ABSTRACT
Different shades of marital life are seen here. Kesava Pillai with perpetual deficits faces perpetual neglect from his wife. A young peanut vendor struggles to keep her severely ailing husband happy, and in that process, she is exposed to premature ageing with no sunshine in life. Clerk Unni Pillai gets infatuated with his peon’s daughter. So does Mohan who falls for a milk-vending girl. Severe class differences and temperamental issues make both the marriages stale. Kurup’s extreme guilt of eloping with a girl ‘from a palace’ and dragging ‘her to the pavement’ ends in tragedy. Postman Panikkar who shuns marriage finally has a live-in relationship with a well-to-do widow with grown-up children. Kutty-amma, with inherited resources neglects her man with weak resources but does not allow him to ‘walk away’ as she realizes she can’t carry on without a male support, ‘a man who comes home when the sun sets’ as the Malayalis say. ‘Exchange’ cuts a new path – long before ‘spouse swapping’ was talked about in the West, Kaaroor presented it in a hilarious manner through the dialogues between
Postman Pillai and carpenter Nanu – when they got drunk!
