The Walls
Mathilukal or the Walls is a novelette written by the much-celebrated author from Kerala, Vaikom Muhammed Basheer. It was later made into a film by acclaimed filmmaker, Adoor Gopalakrishnan. ‘The Walls’ has as its plot, a tragic love story, taking place in an unlikely and sober setting of a prison. The story noted for its autobiographical elements should be read in the light of Basheer’s life as a prisoner. He was a prisoner during the time of India’s struggle for independence. In the story, the lead character portrayed as Basheer himself is a prisoner leading his lonely life chatting with flowers and trees and quarrelling with squirrels to waver his boredom away. The meaningless and frustrated life of Basheer is suddenly incised by a woman’s voice from over the wall. The emptiness of his life is filled with the tender love that he forms for the voice of the faceless woman, Narayani, a woman prisoner who speaks from the other side of the wall. She becomes his reason to thirst for freedom. Meeting her becomes his purpose of life, and he waits for it. Unfortunately, the day Basheer is eventually freed from the jail falls on the day they had planned to meet each other in the prison hospital. The ill-fated lover ends up holding a rose for his unseen beloved outside the prison gate with a heavy heart. It leaves a streak of pain, for the reader knows that for him, freedom meant meeting his beloved at last. It becomes even more painful that he never gets a chance to tell her that he is liberated and he hasn’t betrayed her. The picture of Narayani waiting for Basheer to appear in the hospital would be devastating for anyone. The story, however, could be understood in multiple ways. One is the literal loss of love, and the other is the question what if had everything been a mere fragment of imagination? What if Narayani was his technique of coping his loneliness? What if Narayani is a metaphor for freedom itself? The story remains open-ended, with questions unanswered.
What if Narayani was real?
