Review: ഉമ്മാച്ചു | Ummachu

ഉമ്മാച്ചു | Ummachu by Uroob
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ummachu, written by Uroob, which is the penname of Malayalam author Parutholli Chalappurathu Kuttikrishnan, deals with the life of three children in pre-Independent rural Kerala. Growing up as childhood friends, the children, Maayan, Beeran and the titular Ummachu, go through love, hate, loss, crime, regret, acceptance, joy, remorse, and a final resigned recognition of the life they wrought.

All the while time and age stops for no one, and their children grow into adults, coming into their own conflicts; all in the backdrop of the independence movement.

Ummachu & Mayan are in love; but circumstances prevent them from being together. Circumstances cause Ummachu to be stuck in a loveless marriage with Beeran who comes from a wealthy family. Feeling betrayed, Mayan leaves the land, to look for peace and to forget Ummachu. This is the main crux of the story, one which drives much of the events which occur afterwards.

I felt in this book, elements of Dostoevsky's 'Crime & Punishment'. Maayan who commits a horrible crime of murdering Beeran for love, and Ummachu who chooses to remain silent of her husband's murderer for this same love, come to suffer the consequences of their sin, and are for their whole life tormented from it. Despite earning affluence due to their efforts, being able to finally be together, or having two children, neither of them are able to properly enjoy their time together. For the monument of their crime is ever present in between them, in form of Abdu, Ummachu's firstborn from Beeran, who also became the unfortunate witness to his father's murder.

Through him, the couple are made to suffer and relive the sin that they had perpetuated. And Abdu himself is in a fragile state of mind as he grows up; being forced to live under the same roof as his father's murderer, who is also now his mother's husband, and is disgusted at the prospect of having to call him 'Dad'.

Uroob uses the native Malayalam dialect prevalent in the Malabar, to compose his prose. Many of the terms would be difficult to decipher, even to native speakers. But it has the characteristic flow, and simplicity which was common for the writers of the time.

As expected of the time, the plot is pretty straight forward, without any gimmicks. But the narrative itself is a vehicle to carry the passage of time, and how certain actions and their repercussions echo across one's life. Beeran dies, not knowing the motive of his murderer, likely spending his final moments wondering why his best friend would do this to him. Maayan dies, decades later, alone in the woods, having come to realize that, despite everything he's done, he will never have the life that he envisioned, and he would never be unburdered by his crime, to even hope for a happy ending. Ummachu lives on, as a shadow of her former self, devoid of happiness, and in old age, somehow finding some closure in caring for the youngest generation of her family.

All the while time and age marches on, uncaring of the human condition.

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