If there is one literary form that is truly indispensable in a democracy, it is political satire. Sadly, that is also the one form we have far too little of in the annals of contemporary Indian literature – at a time when the events in our country scream out to be satirised.
The rare exceptions are all the more to be welcomed, and it is therefore with delight that I read the first novel of award-winning Malayalam short-story writer Unni R, ably and fluidly translated by J Devika under the arresting title The Cock is the Culprit.
The Cock is the Culprit is a triumph of satire at its most elemental. Unni has taken a seemingly simple story – that of a rooster which crows at inconvenient times and disturbs important events in a Kerala village – and written it brilliantly to work at multiple levels of meaning and resonance that go well beyond the surface details of the…