Chapter wise summary of roots by malayattoor ramakrishnan

a transdisciplinary biannual research journal

Manjeri, Malappuram, Kerala.

www.kahmunityenglish.in/journals/singularities/

Postgraduate Department of English

Vol. 4 Issue 1 January 2017

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Chief Editor

P. K. Babu., Ph. D Principal D.G.M.M.E.S. Mampad College, Mampad

Members:

Dr. K. K. Kunhammad, Head & Asst. Professor, Dept. of Studies in English, Kannur University

Mammad. N, Asst. Professor Dept of English, Govt. College, Malappuram.

Dr. Priya. K. Nair, Asst. Professor Dept. of English, St. Teresa's College, Eranakulam.

Aswathi. M . P., Asst. Professor Dept of English, KAHM Unity Women's College, Manjeri.

Shahina Mol. A. K. Assistant Professor and Head Department of English KAHM Unity Women’s College, Manjeri

Advisory Editors:

Dr. V. C. Haris School of Letters, M.G. University Kottayam

Dr. M. V. Narayanan, Assoc. Professor, Dept of English, University of Calicut.

Editor's Note

P. K. Babu., Ph. D Chief Editor

Singularities aspires to be a journal which not just records the researches through publishing, but one which also initiates dialogues and urges involvement. True research writing needs to take on the job of intellectually activating untrodden tangents. The Singularities conferences, envisaged as annual events, are meant to be exercises in pursuing the contemporary and wherever possible, to be efforts in leading the contemporary too. Space that permeates our existence, that influences the very way in which one experience, understand, navigate and recreate the world was selected as the theme for the annual conference of Singularities in 2017. The existence of space is irrevocably intertwined with culture, communication, technology, geography, history, politics, economics, and the lived experience. Understanding the spatial relationships, the tensions and dynamics that inform them, enables us to form insights into the process that configure the spaces we move through, inherit and inhabit. Spatial studies, also designated by terms as geocriticism, geopoetics or spatial humanities, is a growing body of critical scholarship, that attempts to discern the metaphysics of a culture from its own material. It frames an alternative method to the historical, biographical and narratological, to the perception of a culture. The papers that are going to be presented in the Singularities Conference on Space, compiled in the special conference volume, not only examined the cultural attributes of a measurable space, but critiqued the imaginary, otherworldly, mythical, fantastic, cyberspace, and even the hybrid zones where fiction meets reality. We are happy to present Singularities Space Conference Issue which offers stimulating read in terms of the experience of Space.

Contents

1. Dr. Abida Farooqui 7 - 10 Eking out Space through Myths: Reading Thomas King’s ‘Green Grass, Running Water’

2. Anagha. E. 11 - 16 A Narratological Study of Benyamin’s Novels

17 - 23

24 - 30

42 - 49

7. Dr. Mathew P. Joseph 50 - 53

54 - 57

58 - 61

62 - 70

11. Manju V. V. 71 - 75

76 - 80

81 - 87

3. Anfal Mooliyathodi Space Memories: A Geocritical Comparison of London City in Mrs Dalloway and The End of the Affair

4. Aparna Mohan Mapping Ontario: The Poetics of Space in Alice Munro

5. Christina Dhanasekaran 31 - 41 All it Takes is One Bad Day… Lunacy and Space in Batman: The Killing Joke

6. Dr. Roopa Philip Imagining the Yakshi: A Study of the Novel Yakshi and the Movie Ennu Swantham Janakikutty

Elizabeth Zachariah The Quest for Survival Space Beyond Caste, Gender and Religion; En route Bama's Karakku

8. Hasiya. T. Ibis as Transcultural Space: Zooming Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

9. Dr. C. Isaac Jebastine Ms. M. Subarna A Psychoanalytic Reading of Jhumpa Lahiri's “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar”

