M.T. Vasudevan Nair's Naalukettu: The house around the Courtyard

I think I lost a lot of it in translation, but the angst of Appunni goes beyond all barriers of language. Such is the way the story is written that you can actually picture the Naalukettu, the fields, the floods, Appunni's father playing dice, his feeling of loneliness against the whole world.

At times, you wonder about the boy. Dint he ever want to go back to his mom? Was what she did so bad? Maybe I say that cos I am what I am now... maybe to a young boy it must have seemed really bad.

I'd been meaning to read this since long. Had the book since this Diwali and never got around to reading it. Now that I have time on my hands, anything with letters on it is good prey for my eyes.

I feel bad that I read a translated version and not the original, but then I would have taken double or triple the time to finish the Malayalam version. Someday I hope to do that though... with a nighandhu(word for dictionary in malayalam) in hand. its possible the entire book could get a different perspective if I were to do that. The translation does not fully convey the mastery of the original story telling.