A Story of Names, Places and the Choices We Make

This debut novel offers a simple idea—that there are two kinds of people, those who like caste and those who don't

- Vijeta Kumar

All the characters we meet in Ponnu Elizabeth Mathew's debut novel, The Remnants of Rebellion, have sweet names, carefully chosen. There's an Aleyamma, an Eesho Achappa, his wife Kochuthresia, a Mamma Mollykutty, a Krishnan, a Pappan, an Avaran, and a Mouse Appachan. Even for a reader familiar with Malayalam, these are names that are memorable, perhaps also because these are names remembered by a child. There's also Elsy, the cook and caretaker of Eastman estate, Duke the dog, and Cutlet, the other dog. Then there's a Roy whose full name is the mouthful Sarvamayavibhanjana Roy.

These names are said, sung, and remembered by Aleyamma, who is just moving into the Eastman estate in Puthuloor, Kerala, when the novel opens. She has inherited it from Eesho, her late grandfather who used to supervise the rubber plantation.

Aleyamma herself moves back and forth between her time as a child spent with Eesho and the bitter years spent elsewhere after her mother takes her away from him. Aleyamma is an artist; she jogs barefoot, smokes, and longs to be an eight-year-old, back with Eesho Achappa again. She is here in Puthuloor because of this newly inherited house and also because she needs time away from a torrid affair with her artist boyfriend Roy—painter, Bengali, fellow barefoot-jogger, and married.