Memories in Hiding

Tooppil Bhaasi, one of Kerala’s best-known playwrights, received several awards in the course of his long career in theatre, including the Kerala Sahitya Nataka award, and the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi award. Memories in Hiding, his last work, won the Kerala State Government award for the best play in 1992. Memories in Hiding is a dramatic work based on real life. The activist and revolutionary playwright draws on his autobiography to reconstruct an important period in the political history of Kerala just after Indian independence. The Suranad Revolution, which he reconstructs here, was a desperate attempt to resist the tyranny of the feudal landlord system which had oppressed the peasant for generations. Writing decades later, in 1992, Bhaasi revisits that era of passionate idealism and commitment, in a tribute to the sacrifices made by the ordinary people for a cause they believed in. This volume contains, in addition to the translation of the playscript, an introduction to the playwright and the socio-political context of his work by Phillip Zarrilli; the playwright’s own introduction; an appendix explaining the logistics of caste and land reform in Kerala; and black-and-white photographs.