MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY DECEMBER 2013

KERALA SAHITYA AKADEMI Thrissur 680 020, Kerala Malayalam Literary Survey A Quarterly Publication of Kerala Sahitya Akademi, Thrissur Vol. 33 No. 3 - 4. 2013 July - Decmber Single Issue : Rs. 25/- This Issue - Rs. 50/- Annual Subscription : Rs. 100/-

Editorial Board Perumbadavam Sreedharan - President R. Gopalakrishnan - Secretary & Editor Chandramati - Convenor Members John Samuel R. Lopa V.N. Asokan - Sub editor

Cover Design : Vinaylal Type setting : Macworld, Thrissur Printed and Published by R. Gopalakrishnan on behalf of Kerala Sahitya Akademi, Thrissur 680 020 and Printed at Santhi Bhavan, Kannamkulangara, Thrissur for Simple Printers, Westfort, Thrissur - 680 004, Kerala and published at Thrissur, Thrissur Dist., Kerala State. Editor : R. Gopalakrishnan Reg. No. 29431/77 Phone : 0487-2331069 [email protected] www.keralasahityaakademi.org

Articles published in this journal do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi. The Editorial Board cannot be held responsible for the views expressed by the writers Editor’s note

he word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the “TLatin for 'bearing across'. Having been b o r n e across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.” (Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands) In a country like India with great language variance, translation is the only way of inter-language communication.Translation promotes the growth of indigenous literature in the global context. In the present-day world, translation is surely the only means of reaching out to a world audience. Gone are the days when only the language and literature of the colonizing masters were brought to light and placed on a high pedestal. Now the whole world is becoming more and more a global village and translation has become a vehicle for culture-transference as well.And the translator, now, is a bilingual mediating agent . Malayalam literature has the tradition of accepting classical works in translation and celebrating them-- Vyasa Mahabharatha, Les Misérables ,War and Peace, Jhutha Sach etc, to mention a few. Let us proudly remember that the Kerala Sahitya Akademi has recently brought out the Malayalam translation of Ulysses, the magnum opus of James Joyce. Translation of Malayalam works into other languages is equally important, as that is the only way to familiarize non- Malayali readers with the great works in Malayalam. Fully aware of the dual advantages of adan-pradan in translation, Kerala Sahitya Akademi seeks to promote Malayalam Literature and culture in other languages. In the New year of 2014, let us join hands to give and receive.

R. Gopalakrishnan Secretary & Editor

Contents

Speaking of poetry - 07 Micheal O hAodha in Conversation with K. Sachidanandan Eco-critical readings of Vishakanyaka - 14 Dr. Vyrassery Vamanan Nampoothiri Arabian Nights - 18 Kureepuzha Sreekumar My dear Ayyappaji - 20 Rosscot Krishnapillai Whither is Fled, the Visionary Gleam? - 26 V.G. Thampy A Tiger and Some Stories - 31 Karunakaran Return of the Non-Resident Indian - 38 A C Sreehari As You Bathe Your Mother - 43 Savithri Rajeevan Ricardo, Janaki and a Female Body - 45 K V Mohankumar Nature and Myth as a Feminine Language - 50 Praseetha K. When the First Person Tells a Story - 55 Manoj Kuroor Literary Ornithology - 57 Sreekanth Willing to End - 61 Nirmala Inkayi - 66 Sreelatha The White Dog - 73 Kuzhoor Wilson 6 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Speaking of Poetry Micheal O hAodha in Conversation with K.Satchidanandan

(This interview was done at the end of 2011 for my Irish anthology, Rogha Danta. (Selected Poems. ) translated by the eminent Irish poet, Gabriel Rosenstock. It was published in Irish as appendix to the book that came out in 2012, but has not yet appeared in English. It may be of special interest to the readers as the poet is responding to questions from a foreign critic who does not know much about Malayalam- or for that matter Indian - literature ) Can you tell us a little bit about your background? What drew you to literature initially? had no writers before me in the family though my elder I brother used to write verses during his school and college days. Whenever I try to think about what really led me to poetry I hear the diverse strains of the incessant rains of my village in Kerala in South India. I recall too the luminous lines of the Malayalam epic, Adhyatma Ramayana that I had read as a school boy where the poet invokes the Goddess of the Word, Saraswati, the Indian Muse, to keep bringing the apt words to his mind without a pause like the endless waves of the sea. My mother taught me to talk to crows and trees; from my pious father I learnt to communicate with gods and spirits. My insane grandmother taught me to create a parallel world to escape the vile ordinariness of the tiresomely humdrum everyday world; the dead taught me to be one with the soil; the wind taught me to move and shake without ever being

Whenever I try to think about what really led me to poetry I hear the diverse strains of the incessant rains of my village in Kerala in South India.