10. K. Kalaivani Perec's Life: A User's Manual: 'Textualizing' the Spatiality of Human Lives

Dalit Feminism and Modern Indian Theatre: A Critical Response to Scape Goats

12. Mansoor Cherusseri Transfiguration of “Home”: A Study of Mahmoud Darwish's Poetry with Reference to “Space”

13. Namitha Raphael Ukken Postcolonial Space as Described in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

14. Nayan Mary Tom Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: The Making of a Postcolonial Space through an Alternative Historiography

15. Olaluwoye. E. Layo A Pragmatic Analysis Of The English Language Used By Drug Peddlers In Lagos Intra-city Buses

16. Priyanka M. C. Traversing Gender Boundaries: Discordant Selves in Kaushik Ganguly's Arekti Premer Golpo

17. Resmi. R. Voicing the Unheard Anthems: A Probe into the Postcolonial Subaltern Space in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

18. Santhosh. P. C. Honor Killing and Female Destiny in Cultural Discourse: An Analysis of Male Power Structures in the Documentary 'A Girl from the River: The Price of Forgiveness'

19. Saran. S. Excavate the Subaltern: Analysing the Dalit Facet in Celluloid

'Intimate Space' in Orhan Pamuk's Silent House and The Museum of Innocence: A Reading

21. Sonia Thomas Exploring the Visual Culture: A Study of Richard Ross's Architecture of Authority and Juvenile in Justice

Constructing a Dystopian Space: An Analysis of Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Satantango

Popular Oppana: A Critical Commentary

24. R. Uthra From space to place: Catharine Parr Traill's The Backwoods of Canada

88 - 94

95 - 106

107 - 113

114 - 118

119 - 123

124 - 128

20. Shamla. K. M. 129 - 136

137 - 141

22. Suja Mathew 142 - 146

23. Sunil Kumar Mannil 147 - 152

153 - 159

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Dr. Abida Farooqui

Dr. Abida Farooqui is Asst. Professor in English, PTM Govt. College, Perinthalmanna

Eking out Space through Myths: Reading Thomas King’s ‘Green Grass,

Running Water’

Colonization and settlement had devastating consequences on the indigenous communities of North America. Entire cultures were expected to be absorbed into and engulfed by the hegemonic discourse without much ado. The only option left for the Native American tribes was either to assimilate or to vanish. Since assimilation was conceived as an impossibility, it was conveniently assumed that they will vanish sooner or later. The myth of the vanishing Indian, established with the certainty and authority of scientific discourse, was steeped in contradiction. Attempts at assimilation were carried out in full swing, albeit with the conviction that they will not be able to assimilate. Indigenous cultures rendered mute consequent to colonization resist the onslaught of the colonial discourse by finding anchorage and sustenance in their own culture-specific myths. They were deprived of their means of livelihood, their language, their culture and their land. Amidst persistent, yet failed colonial efforts to ‘acculture’ the indigenous communities, survival became the key issue. Native populations were dwindling, their traditional habitats were plundered, their customs and rituals banned. These uprooted cultures seek out myths to interrogate the pernicious effects of racism, to survive in an exceedingly hostile world and to address contemporary reality,. Myths enable them to carve out a space for themselves. In embracing myths, they redefine Eurocentric concepts of space and time, bring together the real and the unreal within the same space, and reiterate the existence of alternative epistemologies. This paper seeks to explore how the mythic in the novel ‘Green Grass, Running Water, enables them to situate themselves in the present day world. Besides invoking a mythic consciousness, the novel reconfigures the empiricist notions of space and time in an effort to fathom the mystery of the universe.

