Sacred Talons - Book Review

Guruswamy, a 48 yr old bearded man with sharp and handsome features, is the protagonist of Sacred Talons by Aa Madhavan, translated from Tamil by V Ramakrishnan. Simple meals, temple visits, time well spent with books, observing people as they go about their activities, gazing at the sky, the Sun, the birds, the coconut grove and the market hidden in its copse make his daily routine. Reckless extravagance and excessive self-indulgence by his grandfather and father not only leave him with a lean inheritance but with a sense of revulsion for a rich and pompous lifestyle and petty pleasures. Sans issues and his wife dead for years, the joy of family life is also a distant and fuzzy memory for him.

The tenants who stay on his land truly care for him and constitute his adopted family. This family includes Parvathi, the maid, Ravi, the painter, Vengu the singer, Pappan the tinsmith and last but not the least Velappan, an employee at the dairy cooperative and his wife, Raani. For more than first one-third of the book, Guruswamy is at the centre, like the Sun and the other characters merely move around him like planets, basking in his benevolence. But times change, socio-political scenario shifts, suppressed desires resurface, morals crumble, vices win and people falter. How the lives of this ascetic-like Guruswamy and his acolytes are ruffled up unfolds at a steady pace in the book's latter half. 

Set against the backdrop of pre-independent and newly independent India, in the city of Trivandrum, the goings-on in Sacred Talons make us wonder about the opinions we hold, how our perspectives shift over time leaving us either enlightened or blindfolded. Should the brahminy kite be viewed as Lord Vishnu's mount as per and be revered or just be seen as a bird of prey? The denouement raises this question, clearly substantiating the choice of the title (not an exact equivalent of the Tamil original title, Krishna Parunthu). At its end, we are left with a question to tackle, something similar to the ‘what came first - chicken or egg?' - what changed first - man or his situation?

A special mention for the translation that is not just lucid and readable but intelligent too for giving us readers a title that beautifully mirrors the novel's crux. With a slow, meandering first half and an ‘up the ante’ second half, this layered novel with complex characters surprised me. I enjoyed reading this. 

A little about the author from the translator's note

The author inherited his father's business, a utensil shop at Chaalai bazaar in Trivandrum and wrote Tamil stories set against the backdrop of the market and its immediate neighborhood. His narratives focus on Tamil people in Trivandrum and his language is a curious mix of Malayalam and Tamil. 

Favorite Lines 

“How quickly days managed to bury past memories! Yesterday's heaviness cannot be found in the heart today. By tomorrow, its intensity will be completely gone until it can be found no more. Every passing day washes over us like a breeze. Perhaps days should be renamed as breeze.”

Endnotes

I read the author's novel On A River's Bank, translated by M Vijayalakshmi a few years back. I liked Sacred Talons more than this novel. The year 2026 began with reading a collection of stories by D Ravikumar translated by V Ramakrishnan, the translation left me happy as a reader there too. Here is hoping to read more works in Tamil translated by V Ramakrishnan. And a big shout out to TNTB & ESC initiative that ensures many important works in Tamil are translated and get a wider readership. I am always excited to see the Gopuram/temple tower symbol on covers of books and happy that many such books have a place in my bookshelf.

An Ocean in a Well - Book Review

 

An Ocean in a Well, a collection of 10 stories by D Ravikumar, translated from Tamil by V Ramakrishnan dwells on the personal and political, emotional and practical, straightforward and symbolic, ethereal and real with equal rigour. The opening story Thambi is about a young, homeless man who bites the hand that feeds him. Stories ‘Fact Finding’ and ‘A Death and Some More’ portray how caste-based violence is rife even today when ‘development’ is the loudest mantra. ‘Zha, the Unique letter’, a satirical take on today’s language wars shows how the state alters the definition of ‘sedition’ to further its agenda. The usage of Tamil letter ‘zha’ is banned in this story and the author subtly shows how this seemingly innocuous step thwarts the language itself.

