THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A war of words is brewing in the Malayalam literary field with similarities being drawn in the plots of award-winning author Haritha Savithri’s Zin and Kalachi, written by K R Meera, one of the prominent figures in contemporary Malayalam literature.
The issue took shape after a cryptic Facebook post by Haritha, in which she wrote about the machinations behind the theft of literary plots. The entire episode then turned towards the similarities in the plots of her book and Meera’s.
However, Meera claims the first six chapters of the book were published in an online medium that set the tone of the book, its plot, and characters. The first 6 chapters were published in 2020. The author had spoken about the two books being different in their contexts--Meera’s is on citizenship and the place of a liberal Muslim woman in our country. She refuses to comment further, claiming she doesn’t wish to be part of such debates.
An academic who doesn’t wish to be named, added Meera’s book is on power and religious tangles, interspersed with the travails of patriarchy, and how all these affect women. Haritha’s protagonist Seetha, however, encounters trying situations as she comes looking for her lover in Diyarbakir in Turkey, amidst crossfire of the resistance movement. “While there may be similarities, the setting is essentially different with the variations of culture narrating different facets of life,” she claims.
Reacting to the controversy on a news channel, Haritha Savithri says she had given her book to NS Madhavan for writing the preface before Meera published the first six chapters online.
“Those chapters are the first part of the book. Her character Fida’s and my character Seetha’s respective journeys begin only after that part, that is where there are similarities,” she claims.
Haritha further claims she has said all she wants to in the FB post of hers. “I do not feel there was any ‘copy pasting’. But the basic threads are very similar and this could have been avoided so that such controversies wouldnt arise,” she adds.
But as online debates heat up between readers of both the authors, earlier comments of literary critic P K Rajasekharan is also being propped up in which he allegedly equated Haritha’s work to Rahul Mankoottam.
For the time being, the war of words is still in hot discussion, mainly on social media.
Common setting?
Zin was published in 2022, and won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2023. Kalachi, on the other hand, was published in 2025.
Both the books are about women arriving in conflict-ridden areas in search of their lovers. When Zin is set in Kurd, Kalachi pans out in Kazakhstan