In ‘Comparing Mythologies’, Tomson Highway explains the rationale of going back to myths. “… without mythology, we would be nothing but walking corpses, zombies, mere empty hulks of animal flesh and bone, skin and blood and liquid matter with no purpose, no reason for existing, no use, no point, nothing.” (Comparing Mythologies, 18) Myths “delineate the spiritual nervous system (of the community) in all its wondrous, mystical, magical complexity.”(Highway, 20) For the Natives, it also served the purpose of decolonization. Returning to myths was more than an attempt to return to the past, it was an attempt to survive in the contemporary. In ‘Green Grass, Running Water’, mythical figures do not occupy an extraterrestrial space, they intermingle and interfere in the lives of ordinary Indians. The novel presents two strands of narratives one is the realistic story of Lionel, Eli, Alberta and Charlie Looking Bear. The other is the magical story involving coyote and the four Indians. The two strands merge to create what Vizenor calls a complex polyphonic, yet playful “mythic verism.” (Vizenor, 190) Coyote crosses a wide range of conceptual boundaries by meddling in the lives of contemporary Indians. The ‘constructs’ of reality are challenged by another sort of reality that circumvents the established modes of expressing reality. Mythic reality is informed by newer notions of time and space. Space is one vast

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expanse that encompasses land, water and the sky. The time invoked is a primordial time that encompasses the past, the present and the future. The identity of the four Indians interrred at the mental asylum escape in order to ‘fix’ the world transcends normative notions of time and gender. The janitor guesses that they could be over hundred years of age, and that they could be either men or women. Every time they escape, they fix that part of the world they deem to be repaired and return. The Native world has been turned topsy turvy in the aftermath of colonialism and they have taken upon themselves the task of setting things right. They interfere in the world around them and make creative changes. The endings of the Westerns in Bill Bursum’s Home Entertainment Barn which regularly feature the triumph of cowboys over the Indians are altered much to Bursum’s chagrin that he imagines glitches in technology.

Myths operate in the realm of primordial time and space. The novel does not follow the linear notions of time and space. A mythic perspective is brought in to talk about the connections and interconnections in the universe. The novel invokes creation stories where one finds the Sky World and the Water World and where mythical beings like First Woman descend from the sky to the earth. The universe was one wide expanse that came into being through mythical stories. Stories connecting the earth and the sky are narrated in multiple ways to drive home the interconnectedness of both the worlds, as against the Christian notion of a single, male God perched on his throne high up above in the heavens and the world of human beings beneath. According to one version, First Woman falls from the Sky World to the Water World. First Woman and grandmother turtle work to create land. A handful of mud is obtained by diving deep and this grows and spreads to form the land. Another story tells of Changing Woman from the Sky World who sees her reflection in the water world, flies down and lands on Old Coyote. In another story, Old Woman digs and digs falls through a hole into the sky into the water. Babo Jones, the Black woman, who is also a marginalized figure, tells of a woman who falls from sky. She sits on the back of a giant turtle and gets one of the ducks to dive for mud, which leads to the creation of the land.

The relevance of telling stories to create reality is emphasized throughout the novel. Each of the four parts of the novel is a story telling episode that attempts to subvert existing ‘reality’ and create new ones. The proclamation in the novel that “there are no truths, only stories” is a potent reminder of the impossibility or absurdity of narrowing down the universe into a singular, ‘authentic’ reading and the dangers inherent in accepting one story as the truth. (Green Grass, 391) In the novel, the characters are incessantly attempting to tell stories to ‘fix the world’, since stories make up the world. The haphazard world can be set right only through telling stories. Certain stories have become so influential and dogmatic that they masquerade as the ‘truth’, pushing other stories as fictional and worthless. Hence the imminent task is to dethrone those stories and consider alternative ways of perceiving the world in keeping with Native traditions. It also enabled to forge identities both at the personal and the collective level, through story telling just when colonial attempts were in full swing to stamp out the vestiges of an aboriginal culture, the perishing of which was an inevitability in the march of the human race towards culture and civilization.

