"Where the Lord Sleeps" is a translation of famous Tamil Novel Pallikondapuram by Neela Padmanabhan in 1970. Neela Padmanabhan is a winner of winner of the Sahitya Akademi award, India's leading literary honor.
Trivandrum a beautiful city where I have been for few times and Neela described it as I could still imagine city much better than after I visited especially temple part of the city. Those keen observations of the city make it more appreciable. Title of the book is based on Swami Padmanabha temple where Lord Vishnu is in resting position.
Coming back to the story, the story revolves around a lead character named Anantan Nair. I have listed main characters in the story.
Main Characters :
Anantan Nair: main lead in the story, story revolves around his life.
Katyayani: Wife of Anantan nair
Madhavikutty: Daughter of Anantan Nair
Prabhakaran: Son of Anantan Niar
Madhusudan Nair: Brother of Anantan Nair
Thampi: Tahsildar and boss of Anantan Nair
The story :
An ordinary Man, Anantan Nair in his sixties. Start thinking about his life. The novel explains his journey through several characters and roles.Anantan who is retired head clerk at the royal palace and now working at some shop as a clerk. He is humble, helpless and driven by situations in his life. His character seems like a person who knows what's happening but does not put enough effort or does not take a risk to change the situation, rather he ran away from problems or blame it on others.
But Author starts story beautifully from a situation where Anantan Nair is in swami Padmanabha temple on occasion of his birthday. He starts remembering his past how he spends his life in this temple premises and he remembers his intimate life which has some special moments in this temple. He remembers Katyayani. The story will not tell you what happened to Katyayani until you reach middle of the story. And its worth to read by yourself.
The novel also touches upon the spiritual thinking of society and teacher-disciple relation (Guru Shishya parampara). Kerala being always dominated by left politics Neela also bring slight touch and mention contemporary Naxalite movements and rigid Social structure of India where How it was difficult for society to accept love and inter-caste marriages.
I discussed with my Tamil friend he told me that Tamil version is much better than translation. And of course, I agree as I know that you can express the local emotions and situations in local language only.
In plot many characters appear in the novel without significance to the story. But they were useful in run the story.
Neela has described the feelings of every common man who is always in the delusion of spiritual and material life and who die ultimately attending none.
The novel will help you to get the experience of the Princely state of Travancore, traditional society caught in Whirl in Ugly so called modernisation in british era.
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