Y-a-n-k-e-e, Jayan Rajan spells it out. Pension first and Yankee now, names of his two books of short stories. Only the titles are in English, the stories are in Malayalam. And he will write only in Malayalam, says Jayan in English. Yankee is being released tomorrow in Kochi, his hometown, by director Shyamaprasad. Writer Tanuja Bhattathiri will receive the book. Santhosh Echikkanam who wrote the foreword will also be there.
“I had given them each a copy and said they should come only if they like it. They are all coming,” he says happily. Yankee is one of the stories in the book, and yes it has to do with America. Jayan has been in the US a lot, owing to his work as user experience designer with the UST Global. “Yankee is about neo imperialism. In the story, there is a certain pill that could make a person think like a Yankee — with an average American’s political views and tastes. A Malayali man — son of a leftist dad — takes the pill and his thought processes change,” Jayan says. There is another partly US story where a lesbian couple comes to Kerala. “It is called Rebecca Joe, and one of the women belongs to Kerala while the other is an American. The story revolves around the issues that happen when the American has an affair with a man in Kerala.”
Those who know Jayan tells him his writing style and language have changed since Pension, from three years ago. “That was perhaps more amateurish. There was no technique as such.” In the new book, without planning it, Jayan has written most of the stories with women protagonists in it. There is for instance Ammini, a poor woman who is abandoned by her husband and has a baby to raise. She doesn’t even have the money to buy milk for her tea shop. So she begins making tea with her breast milk and that becomes the ‘special’ at her shop, giving the story its title. And Special is being made a short film by some of Jayan’s friends, just like stories from his first book — Stranger and Arranged Marriage — were made films.
Jayan whose first book was released by director Aashiq Abu, has also played a small role in his film Gangster. Yankee will be released at the Muse Room on Friday at 1 pm.
