How Benyamin’s fiction upended the illusions of Gulf migrant lives in Malayalam literature

The prolific Malayalam writer Benyamin’s short story “EMS and the Girl” begins with a narration by Jose, an immigrant from Kerala living in the United States. In order to hide his own identity from a girl who sought refuge in his house, he introduces himself as Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad – in short, EMS. The girl has never heard of the real EMS – a towering Communist figure in Kerala, who became the Indian state’s first chief minister in 1957 – and therefore believes that it is her host’s name. She goes her way, and for the protagonist life resumes normalcy after some days of high drama. Years later, Jose comes to know from his wife – who had, all the while, been kept ignorant of the entire series of incidents – that once, when he was away, the girl had come looking for EMS. “Even a girl in America came in search of EMS from Kerala when she had a problem,” his wife exclaims. “Imagine – EMS in America!”

The short story is included in Benyamin’s collection Márquez, EMS, Gulam and Others, recently translated from Malayalam by Swarup B R. We learn that the big names in the collection’s title – the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, the political and intellectual giant EMS – serve as refuges for small individuals in the stories engaged in petty masquerades.