BOOK REVIEW: “Maa’makunudhoo Bodu Easa Vaahaka” by Bodufenvalhugey Seedi

By Naeem Ibrahim (Naimbe)

“Maa’makunudhoo Bodu Easa Vaahaka” by Bodufenvalhugey Seedi is a book that really stands out among the Dhivehi books I’ve read so far. I say this because it is different from any other work of old Dhivehi literature I have read, in two very important ways.

Firstly, the central theme of the story is built upon the very ordinary, totally mundane everyday life of island-life told from the perspective of islanders. There is no big plot to the story. The dialogue is the rustic ‘mah’ spoken Dhivehi of Makunudhoo people. If I could draw a parallel to Indian literature, this book reminds me of Mulkraj Anand who was instrumental in changing the course of Indian literature by depicting the lives of ordinary village folks. Of course, before Anand, Dickens had already done that to literature with his portrayal of social realism and focus on the lives of ordinary people. Dickens highlighted in his works the harsh realities of poverty and social injustice, giving a voice to the marginalized and shining a spotlight on the working class. With ‘Untouchable’, Mulkraj Anand did to Indian literature what Dickens did in Victorian England. Before Anand the central theme of all Indian literature was the lives of kings, princes, princesses & conquerors etc. From the standpoint of literature there was nothing of interest about the stories of ordinary farmers & villagers that warranted their stories being written as books. Anand changed that.

With Maa’makunudhoo Bodu Easa Vaahaka, I believe, Maldivian writer Bodufenvalhugey Seedi did to the tiny realm of Dhivehi literature what Dickens and Anand did to literature in their respective societies. His vivid portrayal of the characters of Bodu Easa and those around him, and detailed descriptions painted a realistic and compassionate picture of the island society, the capricious nature of how everything in life hangs by a thread, the prevailing social norms and inspiring readers to empathize with the characters.

Secondly, Maa’makunudhoo Bodu Easa Vaahaka is dotted with so much of minute details of everyday life of islanders in a way Dhivehi literature of that period often doesn’t. Trivial incidents like someone of Bodu Easa’s status going out to pick ‘dhommandhu’ – the ripe drupes of Terminalia trees the outer skin of which is consumed as a famine food - even at a time when he had gunny sacks full of sundried mangrove propagules and breadfruits lets the reader into the structure and quality of the consciousness of the protagonist. That was a point I could inadvertently draw a parallel between Seedi’s character Bodu Easa and Dickens’ character Scrooge in ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Unlike other old works of Dhivehi fiction, this book isn’t laced with stories of jinn, magic or with value judgments or moral & religious advice. The very straightforward depictions of island life almost gives it a dimension of existentialist literature. In old Dhivehi books you’d find a lot of statements on moral & ethical value judgments. That was because books were mostly written by influential religious figures who saw it important to lace their books with religious narratives even when they were writing fiction.  Religion, pettiness, avarice, camaraderie, insularity and even the fine line between characteristic stoicism of the patriarchal ‘odivriyaa’ of the island society and plain stupidity were highlighted by Seedi only to the extent that they play a part in the fate of the individual.

I need to do more reading on Seedi. But it appears Seedi understood that the objective of his fiction was solely to depict ordinary island life in its raw form without the need for draping reality with other narratives. The protagonist cannot detach himself from the matrix of the society. The way Bodu Easa is portrayed in the book is revelatory of nearly everything that Maa’makunudhoo island life Seedi witnessed himself when he was banished to the island. He captures the society, life and mindset of Makunudhoo people in a way I could somewhat relate to the way Dostoyevsky does with Roskolnikov’s character for nineteenth-century St. Petersburg.

For a while, the book left me wondering if Bodufenvalhugey Seedi actually was familiar with the works of say, Dostoyevsky or James Joyce.