Chaavunilam (“Dead Land”)is the title of one of Sarah Joseph’s well-known short-stories in Malayalam. In it she relates a myth of devastation and revival — it describes a scene of terrible devastation through the eyes of the last woman left there, the Mother — who witnesses the terrible violence between her children which leaves the earth shattered, verdure destroyed, and which ends in the death of all the combatants. This is the tale of her immense suffering — she is torn apart by birthing-pains, at the same time as she is devastated by the death of all her children. Continue reading The Nightmare of the Chaavunilam and the Illusions of Well-Meaning Scholars →