Goat Life

It has been a long while at least a year since I have had the luxury of reading a novel at ease. I chanced upon some free time (by no means at ease, but still ..) and by greater chance I got hold of the much celebrated Malayalam novel Aatujiveetham ( Aadujiveetham actually , Goat Life ). My experience reading the book and finishing it one and a half sitting compares well to the description of the first (and the last) rain that Najeeb the protagonist experiences in an unknown part of the vast Arabian desert. At first the rain and the novel ushers in me a wave of fear and pain of not having experienced such a powerful yet familiar form of art for a long time. Then much like what the rain does to Najeeb, familiarity, joy and exhilaration returns and takes over the reins of the parched soul and the spirit. I had spent more than most of last year or so busy with the business of life leaving my spirits to the mercy of parched desert-like intellectual conditions and then comes along Benyamin's extraordinarily sweet , soothing and replenishing desert rain. If you read the novel the way I did , I guarantee similar results . So what is it about ? The story is a simple one based on the real life saga of Najeeb,  a labourer from Kerala who lands in the Gulf bearing dreams of making a life but gets enslaved as a shepherd under an extremely cruel Arab in inhuman work conditions . To add to the misery there is no form of wages except some stale khubboos and water !! He finally makes a daring escape across the merciless desert escaping all its dangers and cruelty. As the author himself admits the story itself is not worth more than 10 pages of text but that is where the author brings in his craft - through Najeeb and his struggle the novelist clearly lays out his outlook on human life , his message on positivity and the theme of surrender to an eternal force not as a choice for humans but as the only way to survive is endearing and captivating. The rendering is deeply spiritual and prompts a lot of soul searching in the reader with regards to one's approach to life and it's vagaries . There is an extraordinary piece of prose around resilience of life in the desert and how it jumps back into splendour immediately after a rain somewhere in second quarter of the novel and I had dog earred the page purely out of respect to the author , only to learn later that this was also the authors' favourite piece in the novel.
Refreshing , replenishing and reassuring read - thank you Benyamin !!