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 7 seen and the rain trained my voice in a Were you aware of a rich tradition in thousand modulations. My beautiful village terms of poetry in the Malayalam with its poor people too must have turned language when you first began writing? me into poetry. With such rare teachers When I began writing I was in school. I must perhaps it was impossible for me not to be a have been 12 when my first poem was poet, of sorts. published in a small village magazine. I had What are your interests outside of only a vague idea of our tradition. Indeed I literature? had read some of the classical authors, but My second love is art. Art galleries are the the general understanding of tradition was first places I go to during my travels. There is not very strong. But gradually, as I began to hardly any important art gallery in Europe or take poetry seriously, I began to read our the US I have not visited. I have also written poets slowly and consciously and later on contemporary art. Then there is cinema. I started writing about their works. I have my own canon and have written poems about attend film festivals or watch DVDs and try to my predecessors- Ezhuthachchan, Kumaran see what is happening there. The visual Asan, Vailoppilly, P.Kunjiraman Nair, element that is strong in my poetry Edassery Govindan Nair, Ayyappa Paniker according to critics as also the narrative whom I consider most significant in terms of element and its use of a kind of montage poetic experience or/ and form. But I keep may have something to do with this reading even the youngest of poets and fascination for films. I am also interested in never cease to learn from others’ practice philosophy and history. I listen to music of even while remaining myself. all kinds too. The fresh discoveries about the human body, especially the brain as also the Do people in the West get a “false” possibilities of life outside the earth and the impression of India from some of the solar system excite me a lot. literature that purports to be “Indian” – i.e. Indian “diaspora writing” written by What style or genres of literature do writers who may have grown up you enjoy as a reader? outside of India and whose links with Avantgarde writing of all kinds interest me their “homeland” are tenuous at best? particularly. Besides world poetry, I read a lot Even among the Indian authors writing in of fiction from all around. You can imagine English there are two categories: those who the kind of writing I like if I name some of live in India and write about Indian life and my favourites: Dostoevsky, Kafka, society and those who live abroad and keep Kazantsakis, Italo Calvino, James Joyce, visiting India looking for “themes”. Then Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Milan there are those who have decided to write in Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, J. M. the Indian languages, twenty-two of which Coetzee, Maria Vergas Llosa, Jose have been recognised by the Constitution Saramago, Salman Rushdie : there are many (there are several more awaiting recognition). more, but I have read almost everything Those who write in these languages are these writers have written available in closest to our reality as it is almost English. I do read plays and enjoy good impossible to capture its nuances and critical/theoretical writing, say Roland complexities in English language that is still Barthes, Maurice Blanchot , Michel Foucault, the language of the elite in India. Of those Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Giorgio who write in English for various reasons – for Agamben and Jacques Ranciere, to name a some that is the only language they know few. My formal research was in post- well as they have been brought up and Structuralism. educated outside their regions; for some it is

8 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY To me poetry is complete expression. It also gives me opportunities to play with language even while expressing my human concerns. I enjoy the act of writing itself more than anything that follows it - publication, recognition and earthly rewards. a choice as it suddenly makes them pan- politics of translation and partly with the sad Indian and even ‘international’- those who fact that there are very few in India or abroad live abroad create a very unreal India. For who can translate directly from an Indian most of them India is an ethnological language into a foreign language. Even the museum and they have a tendency to number of those who can translate well into ‘package’ and sell India. Unfortunately this English is limited, not to speak of French, tendency has also begun to falsify a lot of German, Spanish, Italian, Welsh or Irish. So writing in English done by those who live one has to depend on English as a link inside the country. Their works are often read language. I was fortunate to have direct not as literature, but as instances of history, translators for my poetry into French and ethnography and even anthropology. Your German, but the Italian and Arabic whole perspective gets falsified when you translations were done from my own English eye a foreign market. Thank God, poetry is versions though I did have them compared free from this as it has no ‘market’ any way. with the originals with the help of scholars who knew the languages. Many publishers How would you describe yourself in abroad are not willing to accept such indirect terms of your political leanings? translations. I do not find any easy way out I have passed through an intensely political except to have more translations in English phase in my writing career as a radical so that they make their way from there into Leftist. But my sympathies are now broader. other languages. With all the losses that My concerns are very much alive, but they such translations may entail, something of are not confined to class any more; they are the original definitely gets through. more species-concerns. I believe in the Do you think there is too much of an Commons philosophy: that the earth, water, Do you think there is too much of an emphasis on the West understanding air, knowledge and culture belong to all emphasis on the West understanding the East and vice-versa at the human beings; the first three also belong to the East and vice-versa at the moment? Are there aspects of the East every being that constitutes the ecosystem. moment? Are there aspects of the East that should always remain “theirs”? I try to look at the world also from the that should always remain “theirs”? point of view of animals, insects and plants I do not think there is any harm in attempts so that I may be free of the last hubris, of to understand one another. What I find being man. One of our great writers, strange are these very constraining and Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, who was totalising categories –‘The West’ and ‘the deeply impacted by Sufism has written a ‘East’. These stereotypes, like ‘the spiritual short story, The Inheritors of the Earth East’ and the ‘materialist West’ have already (Bhoomiyude Avakashikal) that reflects this done a lot of harm. Again, a closer look will mode of thinking. prove that all the Eastern countries, or all the Western countries do not share everything: Why is it that so few present-day Japan, China, India, Indonesia: if they have Indian poets and writers are translated some things in common, they have as many – thereby not reaching a bigger differences among them too. This is equally readership in other parts of the world, true of the so-called ‘West’. How far is Ireland the West in particular? like France, or Germany like Iceland? At the It has to do partly with the international same time there is also a real