Stories ‘An Ocean in a Well’, ‘Untimely’, ‘The Moon Pond’ that delve into man-woman relationship - of a mother who speaks to her son with her eyes, of lovers who meet briefly one last time before going opposite ways, of a man & a woman who share dreams and exchange poems are top favorites. The emotions in here wring your heart and the evocative descriptions of land, air and water elevate the reading experience. ‘The Word’, more like an essay, went over my head. On writers, avid readers, biblioklepts, the story ‘The Theory Concerning Theft’, pretty interesting, made me look up details of author Jean Genet.

Be it in dealing with a cultural innuendo in the story ‘Kulfi’ or in rendering a natural or emotional scape, the translation is excellent giving us readers pellucid prose. Just a comparison, a line and a poem from ‘The Moon Pond’ would suffice as proof -

“Hearing him speak always felt like reading a translated novel. The foreignness of his language was enchanting. It was impossible to fix his locale from his speech. It was a fusion of various dialects.

‘.. do not try to recollect, for you are your memory’.

‘All inventions have their origin in words;

We are but their tributaries.

They label us firmly as we label them.

Words of joy, words of misery,

Words of rejection, words of hope,

words for things, words for people,

Words for the universe, and words for nothing.

And behind it all, there is life, tranquil or tough,

with death waiting to spring on you anytime….’

Writing, both an act of resistance and catharsis, can assuage strong emotions on one hand & keep the inner fire burning on the other. That the written word can break boundaries and tackle reductionist ideas is what the author D Ravikumar firmly believes in. In his note at the start of this collection of ten of his stories, he writes ‘The stereotypes created about a race on social, political and cultural levels play an important role in keeping that race enslaved.’ He shares that the notion that Dalits couldn't create complex creative works and had only their life stories to tell, reinforced by what was written, translated and published until then, irked him and gave birth to these stories. The book, published under the aegis of TNTB & ESC, attempts to highlight voices and literary contributions of writers from Adi Dravidar & tribal communities. 

(Thanks to the publishers for providing a review copy in return for an honest opinion)

Books Read in Nov-Dec 2025

Here are the books I read during the months of November and December 2025. 

 

Books Read in Aug-Oct 2025

Books I read in the months of August, September and October 2025 - 

Favourite Stories (Part 3)

 

Sharing a few thoughts on a favorite story from this book. The story's titled Birdsong at Twilight. 

“I have never heard of this odd hobby for women. Do embroidery or baking, not this silly bird-watching. People will think you are strange. Don't start bird watching and forget about the children.”

Naina, mother to nine-year old twins Radha and Ravi, gets scolded by her mother as she tries hard to catch a glimpse of a verditer flycatcher. Naina loves to watch birds, and is always armed with a pair of binoculars. The orchards with plum and peach trees washed clean by the rain, the dense forest of deodars and pine beyond her home in the mountains are very inviting, so unlike their tiny apartment in Delhi. Naina decides to take her children for a walk into the forest before it gets dark. She hopes to spot a kalij pheasant that has constantly eluded her. Her friend, single and carefree, had managed to not only spot one but capture photographs of so many other birds. Oh! how she wished she had just a day for herself, all the time bird watching and doing nothing else!

Naina turns lucky that day for she spots a kalij pheasant. But as she turns around to share her excitement with her children who had been following her, she finds herself alone. Her children are missing. Where could they go when they were behind her all along whispering things to each other? Suddenly, the emerald fortress of the forest feels incarcerating. Did the kids fall in the ravine, was there a leopard or a bear around? Extremely anxious and drenched by a wave of panic, Naina sees a male kalij pheasant walking with a female and little chicks behind him in front of her, in her full view. It feels like the bird family was mocking her.

The Himalayan barbet and whistling thrush too make an appearance before her, the bird song gets louder. All this that would have given immense joy to Naina, only feel intimidating now. She wants her children safe and back, nothing else. Of course, she spots them after a few minutes, a period that feels like a lifetime,  eating juicy wild plums merrily by the stream. And, everything ends well.

How many times have we moms wanted to have some time for ourselves, yearned for it with all our heart to do something we like? And yet when stars align or luck favours, we wish against it and want nothing of that sort. We try to cling to our interests carefully as we know how difficult the path is that separates it from our responsibilities. How hard it is, to master this act of jugglery, right ?