Thakazhi has awarded a free pass into the theme park of his characters' minds; to embark on its topsy-turvy rides one at a time. An allowance is issued to trespass deep into their emotions without prosecution, to stay abreast with their feelings of existence, ambition, conformity, judgement, justification, and finally, acceptance. You are cajoled into forgetting self and the author. At no point is one invited to project their own sensory experiences of joy and plight to that of any character, nor is asked to care about author's circumstances or intentions. Death of the author, and oddly enough, also of the reader, is registered. One subconsciously melds into a seaside belonging to Karuthamma, the protagonist, Chakki, her mother, Chembankunju, her father, Pareekutty, her lover, Palani, her husband, and their individual soliloquies.

There is no question of right and wrong, everyone is so, and so perhaps everyone is wrong. One would certainly be defiant in attempting to distance from that premise, for it might upset our convenience to earmark a villain at the outset. There isn't a conspicuous one in this story. In essence, love is punished, by forces invisible - of collective unconscious, orthodoxy, taboo, customs, fear, righteousness, ambition, gossips, jealousy, helplessness, debt, law of the land, and ultimately the person inside you.

Karuthamma and Pareekutty grew up as childhood mates in a coastal village unbeknownst to each other that they were to be separated when they get older. Their love was that of the permanent nest made in each other's mind, and of the words exchanged and laughter shared. In their life they never touch each other. Yet he was ruined and she was blamed for existence. Why were they deemed guilty? Were they deserving of such a verdict? Of course they were guilty of living rent free in each other's heads, which also belonged to their family and the community. There is a tax to be paid on thoughts, especially if one is thinking of love. Even more important was the hubris, their negligence: towards the supernatural, to their belief in traditions and the omnipresent deity of uncertainties, the 'Kadalamma', the mother of the ocean. Everyone in that community has had given a tacit consent at birth to be owned by the ocean and the community they were born into, to its customs and rules. Being unamenable to those benchmarks forges one into an accused, self-accused, implicit criminal of invisible thought crimes, of which one cannot be absolved. Such a deed makes one a bounty, a prey, a victim!

One is informed about the ambitious and avaricious father, the astute and confused mother, and the strong helpless husband. The tragedy manifests in the realisation that one cannot escape the bond of blood, as much as there is no escape from the bond of 'anuragam' (love); eternally bound by those, in the most cruel, sadomasochist manner, where you constantly reinforce your own conviction of being at fault, your life a burden to others, your love disrupts peace. Once committed, knowingly or otherwise, there is no redemption, because it transforms you into your own torturer, to become your own judge, jury and executioner.

But eventually all that will disappear from memory for a timeless melody and an everlasting embrace. By its own inimitable, inexplicable ways, love always triumphs! When Pareekutty sings his heart out, Kaurthamma will always walk towards him with the unadulterated clarity and perfect equanimity of mind. That attraction, like everything else, is also beyond her control, perhaps aligning with the laws of nature, subduing the ensuing repercussions, whatever the price may be for that tryst, even if permanent solitude, love triumphs!