MALAYALAM SCI-FI NOVEL REVEALS A FUTURE IMPERFECT

DOHA WHILE scientific studies often produce facts stranger than fiction, technology strives to fashion reality as per human imagination.

That is why what was yesterday fiction is today a fact of life. That is why what is today being written as fiction could tomorrow be a fact of life.

On the converse, imagination takes off from the present technological reality to peep into the future and draw a picture of things to come.

Science fiction as a genre concerns itself with this aspect of imagination.

That could have been fine. But it is not, given the images of future conjured in some of science fiction written today.

It is true that technological doomsayers come dime a dozen, but it is equally true that not every science fiction writer is interested in painting a scary picture. What distinguishes the real ‘visionaries’ from the riffraff is their ability to take in the trends and conjure up an accurate picture.

Picking up the ones we should concern ourselves with is a difficult task, to say the least.

In what category Indian writer Habeeci’s science fiction novel Asamayam, penned in Malayalam the language spoken in the south Indian state of Kerala, and released in Doha recently falls only time will tell.

But the world it depicts is not a happy one for humans.

The novel, released by Arabic writer from Sudan Amir Taj al Sir by handing over a copy to Indian embassy Deputy Mission PS Sasikumar, tells the tale of a time when robots and other devices created by humans to make their life easy and comfortable have assumed control.

The story opens with an awful uprising in ‘Tharar’, an imaginary place. The humans are up in arms over the supply of something as vital for their survival as oxygen-kits. The path of the story’s progress is littered with clashes between humans and robots of various descriptions. The author seems to convey a message that if utility, rather than value, remains the cornerstone of human existence this is where we may end up.

While reviewing the book, well known Indian cartoonist in Doha Karunakaran Perambra said, “We can neglect the challenges, worries and uncertainties facing the people in ‘Tharar’ at our own peril.

While the scenario may seem farfetched, the speed of technological developments suggests that human beings may lose control over their inventions sooner than later. While the possibility of human life totally controlled by robots may seem mere imagination today, the movement towards such a scenario is inexorable.

Well known social activist in Doha CR Manoj said that the distress and fears of people who are compelled to live in a world managed and controlled by robots are not too far. “The imagination of the writer makes him more likely to feel be an inevitable reality of the future” he said.

Well-known writer among Indian community in Qatar K Madhavikkutty said that the experiences of the characters in the novel predict an unhappy future for humans controlled as they are by machines, making the work serious reading stuff.

Indian embassy Deputy Mission PS Sasikumar lauded the intellectual groups of the Indian community that offered all support to the book’s launch. Suggesting an English translation of the novel, he said that it will widen the readership of the book. The novel first appeared ten years ago as a serial in Indian language weekly Deshabhimani. It has now been published by Kerala-based publishing house New Books in the form of a 176- page volume.

A music concert was also held on occasion by AVC Abdullah, Karun Menon and Gayathri Karun. Others who spoke on occasion were social worker Shamsudheen, Chandrika newspaper resident editor Ashraff Thoonery, writer MT Nilamboor besides Habeeci himself.
(http://www.qatar-tribune.com/data/20130325/content.asp?section=nation5_1)
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SANTHOSH CHANDRAN

Doha-based author sees dark and brooding times ahead

Review on gulf times

Doha-based Malayalam writer, Habecci, tackles the theme of the progressive breakdown of the social fabric and declining communication across generations in his latest novel, Asamayam.

Reading Asamayam, the third book by Habeeci, is an insightful experience. It is set in a fictitious location called Tharar. Tharar reflects realistically and forcefully the state of affairs when the current changes being brought in to the world by globalisation and IT and GM revolution, in a totally distorted manner by various interest groups.

In Tharar each person is tagged, numbered and tracked, and shall do whatever only with the assistance and only under the advice of a machine, programmed to perform strictly in a prescribed manner. There each person is allowed to do what he is ordained by a higher power, of course neither godly nor magnanimous.

Tharar is a place where one has to pay even for oxygen.

It is a place where you can eat only what you are advised. Tharar is a place where one is bound to live as advised. One just does not have a life of one’s own.

The novel revolves around Peter, his partner Isabella, friend and colleague Maya, son Robin and the technical wizard Kanitkar. The tribulations each character, especially Peter, goes through in his/her life, are portrayed touchingly.

Peter’s inability to be himself is painful. He fails totally in dealing with the new generation, his son, who is hooked to modern gadgets and robotic pets. The boy is a stranger to the values of humanity, values of society and relationships. Peter’s helplessness in communicating successfully and lovingly with his son, who in fact is born under a non-natural setup and not in a womb, is agonising.

The father in Peter could in fact become a loving father only when his child is no more, only when he vouches all his funds for the safekeep of his son’s body under cryogenic system to be revived again in future.

Agonised by his failures, the defeat of a human being in that totally mechanised and dehumanised world, Peter walks alone sometimes out of his mechanised security, into the smoggy air; but his systems cannot tolerate it long and he needs to return if he has to live.

The other characters in the novel, including Isabella who meets her spouse largely through virtual means, Barbara, the love of Kanitkar and even Kanitkar himself, occasionally display their human nature, although they are almost fully naturalised into the system. The novel ends with Kanitkar’s unusual conduct, a flicker of his unseen compassion or as penance for his past deeds, to revive Barbara’s biological brother.

The author likes to describe his work as science fiction, a figment of imagination. However, the novel is a reflection of what would happen if we move along the path of present paradigm of development, ruled by conventional economics and technology with no heart, a micro-minority controlling all resources and transactions, a minority enjoying the amenities and the majority suffering unable to meet life’s essential requirements.

It talks about the world where inhumane technology makes people subservient, where knowledge, without humane content, makes society mechanical.

Even those who have access to all amenities and resources are deprived of their own selves, failing to fulfil their emotional needs, becoming docile to machines and schedules controlled by a superior power.

Habeeci’s work urges the reader to reflect upon the paradigm, in vogue, of the so-called progress of the human society.

Is alienation from everything, your environment, society or even your personal self, inevitable for progress? Does development mean you have to be squeezed into an entirely own world, as if doped, where nothing else matters, no soft feelings, emotions or relations.

As humane touch and interactions fade away and human society turns lesser and lesser social, one distrusts the mode of progress. In this perspective, Asamayam attains further heights, forecasting the undesirable changes in society, foretelling about dehumanisation of the modern life.

(Dr P A Azeez, works at Saleem Ali Institute of Ornithology, Coimbatore, India.)
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