February 4, 2012
On Thursday, I finished reading T.D.Ramakrishnan's new Malayalam novel, Francis Ittykora. I had found a blog about the book comparing it to the works of Dan Brown and Umberto Eco. The Eco comparison is completely unjustified. The Dan Brown one could stand.
The story is about the roots and global spread of an ancient school of Mathematics. Called the Hypatian school after the legendary librarian and teacher of Alexandria, the author provides a fictional alternative to Dr. J. J. Gheveghese's academic proposal that the knowledge of calculus and infinite series expansions traveled to Europe from Kerala through Jesuit priests. It is now widely accepted that Kerala mathematician Madhava of Sangamagrama (modern Koodalmanikyam) who is known to us through his students Neelakanta Somayaji and Jyeshtadeva, invented calculus 250 years ahead of Newton and Leibnitz. In the mathematics research community these days, in acknowledgement of this fact, some series are referred to as Madhava-Newton and Madhava-Leibnitz series. According to Dr. Gheverghese and other researchers on the Kerala school, we have only scratched the surface of the discoveries of this school that flourished in the state from the 11th to 17th century.
The novel ascribes the origin of this knowledge to Hypatia and her father theon and their school that managed to survive in Timbuktu after her tragic murder by the Christian fanatics and the dismantling of the original university. Francis Ittycora, a pepper merchant from Kunnamkulam in Kerala, spread this knowledge to Italy in the 15th century. Unfortunately, Ittykora's own descendants in Kerala have reduced his memory and knowledge into utterly ridiculous superstitious rituals.
The novel is engorged with sex. I had never come across another work with so much heady a mix of sex, mathematics and history. The action flits across the globe along with the zooming through the different centuries in time.
Sadly, the "online" sourcing of most of the novelist's knowledge in many parts is glaringly obvious. This makes detailing of the environment and fleshing out of the characters either completely absent or rather sketchy. The 'wikipedia' style descriptions become jarring soon. This is also the case with the narration of the BDSM specialist brothel titled "school" run by three young women professionals in Kochi. I am pretty sure there are enough fans and practitioners of this indulgence in Kerala but I doubt if the author himself has any such inclination. However, it must be admitted that the book entertains at a level way above pulp quality by drawing in the colorful real personalities of mathematical geniuses like Erdos and Grothendeick. Even economist Paul Krugman makes an appearance! The author is genuniely excited when bringing these folks into his narrative. I couldn't help wonder if he was actually a nerd who injected most of the unnecessary sex into the work just to make himself cool.
In the preface to the book, Asha Menon compares the work's abundance of violence and sex to O.V. Vijayan's emergency-era work called Dharmapuranam. While the references to cannibalism and BDSM might be new in the Malayalam fiction, it is hardly as shocking as the scatological onslaught that Vijayan unleashed decades ago. While the success or failure of Dharmapuranam, as N.S. Madhavan points out, is that the political targets of its blistering analogy sooner or later become clear, 'Francis Ittycora' doesn't quite reveal who among the top business families of Kerala, if at all, is used as the model for the Cora clan.
The most powerful piece of this fiction is the social commentary that it unleashes in the final chapter. The contemporary reaction of Kerala society (and India too) to the photograph of a young woman in bikini is shredded to bits by bringing out how outdated, illogical and hypocritical the society still remains. Hypatias will continue to be torn apart by the custodians of the social order and Ittycoras will continue to be misunderstood and worshiped.
Since I finished the book, another visit to DC Book store was due. Achan also wanted to pick up something by U.A. Khader and Vayalar's Purushantharangaliloode before our planned Delhi trip. I was looking for Dr. Sugathan's "Buddhamathavum Samoohikavyavasthayum" about Buddhism and its impact on Kerala society before the arrival of Brahminism. The other book I had in mind was N.S. Madhavan's new collection of essays titled "Puram Marupuram". The bookstore had N.S. Madhavan's work, Dr. Sugathan's is available only online. The peripheral status of Buddhism continues!
Before getting to the bookstore, we stopped by to check on our aunty who had been recovering from a small surgery. We learnt that another aunt who stays next door the first aunt recently dislocated her shoulder. My little niece there who is in 4th grade likes me very much ever since I told her that she looks like film actress, Kajal Agarwal. She was at home instead of school. Fever.
"How did you catch it?"
"Don't know!"
"Does anyone else in school have it?"
"No"
"Did you not dry your hair properly aftering showering?"
"No"
"Did you eat something bad?"
"No"
"Then I wonder why!"
Brief silence. Then she spoke," You know that world is going to end, right?"
"Ah!" now we were getting somewhere.
"Who told you it is ending?"
"It is there in the book" She got up and fetched last week's Mathrubhumi weekly which carried a cover story on the Mayan calendar and the 2012 apocalypse myth.
"It is here, didn't you read?" she asked me.
"Let me see," I said though I had already seen it.
"Grandpa and Grandma are so lucky. They have lived for so long. I haven't even reached upper primary school. And look, the world is going to end." She was genuinely sad.
I had seen similarly reaction from Nethra, nearly the same age, in Houston the day after her teacher told her that the world is facing a water crisis.
"But it is not going to end" I said.
"It is. A planet is coming to hit us."
"No. There is no such planet."
"How do you know?"
"I have checked"
"How?"
"Using telescopes when I was in America."
"Really?" her eyes widened for a while, then back to fever, "But it says so in the book"
"No, it doesn't! Look here" I pointed to her the ending paragraphs that say the Mayan world ending prophecy is nothing but a new version of the 'end of the world' myth that has always been part of civilization.
A frown.
"What does myth mean?" she asked
"Silly story. False story. Not truth.Not real"
She beamed widely. I could see the fever beginning its retreat.
"Now you can live till you are 100" Achan said.
"Yes! yes!" her eyes sparkled.
A planet exploded somewhere outside the solar system. A thousand new stars were born!
The perpetual minor cold war between Achan and Amma at home have spilled into the newspapers. Achan prefers Manorama and Amma likes Mathrubhumi which reveals a bit about their political leanings. As a fallout now, we have both the newspapers delivered at home along with The Hindu. Sipping on the morning coffee with an extended hour of newspaper reading in the mornings, sometimes I feel like the jackal in the Panchatantra overseeing the goats locking their horns!
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