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 9 standardisation happening in life styles due ways of life and environment. to the processes of globalisation. Go to a Is Indian literature thriving? supermarket or a shopping mall anywhere in the world and you will find similar I would say yes: One reason is the new merchandise , produced probably by the vibrancy lent to it by the above forms of same companies. To some extent this is also oppositional writing, and the other, the happening in modern art and literature. There emergence of many interesting writers who is so much of exchange and mutual impact write in English with greater confidence than that they too tend to be often similar despite their predecessors. There are all kinds of the understandable outcries against the loss writers among them as I mentioned earlier, of cultural and linguistic identities. Cultures but here are many good ones too especially are in a flux, more than at any other phase in among poets and fiction writers; there is also human history. There is a lot of ‘West’ in the a lot of good non-fiction being produced in contemporary ‘East’ and vice -versa. English. Publishers in the West are also turning more and more to Indian writing, Can you tell us a little bit about the both in English and translations from the situation for writers in the region of Indian languages, having almost exhausted India that you currently inhabit and the African and Latin American writing . development of modern (postmodern) Indian literature and languages You have spent some periods generally? undertaking writing workshops in Wales and other western countries. How I have written three books in English on this does Western literature or writing differ subject. I can only briefly respond here. I am does Western literature or writing differ from that of India? Are many Indian living at present in Delhi, India’s from that of India? Are many Indian writers actually living outside India and cosmopolitan capital city which is a melting writers actually living outside India and perhaps not as “in touch” with what pot of cultures. So I get to know about many perhaps not as “in touch” with what Indian life and culture is like “on the literatures. I had also the privilege of running Indian life and culture is like “on the ground” now – as compared with for more than a decade the Sahitya ground” now – as compared with before? Akademi, the National Academy of Literature before? in India which also helped me understand The feelings literature expresses are not very many literatures somewhat closely. The most dissimilar wherever the works get written. exciting things happening today in Indian The difference can be seen in the ways life literatures in different languages- after the is perceived and in forms that are specific to hey-day of High Modernism- are the rise of certain traditions. Even here I would not like Women’s, if not necessarily Feminist, writing, to generalise as individual differences also ( which has a history of at least 26 centuries, matter a lot. Look at the Welsh poets: Twm but there has been a clear growth of the Morrys would draw from the folk tradition; genre in terms of both quality and quantity Menna Elfyn might like to comment in free in the last 15-20 years ), subaltern writing ( or rhymed verse on contemporary especially Dalit - former untouchables, the experiences; Eurig Salisbury would prefer lowest in the caste category - writing: poetry, the traditional classical form of the fiction , autobiography all written in a fresh Cynhanedd even while writing about the idiom with a lot of rustic and dialectal present. I have translated not only Welsh elements, recasting the canons and poetry but a lot of Swedish poetry too, developing a new aesthetics) and minority directly from Swedish, spending time with writing (written by ethnic, religious , linguistic the poets. Nature plays a prominent role in and sexual minorities). There are also new Swedish poetry. concerns, with the loss of languages and

