History of the Badagas in the Novel "Kurinjitthen"

Abstract

Rajam Krishnan's fiction "Kurinjitthen" describes the lives of three generations of the Badagas ethnic community who migrated from the state of Karnataka after the tenth century AD. Through this novel, the cultural elements of three generations of the Badagas community are shared. It can be seen that the attachment of the first generation to the land is diminishing in the succeeding generations. Later, their culture was also mixed due to foreign contact. People who live in a materialistic society are greedy for money and start cultivating tea in their land. The Kurinji flower land is occupied by the tea plants. Rajam Krishnan constructs the struggle between old and new in fiction through characters. Time creates the environment for the next generation to accept the change. In this novel, Rajam Krishnan has written everything about the life, culture, change of time, and generation gap of Badagas. The core of the story is a tender love specific to the land of Kurinji and its disappointment. The literary space of Rajam Krishnan is also explored through this novel.