The first story that has to be set right is stories on the origin of the universe. According to Native conception, the universe took its origin in and through water. Hence the invoking of the origin of the universe from water is deliberate to understand the world from a Native perspective and to debunk the Christian theory of the origin of the universe from void. The

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Dr. Abida Farooqui : Eking Out Space through Myths

novel has a very unconventional and abrupt beginning “So, in the beginning, there was nothing. Just the water” (Green Grass, 1) This is quickly contested by the dream that manages to get out of coyote’s head, calls itself dog and then is mistaken for God. This self- styled creator is baffled at the sight of water all around as he is adamant in establishing that the world was created from void, mirroring the White arrogance in appropriating ‘reality’. In an authoritative manner, the conventional story is rendered thus by the Lone Ranger “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Green Grass, 14) and it is challenged by Ishmael who exhorts him to get the story right.

So pervasive is the wrong story that it can be contested only by a continual process of telling right stories. Stories had to be told and retold until it is got right and this is precisely what the novel aims at. One of the narrators cautions that though mistakes cannot be avoided, it is “best not to make them with stories” because stories construct reality.

Each part is a creation story narrated by four Native elders who impersonate White characters namely Hawkeye, the Lone Ranger, Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe – all characters of imperial master-narratives. Each section delineates a creation story featuring female aboriginal mythical figures namely First Woman, Changing Woman, Thought Woman and Old Woman. Within the novel, these creation figures from diverse aboriginal myths confront White mythical and literary characters, who mingle with present day Natives, creating a complex, magical-realist world where real human beings and mythical beings cohabit, and the past and the present intersect meaningfully. Bringing to the fore creation figures from diverse aboriginal myths, the novelist tries to establish a pan-Indian perspective. Also these myths challenge the Eurocentric myths that masquerade as the ‘Truth.’ Juxtaposing them subverts the veracity of those myths. Hence the unwillingness of the Christian God to share apples with First Woman is re-read as selfishness and egoism from a Native perspective. The Native creation figures are female that challenge the male notion of a creator. The stories emphasize mutuality to hierarchies, harmony to exploitation. These myths establish the indigenous perspectives of gender complementarity and harmonious existence with nature.

The novel exploits the comic subversive potential of the trickster figure coyote to carve spaces for indigenous communities for whom the death-knell sounded with the onset of the ‘civilizing’ mission of the colonizer. Highway describes the trickster as an “essentially comic, clownish sort of character … (who) straddles the consciousness of man and that of God. The Great Spirit. Without (whom) the core of Indian culture would be gone forever. (Rez Sisters, XII) Trickster stories are inherently subversive. Normative notions of reality are reconfigured through coyote. He is a listener to the story that is being narrated, a very playful narrator who actively interferes in the narrative process. He even argues for his right to tell a story by calling into question the foundations of a democracy in which animals have no say. The anthropocentric notion of the colonial discourse where ‘man’ occupies the centre and everything else is marginal is proved devastating for a harmonious and balanced existence. Alberta’s wish for a baby without having to go through the hassles of marriage is thwarted due to the restrictive rules for artificial insemination. A comic twist is given to the story as the White, heterosexual norms are thrown to the winds with Alberta getting impregnated by coyote. The colonial project of the dam steeped in commercial interests that would devastate indigenous lives and cultures is camouflaged as apolitical and a mark of modernity. Finally the dam is destroyed in a coyote-precipitated earthquake; it is significant

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Singularities Vol.4 Issue 1 January 2017 ISSN 2348 – 3369

to note that the dam bursts on a Sun Dance day, the annual ritual festival of Natives. The elemental forces are invoked to set right human interventions in the natural world. Hence the final flood assumes mythic dimensions. According to Native beliefs, the universe originated from water. The novel, besides using water as counter discourse, also makes an emphatic call to fall back on the mythic, where dualities are reconciled and where the universe is conceived as a unified one. The flood consumes everything, leaving room for beginning creation afresh. Everything gets destroyed and the cycle of narrating stories resume. The novel ends the way it begins “In the beginning, there was nothing … Just the water” (Green Grass, 431) in keeping with the circular conception of life. The novel foregrounds the need for replacing the pervasive Christian myth “that is conceived of as one straight line, an arrow that travels with speed accelerating from point A to B to C, and ends there abruptly” with Native myth that is “one vast circle.” (Comparing Mythologies, 43)