10 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Is there any awareness in India of take a strong “political” stand on social minority languages and literatures in and cultural issues? Europe, such as Irish, Welsh, Basque It depends. There are highly regarded etc? committed writers like Mahasvetadevi of I do not think the awareness we have is Bengal who have been bringing up people’s adequate, now that I know at least Welsh issues consistently. Some writers do not bring writing better. Ireland is better known in India the issues into their writing, but are activists .I for its English writers from Bernard Shaw and have also been freely responding to issues in W. B. Yeats to Lady Gregory, Sean O’ Casey my own modest way. But such writers are in and of course James Joyce as they are all a minority. The new movements like dalit , part of English syllabi in India. Basque is feminist , gay and lesbian literatures have little known. their own politics that goes beyond the traditional class outlook. A lot of Indian Do writers get much governmental English writers are political too, like Amitav support in India? Ghosh who has been tracing the evolution of The support writers get is hardly adequate. Colonialism in India and Gita Hariharan who But it is not proper to complain as India has taken a strong anti-communal stand. despite all the claims of development is still a Salman Rushdie too has been engaging with poor country where a good majority of the post-colonial history of the subcontinent. people find it hard to make both ends meet. What is it about the writing of poetry The National Academy of Literature that I ran What is it about the writing of poetry that you cherish? for more than a decade gives awards to the that you cherish? best books and best translations in 24 To me poetry is complete expression. It also languages every year besides encouraging gives me opportunities to play with language smaller unrecognised languages. It also even while expressing my human concerns. I publishes translations of classics and enjoy the act of writing itself more than awarded books and brings out anthologies anything that follows it - publication, of new writing besides publishing one first recognition and earthly rewards. It is with me book by a young writer in each language all the time, even when I am not actually every year. It also organises seminars, writing. I have not only been writing poetry, workshops and readings. But it is impossible but translating poetry, editing a poetry journal for a single institution to cope with the needs and writing about poets and poetry. of a vast country with hundreds of mother- You have translated English poets such tongues. The Indian Council for Cultural as Auden and Spender and the Irish Relations also organises writers’ exchanges poet Yeats into Malayalam. Are there once in a while. There are also Academies in some English poets who do not many of the states which give awards and “translate” well into Malayalam or who organise writers’ get-togethers like the Kerala do not “translate” well in your opinion? Sahitya Akademi in my state besides private literary organisations. Malayalam, the I have found that after Indian poets writing in language in which I write is very advanced in other languages and other Asian poets, it is this respect: it has huge publishing houses, African, Latin American and some kinds of a very large and informed readership and European poetry that translate well into several literary publications. But that is not Malayalam. They seem to share more with the case with many other languages. our poetry at the level of concerns as well as form. English poets are comparatively more Is there still a respect amongst the resistant. So I have done very few English reading public in India for writers who poets. Even T. S. Eliot is difficult though a

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 11 senior poet has done a translation of ‘The actor. This experience has helped reaffirm my Wasteland’. The rhythms are the first faith in poetry as a universal language: the casualty. The syntactic structures of shared mother-tongue of humankind before Malayalam that is a Dravidian language are Babel. Translation is important as a cultural different too. act of exploration and exchange, as a search What future projects are you working for commonalities and even as a political act on now? Can you tell us a bit about that empowers a minority language or a less them? known culture. I have two long poems in mind: one, an The function of poetry in modern-day autobiographical one, of which I had written society? a part – about my infancy - some years Poetry sensitises its readers. It upturns the back. The second is a series of poems virgin soil, makes us see what we might not based on the characters and situations in otherwise have seen, hear what we might not the great Indian epic, Mahabharata- It will be have heard. It refreshes our perceptions and a sequence on the contemporary human re-energises language. It re-enchants an condition. I also wish to write a book in increasingly technological and materialist English on the evolution of post- society, giving back to it the sense of wonder Independence poetry in India. and magic it seems to have lost. How do you find the writing process? As I have a good few small children Does it come easily to you or do you myself – one of whom suffers from spend many hours reworking poems? autism – I really liked this poem of There are poems that I have written at a yours (below) for Palash. A famous Irish stretch, making revisions in the process itself Nationlist and writer – Pádraig Pearse, and others which I have re-worked many who was strongly influenced by Indian times and have yet not been happy with. writers as it happens – said that it is Mostly, especially if it is a short poem, I write when the poet or artist sees the world at a stretch with corrections and revisions from the perspective of a child that while writing and then do one or two copies he becomes most creative. Would where too I make minor - at times major - you agree with this perspective on changes. poetry? Your poetry has been translated into many A GAME IN MATHEMATICS other languages. Does this give you (For six-year old Palash) satisfaction? Does the process of translation give your work a new lease of life? Why is Make a child from salt, translation important? A sparrow from rain, I think of translation as a way of reaching Make a horse from Day, out to those people who might otherwise not And an elephant from Night, have read my poetry. Indeed there are bound Make a lion from snow, to be transmission losses, but there are A monkey from clouds, gains too as the poem gets the flesh of Make snow from jasmine flowers, another language and in Indian parlance it is A cloud from songs. a kind of ‘re-incarnation’. I have also been Make Day from egrets, reading my poetry at many festivals and Night from crabs. individual readings in many parts of the Make Mother from salt, world, along with the translations read by the Rain from kisses. translator mostly, or a professional reader/ Touch the cloud with the jasmines:

12 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Inviting ARTICLES

Malayalam Literary Survey wishes to bring out a special issue on Ecology and Malayalam LiteratureLiterature. Articles, not exceeding 2000 words, are invited from researchers on any relevant topic under the umbrella term. The last date for submission is 15 February 2014. The screening and selection will be done by the Editorial Committee.

