Shinilal is a distinguished contemporary Malayalam author whose fiction is marked by its engagement with history, society, power and the lives of those often pushed to the margins. A native of Nedumangad, Thiruvananthapuram, Shinilal works with Southern Railway as a Travelling Ticket Inspector—an experience that has brought him into close contact with people, places and the varied realities of everyday life.
His notable works include Adi, 124, Sambarkkakranti, Buddhapatham, Udalbhouthikam and Garisappa Aruvi Athava Oru Jalayathra. His novel Sambarkkakranti won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Novel in 2022, while Garisappa Aruvi Athava Oru Jalayathra received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Short Story in 2024.
Shinilal’s writing is distinguished by its experimental narrative forms and its ability to connect historical memory with contemporary realities. His works often question established structures of power and invite readers to look anew at society, history and human experience.
In an Exclusive Interview with Nitish Raj; Editor-in-Chief, the award-winning author talks about his various works along with the importance of observation of humans, places and society in writing.
Q.1 Your journey from working with the Southern Railway to becoming an acclaimed Malayalam writer is fascinating. How have these two worlds—railways and literature—influenced each other in your life?
VSL: As you know, travelling on an Indian train means travelling through India itself. I’ve been working with the Southern Railway for 26 years. During this time, I’ve met thousands of people, witnessed hundreds of incidents, and interacted with people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. And, of course, the railways are a great source of stories too.
Working with the railways has definitely shaped my outlook and my understanding of the nation. These experiences, perspectives, and observations are reflected in my writings as well.
Q.2 Your works often engage with history, society, caste, marginalization and power. What draws you repeatedly towards these subjects?
VSL: I observe society at both the micro and macro levels. In a society like Kerala, where renaissance, anti-oppression, and communist movements took place during the last century, thanks to figures such as Sree Narayana Guru, A K Gopalan and Mahatma Ayyankali, caste is not always visible on the surface. But it continues to exist at the micro level. You can see it only if you observe closely.
Some marginalized communities, particularly tribal people and Dalits, face many obstacles when they try to move beyond their traditional social circumstances. Whether in educational institutions or workplaces, caste discrimination continues to exist in different forms. As an observer, I find traces of caste in my own locality and even inside a railway coach.
So, when I write, these subjects naturally find their way into my stories. My story Gurudev Express is based on a real incident that I witnessed on the same train.
Q.3 Your novel, Sambarkkakranti was awarded the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award 2022. What did the recognition mean to you, and how did the award change your relationship with the book?
VSL: Sambarkkakranti is actually the first novel I wrote, even though it was published after Udalbhauthikam. Receiving a state award for my first novel is an especially exciting experience.
The novel has been translated into English and Tamil, and the Tamil translation has recently won three awards. As a writer, I am particularly fond of this book. It is a train-based story and, as far as I know, the first of its kind in Malayalam.
Most of the incidents described in the novel are drawn from my experiences as a ticket examiner with the railways. That makes the book very special to me.
Q.4 Your professional life as a railway employee brings you into contact with people from different backgrounds and places. Does observing these everyday encounters provide material or inspiration for your fiction?
VSL: As I told you earlier, I meet people from different backgrounds and with different kinds of personalities—crooked, helpful, arrogant, kind, and everything in between. A railway coach is a kind of human museum if you observe it closely. I have found many stories and formed many relationships through these encounters.
When you are on a train, you are among people. Like any writer, I too try to understand and explore the human predicament through my writing. So, my job, which keeps me constantly surrounded by people, gives me greater access to the very world that interests me as a writer.
Q.5 Your Short Story Collection, Garisappa Aruvi Athava Oru Jalayathra was awarded the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award 2024. Your fiction often brings the past into conversation with the present. How does that approach work in this collection?
VSL: It’s a collection of 12 stories. The title story itself is based on the life and death of Kumaran Asan, the poet laureate of Kerala. It is not at all a portrait of his life; rather, it approaches death philosophically and explores his relationship with Narayana Guru.
The story SALAPILA, set against the backdrop of COVID-19, deals with the struggles of the common man and themes such as migration, isolation, and the Citizenship Act.
I use history as a tool to explore the contemporary world. In fiction, as in life, people always relate things to one another. RAKSHASAKANDAM is based on the Ramayana, yet it is essentially a story about the reversal of power. It’s like viewing the story from the perspective of the antagonist. This demonstrates how history and historical references can be used to understand the dilemmas of contemporary life.
Q.6 You have written novels as well as short stories and shorter forms of fiction. What can a short story accomplish that a novel cannot—and what can a novel explore that a short story cannot?
VSL: A short story and a novel are two different literary forms. A short story can be compared to a bullet shot, while a novel is more like a bombardment—or even a nuclear explosion. A short story precisely hits its target. It is highly concentrated, but even in that concentration, it can be fatal.
In a short story, the writer’s freedom is somewhat restricted by the form. A novel, meanwhile, gives the writer more freedom to let their imagination take flight without boundaries. I write both forms. Whenever I get an idea or a thread, I somehow know whether it is meant to become a novel, a short story, or micro-fiction.
Q.7 Adi explores questions surrounding caste, dignity, humiliation and identity. What did writing this work teach you about the relationship between individual experience and larger social structures?
VSL: An individual is the product of his/her surroundings. He/she cannot escape the realities of society; he/she is shaped by them. Caste is a root reality and a major source of oppression in India. As a writer, I cannot turn a blind eye to the caste system.
In Adi, the protagonist, Peelipose alias Philips, is a Sub-Inspector who believes himself to be a respectable person. But he comes to understand the reality through one of his own subordinates. He turns to the history of Ayyankali and finds a way to free himself from the clutches of inferiority.
The lesson, for me, is that one can confront and overcome oppression by reclaiming and drawing strength from one’s own history.
Q.8 Your fiction often brings historical realities into conversation with contemporary life. How do you approach the challenge of balancing historical material with imaginative storytelling?
VSL: History and fiction have different approaches to the reality of life. History has its own established methods and relies on evidence and data, whereas fiction largely depends on imagination. The first is data-driven, while the second is driven by emotions. Fiction is, in a way, the emotional history of ordinary people.
I am interested in how people lived through the larger historical periods. There were wars, conflicts, conquests, famines, genocides, and countless other upheavals throughout human history. Yet, even in the midst of these harsh circumstances, people loved, found partners, played, laughed, cried, cheated, and simply lived their lives.
The wars went on. Emperors conquered. The people lived.
I try to portray the ordinary person within history—the person who has no recorded history of his own. There is no conflict between the two. History moves along its own course. Life does too.
