Onam In A Nightie by Anjana Menon

 In India’s tropical paradise, stands a town wrapped around a giant roundabout, at the centre is an imposing temple so ancient that no one knows exactly when it was built, and this happens to be my hometown too. Onam In  A Nightie by Anjana Menon is set here, and is my 21st of 2022. 

This novel is an absolute fun and quirky read about the author’s days in Kerala during the first lockdown. It begins with her own quarantine journey in Thrissur, Kerala (her hometown) after travelling from Noida. There is oodles-of information about this beautiful state and its people, culture, food , festivals etc in the chapters. There are quite a few comparisons between  Delhi way of life , habits vis a vis Kerala  making one take sides and well agree to few of her jibes . Her characters were sketched authentically - I’ve met them in my life too, especially Shiva. Others too - “Boredom sat with her like her dentures firmly in her jaws.” Its clear she has had so much fun writing this. I loved her analysis of the nightie, and her car transport/truck story was just like her - and so many others. I particularly enjoyed reading the chapter Good Morning America, The law of attraction and the US Election. Along with the letter there, this book by itself is full of wit and sharply observed incidents, this was clearly her love letter to her home state of Kerala, both as an outsider and an insider. Here, even a tiny railway station has set its own rules for acceptance and belonging. On the other side of the tracks, a baker runs errands for total strangers in the middle of a pandemic.

So true, "All year long, scores of old parents wait for the family holiday when the children and grandchildren will visit, and a fortnight or slightly longer will go off in a flurry of visits to shopping malls, the hunt for antiques, good food and finally, instructions. Instructions for the parents on how to live better. And as soon as the holidaymakers leave, a pall of loneliness descends on the folks they have left behind."

It concludes with "Survival is forged by the undying human spirit, and the wait for a better tomorrow. The spirit that will see us through life even in a sodden pandemic, not always unscathed and unbroken, but always hopeful. And to that spirit hangs Kerala, as do us all."

True, here, Malgudi Days meets reality in the search for joy and belonging in a book that is alternatively heart-warming and hilarious. Anjana Menon takes you to a place that you wish stays that way forever, in these true stories of hope and resilience from a midway Kerala town.

Midway Kerala Town, where I was born. The Round, with the pooram in its belly, is the old and the new, the unyielding and the pliable, the familiar and the foreign, community and isolation, the joyous and the sorrowful. 

Anjana Menon has been wrestling with words for as long as she can remember. After studying literature, she got sucked into a journalism career that took her to Southeast Asia and Europe with Bloomberg News.

She returned to India as one of the founder-editors of the business newspaper Mint and then ran a television newsroom before setting up her own content strategy consultancy. She is a co-author of What's Your Story? The Essential Business Storytelling Handbook, published by Penguin Random House.

A columnist who thought she would grow up to be an artist, she likes people more than gadgets, dogs even more than people and slow life over hurried living.

Anjana divides her time between Delhi and London, wishing instead to be in Kyoto, knowing fully well the foolishness of her desires. This is her debut creative non-fiction book.