Writer R Rajasree, who recently won the Vayalar Award for her second work ‘Athreyakam’, has carved her own niche in Malayalam literature. With her highly popular debut work ‘Kalyaniyennum Dakshayaniyennum Peraya Randu Sthreekalude Katha’ -- initially serialised on social media – she opened new vistas in both writing and publishing. In a conversation with TNIE, Rajasree opens up about her bold and ‘beautiful’ characters, subtle ways of patriarchy, and the hypocrisy of our society and times.
Excerpts
You had an unusual beginning – writing on social media, something that traditional writers usually don’t do. Can you take us through that phase…
I began writing on social media not to write fiction. Usually, women writers go silent because of numerous reasons. The cyber world gives them a space to open up. What’s good about it is we can publish what we write. Social media is a forum for our own release and enlightenment. When women feel unhappy or stressed, now we speak on social media. Whatever I wrote on Facebook, which later became a book (‘Kalyaniyennum Dakshayaniyennum Peraya Randu Sthreekalude Katha’), was the view of a woman from rural society.
It started as her quotes. Slowly, that evolved into a literature that people responded to. The narrator speaks in chaste Malayalam and the response is in Kannur slang. This created a lot of interest. Those who read it may have gone through similar situations. The main character Kalyani was then tagged to her friend Dakshayani... the structure of a novel slowly emerged.
Isn’t there a belief that what’s written on social media is not serious writing?
Every age has had such a lack of acceptance. Changampuzha used to write on love and was accused of writing morally deviant literature. Writers in every age had to face it. There’s an element of gender discrimination in it.
Can you elaborate?
Generally, women are accused of being emotional writers. Men think emotions make a woman. This has also given rise to the thought that women cannot think intellectually, their creativity has a limit. Such narratives gave rise to a fake narrative of gender democracy. This was society’s hallmark. So, women have to do more than what men do. She has to work harder to be accepted. On the other hand, men would blurt out a casual comment, and he would be called ‘extraordinary’.
That was because of the cynicism Malayalis had... it was more about fake intellectualism or vain pride. Here, people still make grim faces and say it’s because a woman has written it, and hence, it can only be this deep. This has happened in all ages. There was always a conscious effort to put women on a lower level... which was patronised by many women too... the general anti-feminism of the Malayali population. Films of an age, books of an age... all blare it out... all implying that women are second-class. That they don’t have in them to think deeply, to understand in depth. A change can happen only when we make a conscious effort.
As a writer, what has changed in your life since the success of ‘Kalyani and Dakshayani’?
I always say my life is divided into two – before and after Kalyani. That novel was both a literary work and a turning point in my life. Once the novel was published, there were positives and negatives. I realised our cultural space was not as beautiful as I thought. There’s some hypocrisy too, and it isn’t specific to cultural spaces. I learnt to be more strategic. I get some happiness when I write; when people read them, my works get recognition.
When you were writing Kalyani, there were no expectations. Now, there’s this weight of expectation. Do you feel it?
Whenever I start working on a novel, I feel like I’m writing for the first time. I also asked senior writers about this; they said the same. We don’t become experts after publishing a novel. We need to be attentive even when we do everyday tasks. I have reworked ‘Athreyakam’ six or seven times. We have to work on it.
How did you develop Kalyani’s character? Is she someone you’ve met in your life?
There are many such characters in my life. We notice them for the manner in which they respond to life. They question priorities, quote proverbs, and overcome crises. They guided me through their lives. They know history, fight men, and speak loudly. I merged all of this in Kalyani.
While reading ‘Kalyani and Dakshayani’, one gets a feeling you have some hostility towards south Keralam people...
(Laughs out) I knew this was coming. My father and mother were from Travancore. I don’t have any enmity towards south Keralam. Decades ago, schools, government departments and projects in Kannur were dominated by officers from the southern part of Keralam. Many of them looked down on the local culture, dialect and cuisine. Over time, local communities internalised this condescension, assuming they were somehow inferior. It is the classic mechanism of authority imposing itself on the periphery. Naturally, this imposed submissiveness bred resentment.
In Kalyani, the characters are loud. The women speak their minds without filters...
Guarded speech is an invention of modern family systems. During my childhood, our mornings were marked by intense, neighbourhood squabbles over boundary fences. Today’s generation has never witnessed that. Earlier, our family setup was looser, with democratic space to shout, argue, and settle things. Today, people have become sanitised and silenced. When educated, modern individuals bottle up their rage. Such repression takes a heavy toll.
In our cultural framework, there’s a template of the ‘kulasthree’ (virtuous, chaste woman). Your protagonists flagrantly disregard these concepts...
