'Karachi to Malabar': A web of love stories bound by time and distance | Book Review

Stories about love crossing borders and generations are hardly new. But Sanjeev Panackal Thomas’ ‘Karachi to Malabar: An Odyssey of Love’ is less interested in a single, sweeping romance than in the many relationships that shape people’s lives. The novel moves between characters, places, and periods, allowing one love story to lead to another until lives that initially seem separate begin to intersect. What emerges is a story about how love, even when it ends, can continue to influence people long after those involved have moved on.

The novel begins with a brief account of Kerala’s history and the arrival of Christianity in the region. For a few pages, it reads almost like a history book. Soon, however, the historical backdrop gives way to personal stories, with love becoming the thread that connects them.

One of the first relationships introduced is that of Salim and Xariah. Salim, who is working on his doctoral thesis, meets Xariah, a fellow student from Pakistan. Their relationship develops despite the distance between them, but their story soon leads to an older romance. Xariah’s grandmother, Zohal, was once in love with Michael, Salim’s father. Michael eventually returned to Kerala, leaving Zohal behind in Karachi. He never met their child.

The choices made by Michael and Zohal belong to their generation, but their consequences do not end with them. They travel across borders and through time, eventually becoming part of the lives of people who had no role in the original story. This idea—that lives can be shaped by what came before—runs through the novel, as the relationships of one generation cast their shadow over the next.

Thomas draws extensively from his own family history, including stories he heard from his parents and grandparents and the family dynamics he observed growing up. Places he has known and people he has encountered also find their way into the novel’s fictional world, giving it a distinctly personal quality.

“We are a large family, and I was very close to my grandfather. He helped me understand our family dynamics and the relationships within it. I owe my family a lot for the opportunities I have had,” says Thomas. His own life also finds its way into the novel in more intimate ways. Salim has a twin, Mohan, and their birth is marked by the possibility of losing both children. Thomas himself was a twin and lost his brother very young. Writing about Salim and Mohan brought that old loss back to him unexpectedly.

“It made me wonder, why couldn’t we survive as Salim and Mohan did? It was difficult for me,” he says. These personal connections perhaps explain why family is as important to the novel as romance. The Kerala Christian family at its centre is shaped by expectations, marriages, duty, and old tensions, and its members bear the consequences of one another’s choices. Michael, for instance, is not defined solely by his relationship with Zohal. His political past, his life in Kerala, and his eventual role as a headmaster give him a story of his own. He is married to Eliza in Kerala, but theirs is far from a perfect marriage.

The same applies to the other characters. They are not simply supporting figures in someone else’s romance. Each carries a history and relationships of their own. Just when the reader begins to believe they have identified the central character, the focus shifts and another person’s life comes into view. Another relationship emerges, another history is revealed and the boundaries of the original story begin to expand.

In ‘Karachi to Malabar,’ love is not always measured by whether two people remain together. Sometimes its significance lies in what it changes, what it leaves behind, and how it affects those who come after them. The novel’s structure reinforces this idea. The non-linear narrative moves between characters and periods. Thomas says he wanted readers to be able to enter the book from almost any chapter rather than follow a strictly linear narrative. This approach can be demanding, particularly given the large cast and the relationships spanning several generations.

Yet the fragmented structure also mirrors the way memories and family stories are passed down. A reader may encounter a character before understanding where they fit into the larger story, much like family histories are often discovered in fragments rather than told from beginning to end. Gradually, the connections become clearer. Karachi and Malabar, though separated by geography, begin to feel like parts of the same emotional landscape, joined by people whose lives and memories cross that distance.

The novel also resists the temptation to resolve every relationship neatly. Some threads are left unfinished, which may frustrate readers looking for closure. But that incompleteness feels fitting for a book that treats love as something more complicated than a beginning, middle, and end. Not every relationship reaches a clear ending, and its consequences do not disappear simply because the relationship itself has ended.

‘Karachi to Malabar’ is ultimately a novel about the afterlife of love: what remains after people part, what gets carried into the next generation, and how a relationship between two people can become part of the lives of many others. Its characters may be separated by borders, circumstances, and decades, but their stories keep finding their way back to one another.