The charm of an earlier era

KOCHI: Imagine living a monotonous life in the city or the suburbs. The boring routine of doing the same thing over and over for an unforeseeable future. The society where one does not make friends, but acquaintances. The kind of life where everyone is running against time to meet some deadline. And when one is tired of existing this way of making not much of a difference in the world, one craves for that care and warmth he or she had experienced in that cosy, nondescript village once called ‘home’.

Bhavli is such a place. A south Indian rural village, it is anyone’s nostalgic dream - the sweet fragrance of ‘elangi’ flowers lingering in the air, the popular tea shop and the bustling bus stop overlooking it, being familiar with each face and the bliss that comes with it. The village has all the charm of a bygone yesterday, which is envious to the present modern society.

Attempting to recreate another Malgudi, Ravi Nambiar, in his ‘Monsoon Minds’, has weaved short and simple stories featuring a host of individuals and entities and the subsequent emotions they have invoked.
This element is particularly evident in ‘The Death of a Tree’. The Spanish cherry tree (elangi) arouses the memory of a sweet woman who had ended her life at a very young age. Though half the village had forgotten about the woman, Lakshmi, the unique fragrance of the elangi flowers take the protagonist to his naïve, innocent days when she used to take care of him.  

Nambiar has found a thread in each soul he has met, from the young flower vendor on the roadside to the tea shop owner Gafoor in Bhavli. Published by Notion Press, Monsoon Minds is an anthology of 18 short stories. Using a very simple language and an equally basic concept, the author has stitched each thread into place. What is special about Nambiar’s writing is his passion to write about human values. His writings are particularly inspired by real-life experiences. Some of them have been published in notable newspaers in the past.