In our culture, a woman who stays silent when her marriage fractures is celebrated far more than one who speaks out. Society normalises this endurance. It labels silence as dignity. However, it is up to individuals, their choices. In the Indian family system, a woman survives only by ignoring her own self. Kalyani or Dakshayani don’t have that burden. If things become unbearable, they walk away.
When constructing these characters, how did you envision their aesthetics? Did you picture them as conventionally beautiful?
What does beauty even mean? The ornate descriptions of classical Manipravalam heroines? Every woman, those who work in paddy fields or engage in road construction, or any other area, possesses her own intrinsic beauty. Kalyani and Dakshayani were just ordinary women plucked from that very crowd. I repeatedly indicated that they were far from conventional beauties.
Why should women always conform to established standards of grace? Classical literature fragmented female beauty through hyperbolic metaphors—comparing teeth to jasmine buds and features to lotus petals. Those archaic templates belong in stone sculptures and classical paintings, not in real life. I consciously stripped my characters of those established beauty illusions. When I said she wasn’t ‘beautiful’, I meant she didn’t fit the conventional type of beauty you might expect.
Didn’t women in Keralam possess such bold qualities prior to 1960s/80s?
This is no watertight compartment. Women belonging to these two categories have existed across all eras. Two distinct types of women have existed from the very beginning; the only question is which path you choose. Societies worldwide have mostly followed the same pattern and Keralam is no exception in embracing patriarchal thinking. We claim to be modern, having read deeply and possessing political advantages, progressive viewpoints, and secular platforms.
Consequently, society outwardly portrays one thing, while privately practising another. It is out of this duality that these notions emerge, whether women should speak up or stay silent, and whether they should act like traditional ‘kulasthrees’. We also see that women who possess true autonomy had to fight for that agency. Loose marital bonds existed in the past; when marriages became rigid, the expectation to remain silent increased, and those who stay quiet are labelled as ‘kulasthrees’.
It seems ‘kulasthrees’ are more widely accepted and expressive today...
We see other trends emerge now as well. Have you noticed the return of puberty ceremonies (thirandu kalyanam or rithumathi rituals)? They are now celebrated on a grand scale. Also, we see pregnancy photoshoots and the seventh-month ritual called ‘pulikudi’. When these practices return, part of it stems from social acceptance. At the same time, it subtly reinforces the notion that this responsibility rests solely on her shoulders, signalling her to prepare and shut down all other avenues. When these ideas are institutionalised through colourful rituals, we internalise them more deeply and walk right into the trap willingly. That’s how it works.
We have seen rebellious women portrayed in Malayalam cinema and literature, yet they gain social acceptance only when they acknowledge patriarchy or accept the established order and return to society.
To some extent, we learn this from our own experiences. The process of taming a woman starts right at the beginning of her life and continues even when she enters marriage. How can we imagine someone staying in a relationship, leaving it, returning to it, leaving again and returning again, as though that is simply how things work? When a person realises that an injustice is being done to them, resisting it is something human beings do in every part of the world.
There is no sense in saying that a woman cannot do the same, simply because she is a woman. Humans have enormous potential to grow. Some people use that option; others do not. There can be no dialogue with people who refuse to use that option. This applies whether it is within a marriage, at the workplace, or in the outside world.
You speak about women and their spaces...
Yes. These two women (the characters) cannot reconcile themselves to authority imposed on them from outside. Authority takes many forms. There is gentle authority, economic authority and sexual authority. A woman in Keralam in 2026 has to struggle against all of them, just to live. It is tough.
Earlier, there was a section of women writers who seemed to mistake intellectualism or feminism as imitating men. Now, most women writers, including you, seem to celebrate their femininity…
I think it’s a personal choice. We can follow whichever path interests us. There’s no other agenda involved (laughs).
Today, many women write about women and their problems, whether in fiction or non-fiction. Is it challenging to bring uniqueness to such writing?
It is difficult. The reason is that our experiences are, for the most part, more or less the same. What matters then is how we approach those experiences and the importance we attach to them. Take sexuality, for example. In foreign films, if one character develops an attraction, they may have a physical relationship. After that, they go about their respective businesses. But if you take a film made here, the story gets stuck at that point. It stagnates. The characters remain there, thinking about all the possible consequences. That needs to change. Sexuality is not the entirety of life.
Many women writers resist being identified as ‘women writers’. Your take?
We don’t generally use the term ‘male writer’. We simply say writer. In Malayalam, the word ‘ezhuthukaran’ is used as a gender-neutral expression. But I also believe we should acknowledge that women and men do not write from identical circumstances. I personally feel we should try to move beyond repeatedly discussing the same constraints.
