At once erudite and riveting, Manoj Kuroor’s Nilam Poothu Malarnna Naal (The day the land bloomed) is considered one of the most important Malayalam novels of this millennium. Set in the Tamil Sangam era, it explores a hitherto uncharted narrative territory in Malayalam or, for that matter, even Tamil. To capture the aesthetic essence of this unique milieu, Manoj deploys a new idiom based exclusively on Malayalam’s Dravidian roots; an idiom devoid of Sanskrit sounds. The result of this