Book Review : Pathummayude Aadu (Pattumma’s Goat)

Book Review : Pathummayude Aadu (Pattumma’s Goat) - Vaikom Muhammad Basheer

An instinctive pick from Cochin Airport, this was an absolutely wonderful read during my wait time. Vaikom Muhammad Basheer is one of the most respected and widely read authors from Malayalam Literary field. This is one of his more celebrated works. While the desire to read the original in Malayalam still persists, I couldn’t resist when a good translation was available from Mathrubhoomi books.

This book has multiple facets to it, with a different perspective presented to a different reader. Ranging from an episode in one’s life to a social commentary to understanding the human psyche deeper, this book is just a fantastic read. Time flies by when one delves into the life of the author along with his mother, siblings and their families with an idiosyncrasy of their own and finally the protagonist, the Goat. The first paragraph of the introduction is an absolute laugh riot. I couldn’t help laugh out loud on this.

Personally for me, this book is a mixture of social commentary of an era gone by along with the author’s own take on the inequalities of life (specially relating to the nutrition of the female folk of the family) to the expectations of the human mind (school girls’ attention) to the innate greed of human mind towards the money (Postman, Fruits etc). However, the pièce de résistance is the ingenuity of the human mind to adapt and improvise on every single situation as demonstrated by every single family member, young to old alike, culminating in an absolutely wonderful crescendo of milking the goat.

This book is one of the finest Malayalam literature has to offer and I would highly recommend the English translation of this book. Do give it a read and laugh your hearts out.

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