‘Take The Black Off The Crow’

Review of ‘Kakiyan’ by Devika Brendon 

On the cover of this book, a shiny, embossed ebony eye looks directly at us: alert, but not unkind. Kakiyan the Crow is on the qui vive. 

This is an immensely vivacious, immersive Jataka Tale; a contemporary Aesop’s Fable. And all are welcome at this table. The appealing and accessible story of a crow is part children’s book and part adult allegory, containing within its reach slight allusions and resonances to the cantos of mutability. 

The keynote of the story is resilience: the need for every successful species to develop inbuilt, ingrained survivalism. Know thyself, recommends the oracle-like Mama Alice Crow. Be yourself. Don’t think you can just fly solo and be an outlaw outlier like that Jonathan Livingstone Seagull fellow. In a ‘murder of crows’, be a good judge of character. Look for probable caws, as the saying goes. 

The author, Captain Elmo Jayawardena, was described at a recent reading of this book as having a ‘Conflict-free mind... free of assumptions and biases and prejudices’; and the nerve and spirit to deviate from the established norms of society. It takes such a personality to look positively and with appreciation at a crow, a bird often seen as ugly, dirty, and of a lesser order than the dove, the peacock and the swan. Those elitist, cocooned creatures, swanning and sunning themselves in airy realms above the mean streets patrolled by the likes of Kakiyan’s crow comrades. 

This story, set amidst the hierarchies and tribalism of a community of crows, takes place in the Jacaranda Condominium, where the main character, Kakiyan, eats, lives and observes his fellow ‘kakos’, as they learn about life and love, law and order, at a level we humans (who they call with some irony ‘The Great Ones’) do not often consider. 

This is an irreverent, side-eyed view of humanity, showcasing a scavenger’s often opportunistic point of view. It challenges our assumptions about ourselves and our authority, as these creatures, all with their own raisons d’être, practice their shooting on us, awarding points to themselves for skill, daring and accuracy. 

Human self-destructiveness and cruelty are noted: 

‘It’s an unkind thought perhaps, but the world would certainly be a better place if there was some way we could destroy all the Great Ones and eradicate them from the earth as they’ve done to some others who lived here. It is their endless greed and their insatiable appetite to outdo others that has demolished the sanctity of co-existence and led to this decline towards destruction. The inheritors of the future will have nothing left, be they bird, beast or the Great Ones themselves. It’s as if they have made a covenant to this effect, making sure everything is ruined as much as possible, and as soon as possible.’ 

The satiric elements of the fable are expressed through the wisdom of the elder statesmen and stateswomen of the crow community.  Cyril Crow, the raconteur, for example, ‘watched everything, saw everything, and knew everything that happened in the neighbourhood... He was strictly what you might call a "vicinity crow", never venturing out far from where he lived. He’d hardly been anywhere other than around their flame tree, and visiting us off and on at the jacaranda.’

The story outlines Kakiyan’s development, and in the process examines profoundly human issues of language, identity, colourism, group think, harassment and moral justice. The language is simple, and the syntax and phrasing in character and on point. As befits a modern parable, particularly in this era in which we are continually subjected to a cacophony of information, which seems at times like a tirade of inconsequence, the wisdom conveyed in this story is as bright as the eye of the crow on the cover. Accept things as they are; embrace your place amongst them. 

The ending made me sad, but it was entirely fitting that it should be as it is. The book is open-ended: it begins with ‘Perhaps a Crow knows more than you and me’ and ends with speculations and possibilities: ‘Free minds and free thoughts, just cheese castles we build inside of our heads’. 

The details are vivid and beautiful, the close-ups exactly as you would expect from the beady-eyed narrator. The dialogue is differentiated, idiomatic and snappy. The understated overview puts all the pieces in place. 

‘Things have changed, they always do’, says Kakiyan, illustrating a great universal truth in a few succinct words. 

Caws and effect, as he himself would say.