Moustache
Subtitle: a novel
By: S. Hareesh ; translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
Contributors: Kalathil, Jayasree, translator
Publisher: Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020
Place of publication: Noida, Uttar Pradesh
Language: eng
Number of pages: 331
ISBN-13: 9789353576028
Copyright date: 2020
Subjects: Fiction
Work titles: Meesha
Description: Vavachan is a Pulayan who gets the opportunity to play a policeman with an immense moustache in a musical drama. The character appears in only two scenes and has no dialogue. However, Vavachan's performance, and his moustache, terrify the mostly upper-caste audience, reviving in them memories of characters of Dalit power, such as Ravanan. Afterwards, Vavachan, whose people were traditionally banned from growing facial hair, refuses to shave off his moustache. Endless tales invent and reinvent the legend of his magic moustache in which birds roost, which allows its owner to appear simultaneously in different places and disappear in an instant, which grows as high as the sky and as thick as rainclouds and turn Vavachan into Moustache, a figure of mythic proportions. Set in Kuttanad, a below-sea-level farming region on the south-west coast of Kerala, the novel is as much a story of this land as it is of Vavachan and its other inhabitants. As they navigate the intricate waterscape, stories unfold in which ecology, power dynamics and politics become key themes. Originally published in Malayalam as Meesha, S. Hareesh's Moustache is a contemporary classic mixing magic, myth and metaphor into a tale of far-reaching resonance. "
Notes: Translated from the Malayalam.