with an open mind from a vast sea of short stories in Malyalam, each story is a brilliant gem that is meant to enjoyed and treasured, one at a time. I would highly recommend this book for a program in Women's studies and for some deeply satisfying reading

Gita Bhatia  (Maryland,USA) - June 6, 2006 

DAUGHTERS OF KERALA: 25 SHORT STORIES BY AWARD-WINNING AUTHORS, translated from Malayalam by Achamma Chandersekaran, provides a fascinating read for anyone interested in the art of the short story, international literature, women's studies, or simply learning more about other cultures. Chandersekaran's anthology takes readers to the southwest region of India, where literacy is high and the tradition of short stories--to which women of Kerala have been important contributors--is at least a century old.

Chandersekaran carefully selected these stories,published over a span of 70 years. They convey situations both particular to the multiethnic Malayalam culture and reflective of the universality of a woman's struggles within family and other social relationships, her place in society, and her sense of self. Rather than arranging the stories chronologically by date of publication, Chandersekaran chose to present them thematically. It soon becomes clear why. Love, marriage, infidelity, jealousy, loneliness, cruelty, kindness, guilt, innocence, heartbreak, life, death, are timeless, as is the ever-present quandary about self.

In the introduction to DAUGHTERS OF KERALA, distinguished linguist R.E. Asher provides historical background to Malayalam fiction, noting disparate views about the value of education for women, which often appear in the volume. I found this to be especially interesting.

One of the anthology's earliest stories written in 1948--"Female Intellect (Women have a Mind Too)," by K. Saraswathyamma-- features a bright, young, educated woman with a strong sense of self. When she defies convention, conversing frequently with an equally bright young man, other students view her behavior as scandalous, assuming it is based on physical attraction. She strongly denies the physical component: "The more you realize how smart a person is, isn't it natural to like him more? What I don't get is why people cannot understand that there can be an intellectual attraction." This theme is carried throughout the story.

In a 1998 story by Sara Thomas, "A Rest House for Travelers," a young married woman remembers what she used to be like: "Before her marriage, she was a girl full of vigor and courage. Her college principal called her `smart girl.' She was in the forefront for music, dancing. . . Today she was a very different person. When did she lose her `self'?" The reader may ponder if this character finds a part of her lost self through forbidden love.

Whether a story dates from 1931, 2001, or somewhere in between, or whether the writer is female or male, each author wraps the reader into her or his characters' situations, providing a fascinating, often painful, but always enlightening read. Therein lie the genius and masterful translation skills of Achamma Chandersekaran.

Until I purchased this book at a book fair a few months ago, curious about its title, I knew very little about women's literature in India, once part of the British Empire. And I certainly didn't know about Kerala or "the daughters of Kerala." Once I began reading, I was captivated by the stories. I am grateful to the translator for bringing this work from her homeland to us Anglophones.

Carla Danzinger   (McLean, VA) - July 30, 2006  

Daughters of Kerala is a fascinating collection of short stories from an area full of beauty. To a westerner these stories offer a glimpse into a culture where marriage is usually arranged rather than chosen by the bride, and where women often find themselves stuck in a role of servitude. Yet romance still surfaces, along with a deep sense of responsibiliy and true passion. Many of the stories are like exotic paintings--full of flowers and their perfume, and the scent of love. Others deal with more tragic issues, such as "When Big Trees Fall," which takes place in a convent during the time immediately following Indira Ghandi's assination in 1984. It is about sisters in a convent who save a Sikh mother and her son from the wrath of locals, and reads like a true suspense story from World War Two.

The review by Carla Danziger captures the spirit of these stories better than I could and inspired me to purchase the book, which I now share with my friends. I highly recommend it.

Joseph O Mercer (Albuquerque, NM USA)   - October 5, 2006

Something profound seems to touch you when you turn the pages of Daughters of Kerala, a collection of Malayalam short stories translated by Achamma Chandersekaran. Something that transports you to another world, the existence of the real, and one might believe, even the unreal. Of lives that merely existed, those that rebelled and even those that chose to re-exist in multifarious ways. Like through their children, or in the momentary existence of a wonderful world of love and touch, or a caress, those that truly allows a woman to feel and be. Little details and musings that were carried by these women in their beings that moulded their lives, their beliefs of who they were as individuals and who they were expected to be being women. Social stigma, culture, tradition, all of which weave together to form the web that seizes and binds the hearts and minds of Kerala women.

Like in When Big Trees Fall, where the author N. S. Madhavan, throws light on the many Kerala women who lived their whole lives in cloistered convents, to serve people all over the world. It allows the reader to believe that this situation, on one hand, may have arisen out of an economic need, women subjected to live their lives dedicated to others out of their families sheer need to save face than having an unwed daughter at home. Of a quiet world of piano and garden, put forth in a tumultuous story set in Delhi where a Sikh woman and her child are saved from death without causing harm to others.