The novel realistically portrays present-day Natives, some of whom are lost individuals like Lionel who are unsure of his identity, or ‘apples’ like Charlie who are red outside and white inside, or men like Eli who move to the city but are unable to make it. Strong female characters like Latisha who lives independently after getting estranged from her white husband and Alberta, a professor of history, who teaches indigenous history to White students barely interested in it are representative of notions of female independence in indigenous communities. Native communities were matriarchal. Recourse to myth enables the indigenous communities to repair the damage wreaked by the ‘rape’ of the colonial forces. Highway describes the invasion of colonial forces as a brutal rape when “the circle of matriarchy was punctured by the straight line of patriarchy, the circle of the womb, was punctured, most brutally, by the straight line of the phallus. And the bleeding was profuse.” (Highway, 47)

Hence, the need of a mythic perspective is exigent to repair the damage, to comprehend the world in its complexity and to survive. Juxtaposing one set of stories with the other helps undermine the authority of the dominant. Return to myth becomes imperative to decolonize indigenous communities, to undo the authority of Christian, androcentric, heterosexual perspectives, to reconfigure notions of time and space and to create spaces for survival.

References

Highway, Tomson. Comparing Mythologies. Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2003.

---. The Rez Sisters. Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1988.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993.

Vizenor, Gerald. “An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Neal Bowers & Charles Silet. MELUS, 8.1 (Spring 1981) : 41-49.

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Anagha. E.

Anagha. E. is Former PG student at Central University of Kerala

A Narratological Study of Benyamin’s Novels

Abstract

This contribution discusses the connection between the theory of transtextuality and Benyamin's novels. Benyamin (1971) the young and prolific contemporary Malayalam writer who came to public attention with his Aadujeevitham, attempts to master the modern techniques of novel craft as seen from an analysis of his works. His engagement with Narratology is fascinating and interesting. His style of writing helped him to attract a wide range of audience and specialty of his writing is that he never repeats narrative methods in his novels. The idea of transtextuality is proposed by the French structuralist critic and narratologist Gerard Genette. He put forwards four types of textualities include intertextuality, metatextuality, paratextuality and architextuality. Benyamin's novels are here arranged in the framework of Genette's transtextuality.

Key words : Narratology, Intertextuality, Metatextuality, architextuality, paratextuality

“Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in wind”

- Johannes Brahms

Benyamin is a narrative craftsman. Being a modern writer, he is very much conscious of the structure of his narratives. He uses various interesting narrative techniques in his works. The reader may get confused thinking whether he used all those techniques consciously or unconsciously. He is well versed in the use of narrative craft with an air of confidence and self satisfaction which add charms to his work. Benyamin himself revealed that he has tried to experiment with the craft in his every novel (Ahemmed 49). He proudly admits that he writes for the contemporary audience, not for the people who scared of modern literary craft. Benyamin expects a new reading community, who can look at the world of literature with hope and curiosity.

Gerard Genette concentrates the greater part of his studies on the nature of narrative fiction. In his trilogy, The Architect: an Introduction (1992), Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1997), and Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1997), Genette talks about a new coherent theory called transtextuality. Each of Benyamin's novels can be given as example for different textualities. Although it is possible for a single work to represent more than one textuality, this article attempts to limit specific novels for each kind. Transtextuality is basically Genette's version of intertextuality. Among the four textualities, intertextuality is used by Genette as an umbrella term which include all kinds of quotations, allusions and plagiarism that allows intertextual relation between specific elements of individual texts. He explains this concept as the “relationship of co presence between two texts or among several texts (Genette 1992: 1-2). The relationship between Benyamin's twin novels- Al-Arabian Novel Factory and Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal can be considered as intertextual. Here the definition slightly changes into “the actual presence of one text within

