Benyamin’s Silent Journeys, translated into English by Anoop Prathapan, arrives at a time riddled with intolerance, conflict, and widespread mistrust surrounding migration. The novel gives voice to the lives of women whose work and resilience are rarely documented, yet whose impact resonates across generations. Read in these turbulent times, it offers a comforting and reassuring tale – one that highlights courage, endurance, and the quiet power of lives that shape our existence.

The roads not taken

The story begins in Manthalir, Kerala, where young graduate Manu faces deep uncertainty about his future, torn between the advice of his parents, his sister, and his girlfriend Janaki, who urge him to build a career in Australia. After a sudden illness lands him in the ICU, Manu is cared for by nurses whose dedication, warmth, and compassion guide him through recovery. Manu comes home holding on to the last thing he remembers doing before his hospitalisation: helping his father sort through the ancestral house that is about to be demolished. As he sifts through old belongings, he discovers a letter tucked away in an old cupboard – written by his great aunt, Mariamma. Mariamma was one of the first from her community to travel abroad as a nurse in the mid-1940s, but her family lost communication with her after a few years. Manu’s recovery and his subsequent indecisiveness about his career choices lead him toward a strange path no one expected. The letters and the vague recollections of family members spark his determination – a faint echo from the past that soon stretches far beyond the familiar rhythms of home and country.

“When we embark on a journey to uncover these truths, we need not chase after evidence; instead it will find us along the way. Nature guides us through these discoveries, ensuring that every mystery is unveiled in due course.”

When Manu decides to discover his great aunt’s life and work, he is met with great judgment and apprehension. Against all odds, he is able to gather resources, find support and comfort in unfamiliar places and environments. Just like how Mariamma left India to step into a war-ridden world, new cultures and challenges, Manu carries with him a mix of hope, fear, and resolve. Throughout his search Manu realises over and over again that Mariamma never sought be extraordinary, yet it became extraordinary precisely because of how quietly it unfolded. Between false leads and speculations, her story remains out of reach. At a certain point, all Manu has are yellowing letters, blurry pictures, and half-remembered anecdotes from strangers.

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A large part of the novel also becomes a space where unconditional kindness is allowed to breathe in this fast-moving, digitally saturated world. Manu’s own journey is supplemented by someone contemporary walking in the same footsteps as Mariamma, his friend Maria John. She also left home alone, with little resources, trusting that faith, courage, and duty would see her through. Working in Gabon, Maria John provides Manu with an additional depth and perspective as he is quarantined in a faraway land. Manu and Maria’s journey also mirrors that of many people today who find themselves reaching back toward the past, trying to understand those who came before them, experience love, loss, and isolation in every step of their journey. But Benyamin contrasts Manu’s research with that of Maria’s lived experience through how women understand their work – particularly nursing. For Mariamma, faith shaped a large part of her vocation. Nursing was not just a job; it was also a calling, a form of service rooted in spiritual conviction and moral purpose. Her work was an extension of her identity, a way of living through compassion and care. There is also the other part of the story where Benyamin points out the generational shift towards nursing as a vocation. It is a step towards stability, foreign employment, financial independence, and upward mobility. Dealing with contemporary challenges, Benyamin has not portrayed this shift as a loss, rather he intimately reflects on the changing economic realities. Manu’s own experience is proof that what has changed is not dedication but the framework of a profession. It is treated thoughtfully and kindly, showing how time, circumstance, and opportunity reshape even the most deeply held professions. What gives the novel its quiet force is the refusal to rush the emotional undercurrents, and Benyamin’s writing remains rooted in melodic texture without being overbearing. There is patience in Anoop Prathapan’s translation, its simple without being sparse, allowing the tenderness of Benyamin’s narrative to come through beautifully.

But those footsteps were calm and soft – they were nothing but silent journeys!

A family’s inheritance

In the preface, Benyamin notes how his research unveiled the stories that live in shadows – the women that history books overlook. In Mariamma, he finds both a character and a symbol. Women like Mariamma reshaped individual lives and family histories long before men set out on similar journeys. Such journeys ripple forward through time, guiding the opportunities, anxieties, and identities of descendants these women have never met. Mariamma’s story, therefore, is treated not as a single dramatic rupture but as a family’s inheritance, a reminder that the impact of migration is rarely carried by one generation. What is particularly interesting and one of the novel’s greatest strengths is Benyamin’s refusal to simplify and romanticise the migrant experience. There is clarity in the contradictions: the excitement mixed with fear, the pride of building a successful life balanced against the guilt, the freedom of the outside world overshadowed by isolation – all of which is quiet but persistent, and deeply human. Everyone who helps or sustains Manu in a foreign land is connected by the same threads – daily acts of endurance and choices made without spotlight or applause.

Silent Journeys’ strength lies in reminding us that, at a time where immigrant labour, skills, and care are regularly met with violence and severe disdain, dedication and the will to survive continue to adapt and endure with quiet courage. This novel honours the women who worked tirelessly, whose stories matter and urges us to reflect on how many silent journeys have shaped our own lives, and how many more remain hidden in the shadows, yet to be heard.

Silent Journeys, Benyamin, translated from the Malayalam by Anoop Prathapan, Penguin India.