Happy marriage

Other stories like The Lies My Mother Told Me by Ashita brings alive the many notions passed on from mother to daughter, of secrets to a happy marriage. Secrets like a way to a man's heart are through his stomach, only for the young wife to realise the bitter truth of life. A truth her mother chose to forget, masked by innumerable lies. As the story reads... "When I got into the bedroom after being in the smoke and soot of the kitchen the whole day, he was dissatisfied and wanted bigger breasts and thighs. I realised that, just like preparing food, I had to prepare for love also. I felt harshly betrayed by Amma... .'.

Each of the 25 works of eminent Malayalam writers in the book has traversed the world in which the women of Kerala lived and continue to do so. Clearly and cleverly translated by Achamma, a Keralite who left for the United States in 1962 as an undergraduate student, they speak much of her perceptions of Kerala society.

Uncommon for women to pursue further studies in a foreign nation, Achamma left her little village of Arthunkal in Alappuzha, to achieve what women in her days were expected not to do. Having worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce as an international trade specialist for education and training services, Achamma's travel of the world caused her to focus and depict Kerala in a new and different light. Unknown to many of the culture and beliefs of this small South Indian state, the stories she has chosen aim at throwing open the hearts and minds of Kerala women all over the world, each one of them highlighting her understanding of women, both in the early 20th century and towards the year 2000.

But she says the stories were not deliberate, but were picked from a list of award-winning authors of Kerala, each one bringing forth the situation of women over the years, enabling the English audience to obtain a taste of Kerala, its women and the socio-economic environment in which they live. Her translation is beautiful, literally allowing the reader to taste the words as penned by the authors themselves, sentences framed in simple drama whose fruitiness can be savoured easily. Like in A Rest House for Travellers where she says "the sense of guilt and embarrassment was not sufficient to melt the frost of her detachment."

So, its not surprising that Achammas's second translation (the first being Me Grandad `ad an Elephant, three novels by the late Vaikom Mohammed Basheer, co-translated by Dr. R. E. Asher) was awarded Best Book 2005 Award for the short story fiction category by U.S.A BookNews.com. Or that Shashi Tharoor reviewed it as `... .a welcome addition to the English speaking world's appreciation of Malayalam.'

But for Achamma Daughters of Kerala has been work that has thrown attention on little Kerala, "where numerous situations have hence come forth," like lectures and discussions of feminism in Kerala. But she explains that there is a desire to portray the other side of Kerala too in yet another translation. "Not just stories of suppression but of successful women who have ridden the wave of change; withstood social inhibitions and proven to be true daughters of Kerala!"

Daughters of Kerala is an exhilarating read. Translated glowingly to English from Malayalam, the twenty-five short stories bristle with the flame and ice of complex human relations. Despite the book's title, the stories are not feminist, but a haunting blaze of images of ordinary women and men, caught in the web of living in a fast changing society. The overall focus of stories is, however, on women. While `Female Intellect' is a representative story of feudal style segregation of sexes in the early years of last century, ` A Dream From Israel' is the story of a latter day girl taking charge of events as they develop in her social whirl. There are crisp and tender, snapshot narratives like `Baby Doll' and longer sustained tales like `When Big Trees fall' keeping balance between different genre of short fiction. Altogether a prized gift to literature of global village from a language with one of the richer literary legacies in South Asia. Achamma Chandersekaran deserves encomiums galore, for her gracious and painstaking enterprise.

- K.P.Joseph, Writer Critic   (Kochi,India) - December 4, 2006

Thanks to their adept translator, Achamma Coilparampil Chandersekaran, the stories in Daughters of Kerala preserve each author’s distinctive voice. At the same time, the collection raises universal questions about the lives of girls and women. The book will make a welcome text in a course in world literature, women’s studies, or short fiction. Daughters of Kerala will also appeal to the individual reader seeking a book as entertaining as it is informative.

Carole Fitzgerald Hayes   - September 7,   2007

Daughters of Kerala. Achamma C. Chandersekaran (transl). 2004.
Tuscan: Hats Off Books. pp.196. US$ 17.95 (paperback).
Reviewed by Marie Varghese¹

25 Short Stories by Award-Winning Authors, presents a refreshing collection of fictional narratives that vividly represent the everyday experiences of women from the southwest state of Kerala, India. These pieces were originally published in Malayalam over a span of seventy years, and each story has been translated into English for the first time by Achamma Chandersekaran, a diasporic Keralite and former international trade specialist for education and training services at the U.S. Department of Commerce. While it may surprise potential readers of Daughters of Kerala to discover that a number of contributors to this anthology are male, Chandersekaran explains in the preface that her selection of stories was not based on the gender of the author but rather in the commitment of each writer to feature Malayalee women in the 20th century. Taking this point into consideration, this anthology complicates the notion of what counts in South Asian Women’s writing and may be useful to individuals interested in Women and Gender Studies and the social sciences, as well as creative writing. Despite the fact that none of the writers in this anthology explicitly describe their works as “feminist texts,” it should be noted that these stories can be used in the classroom to discuss feminist approaches to analyzing prose produced in the global south.

