Matriarchs and ancestral homes are never far away from creative spaces when writers from Kerala spin stories. This time it is army officer-turned-author Sajita Nair who has centred her latest novel, The Grande Matriarch of Malabar, on a matriarch and her complex relationship with her tharavadu (ancestral house).
Of ancestral homes
One of the first women to be inducted into the Indian Army, Sajita has moved away from cantonments and barracks to an old ancestral home in Kozhikode and its owner, a canny woman who will go to any length to protect her tharavadu.
