Life and Times in Kolaazham (Part 1) by Sridev Mohan unfolds in the imagined Union Territory of Kolaazham, a place recently declared “the happiest place in India.” Yet beneath this title lies a layered world — one that mirrors the contradictions, humor, and melancholy of modern Indian life. Through a series of short, interlinked vignettes, the author captures what V.S. Pritchett once called “something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.” Each story becomes such a glimpse — fleeting, intimate, and deeply human.
The stories are anchored in everyday experiences but often shimmer with allegorical undertones. Kolaazham itself, though fictional, feels palpably real — a microcosm of postcolonial India, where tradition, memory, and modernity constantly jostle for space. The people who inhabit it — Hussain, Mr. Naidu, Peter, Swpna, and many unnamed others — live lives caught between history and aspiration, irony and innocence.
Hussain and Mr. Naidu embody this tension most strikingly. Their lives seem forever entwined with the weight of history — not just personal or regional, but civilizational. Even as they long to escape the clutches of the past, they find themselves pulled back into its orbit, unable to live untouched by its echoes. Their predicament speaks to a wider Indian sensibility: a nation still seeking freedom from inherited memory, yet unable to exist without it.
Peter, who runs a business disposing of human waste, represents another face of postcolonial irony — how the remnants of colonial systems and hierarchies are repurposed for profit in the modern day. His enterprise literalizes the recycling of the past for economic gain, a theme that recurs throughout the collection in subtle, biting ways.
Other stories, like those featuring Swpna, the lesson on not wasting food, and even scenes involving a cat, a crow, and ants sharing a bar, reflect the author’s ability to draw meaning from the absurd and the mundane. Everyday life in Kolaazham is never just ordinary; it carries moral undertones, humor, and quiet commentary. Through these vignettes, Mohan questions ideas of waste — of food, emotion, and opportunity — and turns them into metaphors for human behavior.
Moments of irony are frequent and piercing. Outsiders call the place Boreland and Spitland, mocking its contradictions; yet Kolaazham, with its famed “oats biryani,” continues to celebrate its own eccentric joys. Even language becomes playful — as when the cryptic question “Do you know what Kofikano is?” leads to the image of a teen choked by the bitterness of a coffee bean, a scene as literal as it is metaphorical.
Mohan’s prose oscillates between realism and satire, tenderness and irony. The result is a world that feels vividly inhabited — by characters who laugh, stumble, and search for meaning amid confusion. Life and Times in Kolaazham invites readers to witness these small collisions of lives, reminding us that happiness is not a state but a fleeting condition, glimpsed, like Pritchett’s short stories, from the corner of the eye.
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