Notes on the fragile Malayali male ego

In 2022, when the Malayalam edition of Unni R.’s collection of stories, Malayali Memorial, was first published by DC Books, the cover image created a social media storm.

- Somak Ghoshal

In 2022, when the Malayalam edition of Unni R.’s collection of stories, Malayali Memorial, was first published by DC Books, the cover image created a social media storm. It showed anti-caste leader B.R. Ambedkar dressed in typical upper-caste garb—white shirt, mundu and shawl with gold borders—sitting in a room surrounded by markers of Savarna privilege, with a framed photo of young M.K. Gandhi in the background.

The designer, Sainul Abid, justified the composition as being a reference to the title story, where a character, S. Santhosh Nair, is outraged to have been stuck with the nickname “Ambedkar” since the time he had to dress up as the social reformer at a school event when he was a boy.

In a fit of despair, Santhosh bitterly complains to the narrator of the story of this legacy, which had not only turned him into a laughing stock but also caused a rift with his lady love. The combination of his dark complexion and the parodic nickname has left him feeling emasculated, threatening both his patriarchal and caste superiority.

Needless to say, no one was pleased with the artwork. But no one bothered to read the story carefully either, with its twist at the end that made an even bigger fool of Santhosh Nair. Unni stood by the designer’s freedom of expression. You’d expect little else from a man who had criticised the leftists in his home state Kerala, in an interview, for being “still bound by the sacred thread of Brahminical consciousness”.