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another”. Their possible references to other works of literature are hardly mentioned here. Next is metatextuality, which is very much close to the definition of intertextuality. It denotes the relation by which one text bears critically on the other. For example, one can see

Metatextual relationship between the Bible and its critical commentaries as they provide new interpretations on Bible. Benyamin's novels Abeesagin and Pravachakanmarude Randaam Pusthakam are such kind of biblical reinterpretations. Readers can find metatextuality between these works and the Bible. A paratextual analysis of Manjaveyil Maranangal , Aadujeevitham and an architextual study of Akkapporinte Irupath Nasrani Varshangal are also attempted here.

Intertextual Relationship of the Twin Novels

Intertextuality in Genette's idea has more limited dimensions. It is the relationship between two texts according to the co presence. Genette uses this term “for a rich mosaic of echoes of, quotations from, allusion to and parallelisms with other texts in a text such as The Waste Land by T.S Eliot” (Mirenayat 534). It also refers to the actual presence of one text within another.

If Al- Arabian Novel Factory is taken as text A and Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal as Text B, one can find that text B lies inside the text A. The events and characters are closely connected together. Al-Arabian Novel Factory begins when Pratap, the Torando Sunday journalist reaches an Arab city in order to collect materials for a foreign writer. Pratap gradually learns about a Pakistani girl Sameera and her book A Spring without Smell, which is text B. Usually, when suggesting intertextual relationships, it is important to target quotations, but here, no quotes from text B are included in text A. Only events and people appear again. In another way, it can be said that text A completes text B. The former almost succeeds in answering the questions left by the latter. Al- Arabian Novel Factory shows the existence of text B as a work. The title of text B is first mentioned in the second part of text A. This section is specifically subtitled as 'Not for Sale'. Text B is written by Sameera Parveen and is banned for sale in that country (Al Arabian Novel Factory 90). The narrator of text A (Pratap) gets it from his companion Riyaz, who is also from Pakistan

The next reference to text B comes in text A when Pratap's friend's husband, Perumal, shares his experience about this book. During the investigation about Sameera and her book, the narrator meets many characters, who Sameera had mentioned in her book. He also encounters the aftereffects of Jasmine revolution, especially with the consequences of the suppressed uprising in that country. The narrator gradually becomes more aware about the political condition of that country. Here readers can find that how the same incidents are looked upon from the different perspectives of two narrators. While Pratap learns about the events from other people, Sameera experiences it in her real life. Pratap's curiosity to unravel the mystery behind Sameera and her book leads him to many troubles. Through his experiences, text A explores more relationships with text B.

The role of the characters of text B in Al- Arabian Novel Factory become more clear when Riyaz gets arrested by the police for terrorism. Riyaz is later revealed to be Javed's brother to whom Sameera addresses her writings. Text A reveals that Javed was the person who converts Sameera's E- mails in to a book and hands them over it to Riyaz. Towards the end of the novel, Javed meets Pratap and tells his real story. He reveals that his real name is Yasin,

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Anagha E : A Narratological Study of Benyamin’s Novels

who became friend with Sameera through E- mail. He could never meet her, as she had gone somewhere else before that. At the end, Javed promises to Pratap that he will definitely find her as she is not just a story for him, but his love! (Benyamin 423) Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal becomes complete only after reading Al- Arabian Novel Factory. The two stories are interlinked each other and one is incomplete without the other. This relationship can be seen as an intertextual according to Genette's theory.