A rain of sparrows for children, but even otherwise I try not to from the heart of the monkey lose the child in me. Yes, it is important for a mauled by the lion. poet to keep alive the child in him/her. I have Feed the crab to the egret: also written many poems on/for my two the trumpet of an elephant from inside the daughters. This poem was written for a poet- horse. friend’s son who has now grown up into a Give the child a kiss: writer himself! In the rain Mother melts, What is poetry? songs, sparrows, jasmines, lion, Day, Night, Palash. All my life I have been trying to understand this. I don’t have any final answer as poetry I have very often tried to look at the world is ever changing in its attempt to catch up through a child’s eyes so that the familiar with the changing reality and the evolving world becomes unfamiliar and full of perceptions of life. Let us not define it for all surprise. I have recently also begun to write time or for all human beings. ■

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 13 Eco-critical Readings(s) of Vishakanyaka Dr. Vyrassery Vamanan Nampoothiri

K. Pottakkadu’s (1913-82) Vishakanyaka (1948) is a very S. convenient site at which the anthropocentric, humanistic ideology of adventure and progress and the new biocentric, environmental perspectives/texts can be divulged and discussed. Here, in the following passages what attempted are the previous assessments of this ‘environmental poem’ and they are contrasted with V. Raja Krishnan’s ecocritical or counter reading. The epoch of the composition of the novel in Kerala culture and literature was that of the advent and advancement of anthropocentric admiration for man’s indomitable will and fight against nature. Unlike the European Renaissance of about the 16th century and the origin of Humanism and the birth of the Romantic Revival in the 19th century, in Kerala, all these occurred simultaneously in the first half of the twentieth century. The novel was written, in 1948, almost at the pinnacle of this cultural trend. Occidental adventures in conquering the sea, the sky and rooting out the ‘dark or satanic’ dragons and devils like woods and forests, and also, the Soviet Progressive waves of Communism instructed, inspired and synergized most of the Kerala/Malayalam writers. Nature was diabolic and culture godly to them. The two poets, in whom such an anti-Nature ideology finds its Occidental adventures in conquering the sea, the sky and rooting out the ‘dark or satanic’ dragons and devils like woods and forests, and also, the Soviet Progressive waves of Communism instructed, inspired and synergized most of the Kerala/Malayalam writers. Nature was diabolic and culture godly to them.

