What happens with a highly technical book is few get to read it. Years ago, when J. Devika was in her 20s, most of these books were written by “doleful and bearded men.” And she wanted to show that she could do it much better without a beard. “So my earlier writing as an academic was highly technical and found place in journals, read by about 30 people,” Devika said, at the release of her new book Pennorumbettal Lokam Marunnu at the Institute of English, in Thiruvananthapuram.
But this new one is not that. It answers the most basic questions on feminism, gender and politics. “Technical Malayalam can be equally uncommunicative as technical English,” says the researcher who works at CDS. This book is what she calls a bridge book, much like the previous one she wrote on gender and history, Kulasthreeyum Chanda -pennum Undayathengine. “My funder said, ‘write a good textbook’, and I said ‘no’. Your brain shuts off the moment you hear it is a textbook. Don’t you agree?” Devika asks a hall full of laughing students.
She went to colleges to talk to young students to understand what they wanted to know about this topic – same as she did for Kulasthree. “For that book, I chose 10 of the most frequently asked questions and treated them as chapters,” Devika says. She also spoke to women workers from SEWA and learners from Kerala Mahila Samakhya Society. They wanted a visually imaginative book. And that’s how she collaborated with designer Priyaranjan Lal to turn it into “provocative pieces of art”. She followed the same methodology for Pennorumbettal and heard all kinds of questions. A boy wanted to know if empowerment (shaktheekaranam) was not enough and if women needed liberation (vimochanam) too. Girls were more concerned on security – wasn’t that more important than freedom, they asked. Devika proceeds to answer all these in her book that ends with a bibliographic essay.
Sreebala K. Menon and Jimmy James took up the publishing through their ‘Readmebooks’. Gargi and Jijo Kuriakose, who had helped Devika during the writing, did the book release. M.G. Radhakrishnan took the role of a critic but could only find fault in the book not having an index.
“The book is comprehensive, minute, and original,” he said. He went on to say that Kerala had many women achievers and mentioned stories of a few like E.K. Janaki Ammal, Anna Mani, Dakshayani Velayudhan and Anna Chandy, among others. Professor Meena T. Pillai welcomed everyone, and had been a draft-reader of the book.