According to Chandersekaran, the stories included in this volume can be grouped according to two sub-themes. The first theme that emerges within these narratives confronts the challenges and possibilities of education among women in Kerala. This region of India is known for high levels of literacy and formal education among women, despite having one of the lowest per capita incomes in the country. This “Kerala Model” of governance, a legacy of socialist policies on education and land reform, has caught the attention of academics and development analysts for decades. Yet, as some of these stories demonstrate, these noteworthy advances in educational opportunities do not always translate into more autonomous conditions for women. As R.E. Ascher points out in the foreword, education is regarded as a “passport to marriage” for women in many cases, and a number of short stories echo this perspective in the book. For example, Sarah Thomas’ (1998) “A Rest House for Travelers” descriptively illustrates the situation of Mrs. Jayadev, a bright college student who has married a professor at her school. Thomas writes, “Many women envied [Mrs. Jayadev]…But today, if they knew the truth…she was just his housekeeper, nothing more, except for the social occasions at the college when she was just an adornment” (29). In contrast, a story written fifty years earlier by K. Saraswathyamma, (1948) “Female Intellect: Women Have a Mind Too,” features the outgoing and strong-willed Vilasini, who is regarded by her teachers as the star pupil of her school. Throughout the narrative, Vilasini contends with accusations of being called a “scandalous woman” by her peers, simply because she engages in debates with male students in her class. On one occasion, while attending a social gathering at school, Vilasini is described by her peers as “a woman with manly qualities” (128).

After the protagonist refuses the sexual advances of a male student, the author writes that Vilisini “thought about her behavior towards him to figure out if she had done anything to give him the wrong impression. She had not felt anything more for him than camaraderie with a colleague, nor had she acted in any other way. She only behaved like a man would to another man” (130). Stories such as these can certainly lay the groundwork for engaging classroom discussions about the intersections between gender roles and education. Another recurrent theme in this book involves stories that deal with women confronting patriarchal norms imposed on women as wives and mothers. While the all-too-familiar trope of the suffering Indian woman trapped by tradition is present in a number of these narratives, (for example, “Fraction,” “Amma,” and “Lies My Mother Told Me”), other stories describe women who resist the norm as they experience intimacy and desire outside the institution of marriage. For example, in “Ghare Baire: At Home and Outside” by Gita Hirayan (1997), the author writes about a woman who spends her days daydreaming of her love-affair with her neighbor, Haridas. As the story progresses, the female protagonist questions her lover and asks him if he would permit his own wife to pursue an extra-marital affair to which he replies, “I would kill her” (98). In “A Lullaby of Dreams” by Martin Eresseril (1974), a married woman admits her attraction to a young man living in her neighborhood without realizing that her husband silently acknowledges and reluctantly complies with the situation. Other stories that touch upon intimacy outside of marriage include “Rosemary” (1978), “Underling” (1945), and one of the earliest published pieces in the collection, “In the Shroud” (1931). One of the great strengths of this anthology comes from the variety of voices that are featured in these stories. These stories represent the experiences of women from variety of economic backgrounds; narratives of the urban middle class (“A Rented House”), the working poor (“Wooden Dolls), and the Malayalee elite (“One Still Picture Cannot Capture a Life’s Story”) offer fascinating insights into the intersections of women’s roles in relation to social class. The women characters in these texts also represent major religious denominations in Kerala including Hindus (“Sandalwood for a Funeral Pyre”), Muslims (“The Dawn of Enlightenment”), Christians (“When Big Trees Fall”) and Jewish communities (“A Dream From Israel”). However, readers who are unfamiliar with the social, political, economic, and religious contexts of life in Kerala may have limited success in grasping the historical framework of these stories unless they seek assistance from outside texts. For example, “A Dream from Israel” could have been enhanced by scholarly commentaries on the centuries-old Jewish community in Cochin. Likewise, the generous old woman in “The Daughter of Man” who continuously provides food for underprivileged people in her community would have benefited from an introductory analysis of the legacy of socialist land reform in the region. In the preface to the anthology, Chandersekaran notes, “Malayalam writers and Kerala culture have to pass through translation before they can be presented to the world.” Unfortunately, the difficulty of the translation is not only fostered by the lack of contextual information, but also evinced by a few noticeable instances of awkward word choice and inelegant phrasing.

While some of Kerala’s most internationally recognized Malayalee women writers such as Arundhati Roy and Meena Alexander are not included in this anthology, Chandersekaran should be applauded for highlighting the work of authors that have, until now, been inaccessible to non-Malayalee speaking audiences. At the same time

Chandersekaran’s exclusive focus on “award-winning authors” makes me wonder about the missed opportunity of publishing new texts by Malayalee women writers who have been marginalized by the mainstream Kerala literary scene. For instance, it would have been interesting to read short stories that reflect the experiences of queer women, gender non-conforming women, sex workers and unmarried elderly women. In addition, I found it surprising to discover that there were no stories about diasporic Malayalee women living outside the subcontinent, considering that both the publisher and the translator are based in the United States. Nonetheless, Daughters of Kerala is a welcome addition to the corpus of literature about women from south India.

¹ Marie Varghese is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University.

Marie Varghese   - May,   2004