14 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY zenith, are Vyloppilly Sreedhara Menon been made fertile and luxuriant, were [1911-85] and Vayalar Rama Varma [1929- obliterated with fatal diseases. The heroine is 75]. Whereas Menon changed his stance by the enticing but toxic land that by her his active participation in the Silent Valley fascinating glances seduces the Movement [1978-83], Pottakkadu’s remarks protagonists, extorts their sweat, blood and on the inspiration and source of his novel love and then kills them finally with her are as per the dominant socio-cultural world venomous embraces. This saga has epic view of that time. In his pre-script statement dimensions and profundity and three for the first edition, in 1948, Pottakkadu conspicuous cantos—the exodus, appreciates the hard-working and adventurous activities and the evolutionary adventurous farmers from the erstwhile finale. The heroic farmer-settlers have hopes Travancore, the southern regions of the new and dreams regarding the quest and united Kerala, who tried to inhabit and tame conquest of the heroine, anxieties about the wild, unploughed north Kerala regions, pleasing her, dangers on the way. which were called Malabar before the Description of all these, especially their unification of Kerala in 1956. The first batch indomitable courage and their arrival of Travancore settlers had to face the fatal constitute the first part. Dipping his pen in attack of malaria. As the land was the ink of human love, the writer, in the unploughed, it is designated as ‘maiden.’ second part, portrays the self-sacrificing The novelist confesses: heroes encountering hurdles for possessing Knowingly or unknowingly, I felt a love for the heroine. The last part of this tragedy the Travancore brothers, who paved the first ends with a picture of the pathetic plight of steps for a united Kerala. I think that they the heroes, falling dead after the heroine’s deserve admiration because of their fatal embrace. (Vishakanyaka 9) astonishing industriousness and the Professor Krishna Pillai views the bioregion of courage, self-sufficiency and confidence for Wayanadu in North Kerala as a venomous commencing a new life in an unfamiliar damsel with enchanting eyes and serpentine region, without availing any kind of body. governmental support or sympathy. I was Another critic, Professor Mathew Ulakanthara urged to write this novel more by in 1982 has only highly enthusiastic compassion and consideration I felt for their appreciation for the heroes in the novel: sufferings and sacrifices than reverence. (Vishakanyaka: 7) Pottakkadu’s Vishakanyaka is the heroic saga of Travancore Christians who fought against The writer dedicated the novel to the martyrs the chilly winter, malaria and wild animals among the early mass settlers. and who transformed the woody hills of Professor N. Krishna Pillai in his Kairaliyude Malabar into agricultural orchards. They had Katha [the Story of Kerala Literature] opines sacrificed themselves at the altar of green that Vishakanyaka published in 1948 is the revolution even before the modern masterpiece of Pottakkadu, the novelist governments entered the scene. There is not (Visha: 9). It is not an individual’s story; but a particular hero in the novel. The heroine is a piece of social history: the wild land/ toxic damsel of Wayanadu, The heroes of the novel are the group of who with her magical power enchanted farmers, who abandoning their native young farmers and sucked their blood [like a Travancore, sought the soil of Malabar, for vampire or female dracula]. Such an farming patiently fighting against the hostile enthusiastic novel that describes the conflict environment and the sluggish people there between man and nature cannot be seen in and , in the end, though the wasteland had any Indian language. As the symbol of cruel

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 15 nature, here is Madhavi and as the All critics observe that this novel has no representation of the farmer-batch, the individual hero or heroine: young man Anthony, who is defiled by her in The farmer-settlers, as a whole, are installed as the end of the novel. When Anthony, the hero. ‘The elder-brothers from Travancore,’ abandoning everything and returns to his while retaining their individual ethology, are native region, new batches of farmers, it is envisaged as a single faction. The wild nature stated, come to the wild land of Wayanadu. of Wayanadu waits for them with its seductive The novel is a saga of mankind who do not and perfidious pits. After tempting the hard- bow their head before nature. If a generation working as well as the idyllic alike, the maiden- fails to achieve the goals, the next ones soil ridicules them. The novel is the narration of come forward with greater courage to the meeting between the settlers and the soil. continue the fight. (10) Here is a character, Anthony, who does not rise The three citations done above have one thing to the status of a hero; but he can be called the in common, that is the attitude of admiring novelist’s representative/spokesman or the and appreciating man’s fight against nature. central consciousness. (Rajakrishnan, The novelist and the two critics have silenced Nagna: 35) nature. Silence is a term in ecocriticism, In an academic/technical scrutiny, Anthony following the idiom of Rachel Carson, in her may be designated as a non-hero or book Silent Spring, 1962. The very idea of mouthpiece. But, in an ecocritical analysis, giving a voice to nature can be said to be such as the one attempted here, Anthony is postmodern.Ecocritical readings bring out the a very significant character or central voices of Nature, or the non-human consciousness. He reveals or represents the environment. The analysis that follows Christian other-worldly asceticism; and counters Raja Krishnan’s counter-reading of hence, an anti-ecological perspective. Vishakanyaka (Nagnayaminikal: 33-43) de- Ecology or ecological spirituality always silences the maiden soil of Wayanadu. An favours biocontinuum, this-worldliness and ecofeminist interpretation undertaken by this earthly existence. Like the poetic line of the English Professor and critic argues that the American poet Robert Frost [1874-1963] the farmer-settlers from Travancore are brutal slogan of ecology is “Earth is the right place rapists, not heroes and martyrs. The maiden for love” or life. Rajakrishnan projects the soil of Wayanadu welcomes and weds them, anti-pagan, pantheistic or environmental expecting a decent, family life, in conciliation mindscape and anthropocentrism that come with all her biotic relatives like pigs, grass and out through the portrayal of Anthony: fire-flies. As she finds that the Christians from Anthony stands far apart from the main Travancore are not real lovers but avaricious current of farmer-settlers. He is an ascetic robbers, rapists and butchers, she retaliates and has a desire to become a priest….the with her trump card of the terrible malady of passages from the Bible that attract him malaria and the majority of the pioneer farmer most describe Adam as coming out of the settlers are annihilated. Some return to their Paradise and God giving out the decree: native lands and habitats at central “God blessed them [Adam and Eve]. God Travancore. A very few, who have adopted said to them ‘Go and multiply. Fill the Earth a peaceful path of coordination and and conquer it. Rule over the fish in the sea, conciliation from the very beginning of their birds in the sky, nature’s animals and all the arrival, remain at Wayanadu, enjoying the creatures that creep on earth.” (Nagna: 40) eternal bliss of the ambrosial embraces of an evergreen damsel or maiden. If one attempts a deconstructive reading of Pottakkadu’s own words: “ knowingly or

