And here it is ,the 2 months journey of 927 pages with Manu S Pillai concluded on 8-6-2021 at 12:26 am. I literarily travelled a time travel to be with the Travancore kingdom with Covid-19 altering many of my plans and giving me amble time to gulp this huge book of knowledge. I enjoyed going through the ups and downs this dynasty went through. Moreover, it gave a clear picture what was going inside the palace during many proclamations that was announced. I can’t remember another book that engaged me like this one in recent times. Let me make it clear that I was almost unaware of the Travancore kingdom apart from few things I have learned from my high school texts and some stories in black and white that I read in my childhood.
The main attraction that I find with this book,
is the way the author tries to captivate the attention of the reader throughout
its pages. Anyone who have a little interest in history of Kerala will be
allured to this book starting from chapter -1.The book I believe ,is
history flavored with a narrative diction which makes readers to
travel with the author till the last line. Many characters that I learned in my
history text or was explained was in black and white terms. For example .Sir CP
Ramaswamy Iyer was a complete dictator for me.It was through this book that I
came to know that he had done many good deeds as well. We can see many greyish
characters in this chronicle, but none as we learned or atleast I recognized was
not completely good or bad. In other words, we can see real human beings who
had their plus and minus as well.. Though the book itself was enticing for me,
there were some really interesting areas which really made me curious. Firstly,
the way in which author try to explain ‘thripadidhana’ of Marthandavarma with
the situation prevailing during those time. Secondly, It was a new knowledge
for me that the entire present generation of the dynasty are the direct decedents of
Rajaravi varma,the great artist. Thirdly, the backstage of temple entry
proclamation, which I had always thought as a child while I was studying this
in my history textbook during school days. Finally it is the forgotten Sethu
Lakhsmi bhai and her family genogram which had my attention. I really think
there is a scope for a movie /biopic for
this Attingal rani as how the table turned for her from the privilege of Senior Rani to Sri Sethu lakshmi bhai.
While I feel the author has done a real hard work
and had his justification for all the chronology of events in this book , I think the book may be more complete if more information about Sethu Parvathi Bhai and her successors
or their version of history was incorporated .But ,I think the author can be
justified as he had mentioned in this book that he had tried his best to get
information and records from her succecors,but was not able to accomplish that because
they were reluctant to open the door of discussion and records to the author. I
wish, if they had done that ,this book may have
more conditions to talk.
Overall, I would like to suggest this book for
all the younger people out there who would like to know how we evolved culturally
in this country .Of course this have more pages than one usually think, but
once you start reading it will persuade you to turn pages until you reach the
last page.I thank Mr.ManuPillai for taking such a herculean task to explore the
older Travancore and made this book availiable for us. I wish him all the
success in his future ventures.