‘Pennezhuthu’ (women’s writing) was the subject of intense debate around 10 to 15 years ago. How relevant is that debate today?
I think a section of women writers rejected the term because they felt their writing should not be confined to such a narrow category. That term had particular relevance when K Satchidanandan wrote the introduction to Sarah Teacher’s (Sarah Joseph) short-story collection. We must understand the social circumstances and literary context in which the term was coined. It may not carry the same meaning 25 or 30 years later. I think the problem arises when we try to understand contemporary women’s writing using the same framework that existed decades ago. The sharpness and dimensions of the arguments made then may not necessarily apply today.
How do you see the rebellious characters created by yourself, Madhavikutty, Lalithambika Antharjanam, and others?
You did not mention K Saraswathi Amma, who didn’t receive the same recognition as Madhavikutty. Her characters rebelled against male centric-society, but they weren’t accepted. Characters that receive the adoration of patriarchy at times end up being referred to as feminist voices.
Why was there a big gap in your writing?
It was during this gap that I lived as a middle-class housewife. Who has the desire that women should write? Your family will never demand of you to write or sing or dance. That’s something you should demand of yourself.
Do you think the life of the average Malayali woman is fraught with hardship?
It isn’t that their life is fraught with too many hardships. Their life is more creative and they sense what they want. As they identify what they want, it creates more wounds in their minds. Compared to older generations, they are enlightened about what they need. Especially once they cross into their 40s. It shouldn’t be like this, they feel. The reason is the life they lived so far, the journeys they undertook, the books they read, and the people they met. Only at that stage can we open doors on our own. The priorities of life change at that stage. Children would have grown up by then.
Do you regret that life seems to have zipped past?
Definitely. Earlier, when I had an intense desire to travel abroad, I couldn’t. Now, I have to travel with a medicine box (giggles). I feel these moments should have come earlier. The celebrations should have begun earlier. But I’m very content with what I have. I have now learnt to truly live.
Are you happy to have lived the life of a woman? In your next life, would you still want to be born as a woman?
I’m happy with my life with all its difficulties. I would like to be reborn as a woman, but with less blunders made (laughs). I will think more intelligently, unlearn, and reinvent myself. A woman’s life has so many hues. That’s why Bhangaswana in Mahabharata wanted to retain his transformation as a woman, despite being born a man. Women’s life is so beautiful if it’s allowed to be lived as such. The world will one day become women’s. It won’t be appropriate if we are not born as women then (laughs).
Is that what attracted you to the character Shikhandi, who’s not quite a prominent character in Mahabharata?
Mahabharata has vast grey areas, allowing one to pick just any story from it; only political relevance is a requisite. A lot of people have told me about the trauma created by the word ‘Shikhandi’. In today’s era, we cannot justify anything that stands against the dignity of a human. If you look at social media, the word ‘Shikhandi’ is used in a derogatory manner. It’s against human dignity. But we cannot blame the text that was written in a long bygone era. While partaking of such a text, we should remain vigilant. We have a responsibility to the current place and time in which we live.
So you ensure the use of only politically correct words and usages?
In general, yes. It’s a conscious decision. At times, there could be slips. Taking such a position could be a limitation in developing characters. Yet, I pay special attention to this aspect since it stems from firm conviction.
Mahabharata is a vast canvas. Placing a story inside it would be like conjuring up a puzzle. How difficult was the process?
It was tough. I had to rework it (‘Athreyakam’) six times. Care needs to be taken on several aspects, like the language used by each character. It was initially written on a mobile phone in 2016. I would make small jottings and save them. But when you read it later, it sounds absurd. When you write a novel, the big question is, ‘So what?’ The story kept dragging on for a long time until I got into Mahabharata. It was a long work, extending from 2016 to 2024. Connecting the dots without missing links was crucial.
In the current political scenario, taking up such a work could invite allegations of hurting religious sentiments...
I received many threatening emails. Someone said, ‘MT wrote such a work towards the end of his life? Don’t you want to live?’ I’m fine with any such threats. If it’s wanton, I would take legal recourse.
A plagiarism allegation came up against your work...
An allegation surfaced around a year ago. I have filed a defamation case. It’s currently before the court.
Have you read those works (based on which the allegation was made)?
No. I heard the opinions of those who have read the books. I didn’t get those books. I had no option but to file defamation. Let the law take its own course.
Women writers in Malayalam are often categorised into different niches. Which is yours?
My own! (Smiles)
TNIE team: Cithara Paul, Anil S, Aparna Nair, Anna Jose Albin Mathew (photos)