16 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY unknowingly, I felt a love for the Travancore unforgettable sense of guilt in Anthony’s brothers.” In a new ecological/environmental conscience. The presence of a serpent/ critical context, a new subtext emerges—in Satan, the Tree of Knowledge/Athimaram the phraseology of Ayyappa Paniker, the [Athi Tree/ FicusglomerataRoxb], the ingrafted or interiorized pagan sensibility of Forbidden Fruit/maiden sexual experience the novelist, knowingly or unknowingly, and the first couple—Adam and Eve/ surfaces. It is this sensibility ecologically Anthony and Madhavi are there in this scene shared by Asian Indians, Red/American (Nagna: 41-42). On that rainy day, Madhavi, Indians, the Chinese and the Africans that the lusty milk maid, seeks Anthony’s bed, prioritizes biological egalitarianism and tempts and ‘defiles him.’ The poetic/ earthly life. The sub-textual readings of the environmental novelist gives a detailed and characters, Anthony and Madhavi, as well as romantic description of the courting and the poetic descriptions of the beauty of un- copulation of fire-flies at night, in the dark contaminated scenery of nature in the novel hills and vales. The Wayanadu hills, the bring out the pagan ecological sensibility of rustic, pagan/non-Christian and lusty this environmental classic. Madhavi, non-human mad fire-flies and the Anthony represents anti-environmental ideals accidental coincidence of rain, all these, in the novel. Umpteen numbers of together combine to initiate Anthony into the postmodern ecological critics like Lynn White irrecoverable ‘fall.’ Anthony loses the ascetic, in “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological pure and innocent paradise. To him, Crisis” and Christopher Manes in “Nature Madhavi becomes a venomous damsel, a and Silence” (Ecocriticism Reader: 3-29) serpentine/poisonous maiden, or a ‘la belle have indicated the ideological, Occidental/ dame sans merci.’ He equates the lusty Western and Christian antipathy to pagan or maiden soil of Wayanadu with Madhavi. biocentric environmentalism. Rajakrishnan Knowingly or unknowingly, this becomes the continues: surface-structural message of the novel/ novelist. But, the sincerity and adeptness in In short, one can say that Christianity by the descriptive/poetic/nature-lyrist power centuries have evolved an anthropocentric expose the deep-structural sub-text/texture world-view. Man is installed at the centre of diametrically opposite and the portrayal of the universe. About the relationship between Anthony turns out to be ironic. man and the world of non-human biota, priority is given not to cooperation but to Reference: conquest. In the pronouncement given to the Abdulla, V, (trans) Pottakkadu’s Vishakanyaka. Thrissur: first couple, this is specified. Continuing Kerala Sahithya Academy, 1980. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, edited. The such a thought current, the Western nations, Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary who claim to follow the Christian culture, Ecology. Athens: Georgia UP., 1996. have found religious sanction for tearing K. Ayyappa Paniker. Anthassannivesam (Interiorization/ down nature, colonial conquests, Ingrafting).Kerala State Institute of Languages, development and progress. Thus, Anthony 2000. holding God’s words vindicates the tough Pottakkadu, S.K. Vishakanyaka. Rpt. Kottayam:D C Books, 2006. [The remarks on the novel by Krishna Pillai and harsh task of his brothers. (Nagna: 41) and Mathew Ulakanthara, are from this edition.] Interpreting the thirty second chapter of the RajaKrishnan, V. Nagnayaminikal [Nude Nights] novel (Visha: 88-96), Rajakrishnan finds Kottayam:D C Books, 2003. other-worldly, ascetic biblical allegory in the Zachariah Mathai, Compiled/edited. “Eco-spirituality: A Pro-worldly Asceticism.” Ecology and physical union between Anthony and Spirituality.Nagpur: India Peace Centre, 1996. Madhavi. The scene or the event creates an (See pages: 11-13). ■

