When I joined school the system of providing free rice gruel at noon hadn't started.

[2] The novel, through the lives of its protagonist Kunjipennu and her childhood love and later husband, Kochuraman, depicts the history, traditions and travails of the Malayarayar tribal community in Kerala in the twentieth century.

[3] While Narayan completed the manuscript of the novel in 1988, it was published only ten years later by the DC Books.

[6] The novel's English translation by Catherine Thankamma won the Economist Crossword Book Award in 2011.

Kocharethi has run into six editions in Malayalam and has been translated into Hindi as Pahadin and into all the south Indian languages.