V D Satheesan was never the obvious choice for Kerala’s next chief minister, except to the voters. There is a photograph in my head from the Kerala Literature Festival in 2024, of Satheesan standing in the corner of a tent at Kozhikode beach, asking me about a Bulgarian novelist. I had just interviewed Georgi Gospodinov, the International Booker winner, who was wandering around the festival largely unrecognised. When I mentioned this to Satheesan in passing, expecting nothing more than polite acknowledgement, he immediately wanted to know where Gospodinov was, whether they could meet, and what I had asked him. And then, before I could answer, he gave me a 15-minute lesson on Time Shelter , Gospodinov’s novel about a clinic where each floor recreates a different decade, where patients with dementia choose which era to live in. He had read it. He had thought about it.…