Metatextuality : Abeesagin and Pravachakanmaarude Randaam Pusthakam

The relation between a text and its critical commentaries is regarded as metatextual relationship. When text A interprets and criticizes text B, their relationship is metatextual. Different types of interpretation of several books are example for this particular relationship (Mirenayat 535). Such a relation exists between the Bible and Benyamin's Pravachakanmarude Randaam Pusthakam and Abeesagin. These two novels are written as biblical re- interpretations. Both take their thread from the Bible and subvert them into a different plot. If the Bible is taken as text A, Pravachakanmarude Randaam Pusthakam as text B and Abeesagin as text C, to prove metatextuality, it is necessary to find the implicit references of text A in text B and C. By implicit references Genette means an implied kind of reference, which is “not stated, but understood in what is expressed” (Simandan 32). Metatextual relationship exists between a text and its criticism written. This relationship is seen in a commentary on literary texts (Mirenayat 535).

Text B acknowledges the specific references in text A. Apart from the direct quotations from Bible; a more baffling kind of metatextuality is evident in text B. In these two novels, the names of the characters are similar to those in the Bible, their characteristics are extremely different. The author deconstructs the public life of Jesus and presents it in a controversial manner. In the cases of events and places, one can find both similarities and deviations from the Bible. The relationship between these two books becomes metatextual as the history of Jesus is criticized and interpreted in a different fashion in text B. Besides Jesus, the characters like Judas, Mary Magdalene, Barabbas, and Lazarus are also subverted here. The life of Jesus, his childhood and three years of public life are recorded in the New Testament. According to Bible, he is the incarnation of God and his spiritual teaching is followed by his disciples. Christian beliefs emphasize that Jesus died for the sins of all people and that he rose from the dead after three days of his crucifixion. One cannot find this divine image of Jesus in Pravachakanmarude Randaam Pusthakam, while portrayed as a common man who possesses all kinds of human weaknesses. He is very passionate and sincere towards his duties and at the same time less confident and confusing character as he wrestles with ambitions. Benyamin deconstructs the divine image of Jesus even at the very beginning, as he mentions that he is the child of Mary from her first marriage (Benyamin 35). The author introduces another character Mari, who is the second wife of Joseph and the step mother of Jesus Christ. She is presented as a very powerful character who worries about her elder son (Jesus) and supports him even at his final moments on the cross.

There are also other examples of similar transformations that have taken place in the characters. For example, Benyamin transforms Mary Magdalene into a negative character. He portrays her as a woman who takes revenge on Jesus for rejecting her love. Barabas, who was chosen by the people over Christ, is transformed in this novel as a martyr. The novel tells that Jesus was crucified along with Barabas and Simon Magnus. The Bible mentions these

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two only as thieves.

Pravachakanmarude Randaam Pusthakam portrays Judas, who according to the Bible is one of the twelve disciples of Jesus and the one who betrayed Christ for thirty silver coins, differently and interestingly. Benyamin totally re interprets this character and presents him as a faithful, loving and revolutionary companion of Jesus. Unlike the Biblical character, he shows more physical intimacy towards Jesus. The novel's portrayal of their intimate relationship provides a different level of interpretation.

Characters, events and relationships portrayed in the novel are at odds with the Biblical account. In the Bible, Jesus meets Peter as a fisherman. Andrews is Peter's brother. Jacob and John are also brothers according to Bible, but in the novel, there are no such blood relations between Jesus' disciples. Another example is the novels' portrayal of Thomas's attraction towards Mary, and her love towards Jesus. None of these incidents are mentioned in Bible. Christ's crucifixion is also depicted with many changes by Benyamin.

Abeesagin (text C) can also be considered as a critical interpretation of the Old Testament story in the Bible. The story of Abeesagin and Solomon does not appear in the Bible. King Solomon and Abeesagin are Old Testament characters. Abeesagin has a very limited role in both the old Testament and in the novel. Even though she is the title character; the story develops through the narrative of Solomon. The novel claims that Solomon wrote his Songs for Abeesagin, a servant girl was appointed to serve King David during his final days. The Old Testament, mentions that Solomon's step brother Adoniav wanted to marry Abeesagin (1 Kings 1:17), but, Solomon kills all dissenters including Adoniav (1 Kings, 1:25). In the novel,