N. S. Madhavan’s Litanies of Dutch Battery … the other book I got at Sangeet along with the Becks on the same day …

As soon as I saw this book, the cover caught my attention first, then I saw the name of the author … at first I thought it was Khushwant Singh!  Then I saw that the actual author’s name was almost hidden among the leaves and clouds at the top … anyway, that fact was established … I had heard N. S. Madhavan’s name long back in connection with his well-known short story Higuita … a friend and fellow-researcher at CIEFL, M T Ansari had written a paper on the author and this short story ... this piqued my interest in the story and I had read the story in English translation then … and so when I saw the author’s name, I picked up the book … something lit up dimly in the dark recesses of my memory, which told me that I had either read a review or some reference to this novel … not a strong enough vibe to remember anything clearly … I felt I should buy this book … then there was a longish blurb by Khushwant Singh on the opening page, a part of which appears on the cover … at the back there were some more positive comments … and if I want to know more, then Wikipedia is always there for initial information … and this is what I got to know … Madhavan primarily writes short stories in Malayalam and has published five collections of short stories, all highly acclaimed, with Higuita being judged the best short story in hundred years of Malayalam literature … and Litanies of Dutch Battery written in 2003 (Lanthan Batheriyile Luthiniyakal) is his first and only novel so far … this novel was translated into English in 2010 …

And “the novel is about life on an imaginary island in the Kochi backwater, named after a 17th-century battery (bathery in Malayalam) of five cannons installed on its promontory by the Dutch (Lanthans in Malayalam). Jessica, the young narrator of the story, is the scion of a family of carpenters with a long tradition of boat building. Her remniscences start from the days when she was inside her pregnant mother's womb. The novel presents an intimate picture of life of the Latin Christians of the Kerala coast, descendants of poor, low-caste Hindus who were converted to Christianity by Portuguese colonists in the 16th century.”