Capturing the Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life....

Two pillars hold the weight of society's fragile frame— Marriage and morality. Marriage weaves a thread of duty, binding hearts in the fabric of belonging, as long as we seek the world’s embrace. Morality, like an unseen fence, traces the lines between our lives, our acts, our tangled ties, defining what we dare and deny.         

Language is a riddle we grasp with trembling hands - to create meanings  and construct realities; Little do we realise  how we are pulled into the whirlpool of language, where we wrestle in vain to avert miscommunication; With each stumble and falter, we persist in refining our speech seeking to mend every rift and articulate every pause. Yet, in our quest for perfection  we fall deeper into language’s vast abysses.

By 2024, offering Kerala Studies within English departments in higher education institutions under the Government of Kerala has become a common and expected practice, no longer seen as anything out of the ordinary.  But there was a time when discussing even those narratives in Malayalam that had English  translations was considered an aberration.  I joined for PhD research at the Institute of English under the guidance of Prof. G. S. Jayasree in 2006. My research involved exploring the making of the new woman in nineteenth century Malabar. To facilitate the reading, two major texts I had chosen were Indulekha (1889) and  Parangodi Parinayam (1892). These texts had English translations, by OUP and  Samyukta: A Journal of Women's Studies respectively, before the beginning of my research.  Yet, I often encountered puzzled reactions when I mentioned my research topic and the department I was doing research in.   Fast forward to year 2013 - Jayasree M...

Critical theories are largely seen as intellectual labyrinths, as challenging to navigate as the intricacies of rocket science. A core paper invariantly offered in courses on Literary Studies, most of the students and even teachers have a hard time grappling with the discussions under its purview. The very reason for the inclusion of Critical theories -  the strengthening of Humanities perspectives - fails miserably when approached as an intellectual burden that cannot be wished away. Most of my teaching assignments since the past 7 years have included texts from Critical theories for postgraduate students. These seven years of teaching theories have been a learning experience to identify the reasons for the skewed perceptions on theories held by many students and teachers. I have also been informed by the regular discussions I continue to have with my guide and mentor, Prof. G. S. Jayasree  who introduced Literary theories at the Institute of English in 1995 and moulded the c...

The idea of life/death as defined in the analog world is getting complicated in this digital age. As netizens, our everyday life is immersed in diverse forms of digital acts that by and large leave a digital footprint until and unless the traces of our digital lives are erased forever through deliberate human intervention or collapse of technology.  In this era of hyper-digitalization, we’re not just living our biological lives; we're also crafting algorithmic versions of ourselves, day by day, in the digital realm. "When we encounter the dead through their left-behind data - what researchers call 'digital remains' - we are not merely facing a symbolic mask but a lifetime of data, an informational corpse."  We must sharpen our awareness of how we manage our digital selves to guard against the risks of data manipulation, digital theft, and breaches of privacy in the online world.  Together with being critically cautious about what we post, comment, like or s...

Statutory Warning: Giving or Ta king or Abetting the giving or taking of dowry is a punishable offence.  Enacting laws and framing policies are never enough to challenge perceptions that are deeply entrenched in the social psyche. These formal interventions have to be equally complemented by critical engagements with the socio-cultural discourses that could reinforce and normalise the discriminatory and exclusionary practices. The dowry system is one such social evil that continues to thrive unabated in spite of the Dowry Prohibition Act (1961) and the initiatives from the part of different governments in ensuring the successful implementation of the act in letter and spirit. The issue becomes a serious threat to society when we realise that a state like Kerala, with high human development index (HDI), continue to report instances of suicide / murder of women belonging to all sections of the society owing to the failure of their families in meeting the expectations of dowry of...