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 17 The Arabian Night Kureepuzha Sreekumar

n April’s twilight, the lady who sold the pain of love, I The night when she boards Air Arabia, Suddenly leaving her mobile phone in aversion, Across the sea, the wind sets fire to the sand, The hot big copper vessel. A guy wanders lonely in the desert sand Without even a verse. Far away, rubber and beetle-stricken coconut groves, The beautiful native land with its dry rivers Power-cut comes with all power like glow-worm. There is one with her shabby night-dress, Covering her body, crying at intervals Feverish with severe cough, Weaves her hard life In the darkness, her bedroom’s zero bulb Has futures’s hopes of light. She cannot close her eyelids In between a comma’s rest. Labour camp which smells like rotten socks, The smell of “paradise-tree” flowers. In my comrade’s khalana, music flows like rain Gone are the rinsed and dried clouds, and the sky is clear. Took a hurry bath and went outside I saw the moon like “kuboos” in a big plate. I passed the metaphor into the vast desert Returned and held the mobile phone. Far away resides my girl

18 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Darling! Can you see this fullmoon? Yes! I can! O.k., then, you turn left and stand ahead, Fantastic! my beloved, I can see you clearly in the moonlit night. That’s right. It’s quite a surprise, that I can see you in moon Words broke, not even a single penny left, Uttered the cell in silence. Two of them seeing each other, On either side of the sea, Standing and stunned.

Translated from Malayalam by Smitha V.

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 19 My Dear Ayyappaji Reminiscences about Dr. K.Ayyappa Paniker Rosscote Krishna Pillai

he diminutive physical presence was of one of the tallest T poets who pioneered Malayalam poetry through modern domains to postmodernhorizons. Possessing a scintillating intellect, ready wit and effusive humour, the person was a much sought-after invitee to many an international literary gathering across the world. He was none other than Dr. K. Ayyappa Paniker, who left an indelible imprint on me as we worked together at the renowned literary organization, C. V. Raman Pillai National Foundation, headquartered in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Six decades ago, it was in the late 1940s, when I was a budding writer of short stories and science articles in Malayalam, that I first came across the name, Ayyappa Paniker, as a writer of short poems in the popular Malayalam magazines of the day. I was told that he was the nephew of Sardar K. M. Panikkar, the famous historian, diplomat and Malayalam litterateur, who belonged to the Chalayil family of Kavalam, a village in Kuttanad near Alappuzha. I knew rather closely almost all the members of the family from my early childhood since my elder brother Dr. R. Kesavan Nair married Saraswati Amma, daughter of Sardar Panikkar’s elder brother Dr.K. P. Panikkar. But I had not heard Ayyappa Paniker’s name ever being mentioned as a member of that family. Several years later, Kavalam Narayana Panikkar, the well- known dramatist, and poet , who was also a nephew of Sardar Panikkar, told me that Ayyappa Paniker was the son of Sardar’s matrilineal cousin and that he belonged to a branch of the family called Oalickal. A chance encounter with the celebrated poet one day in 1971 led to my lifelong friendship with him! I had been working in

20 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Delhi for 18 years from 1952 as an Indian convened to form an organization in the Information Service (I.I.S.) officer under the name of C. V. Raman Pillai. It was then that I Central Government; I had been the news discovered where C.V. stood in the editor of All India Radio (Malayalam) and estimation of this very widely-read brilliant later became the Assistant Editor of Yojana literary critic. Referring to C. V. and his novels (English) journal. In 1970, I came back to my in his excellently epitomized monograph, “A birthplace, Thiruvananthapuram, for Short History of Malayalam Literature”, launching Yojana in Malayalam and to be it’s published by the Government of Kerala, Editor. Paniker has said: On one of those days in 1971, I made my “C. V. Raman Pillai’s Rama Raja Bahadur is usual weekly jaunt to the beach with my the greatest novel…., his masterpiece, mother, wife and three children. It was then conceived on an epic style….The inscrutable that a short lean person with a beaming face destiny of man — of both the individual and came towards us with his wife and two little the masses — is the central theme of daughters and respectfully greeted my RamaRajaBahadur. The structure of the plot, mother. Then, with the skill in characterization, consummate feelings of the narrative and descriptive affection for him, my It was then that a short lean skill: all these are means to mother turned to me and person with a beaming face the ultimate end of asked, “Krishna, do you came towards us with his wife unravelling this mystery. know, this is Ayyappa and two little daughters and Ram Raja Bahadur has Paniker?” I said “No” but respectfully greeted attempted this more instinctively greeted him my mother.Then, with successfully than any other with admiration. It was consummate feelings of Malayalam novel written so indeed a pleasant affection for him, my mother far.” encounter. Thus through turned to me and asked, Holding such an exalted my mother the foundation “Krishna, do you know, this is view of C. V., Paniker did of my very fruitful Ayyappa Paniker?” not hesitate to join the friendship with Ayyappa executive committee of the Paniker was laid. newly-formed C. V. Raman Pillai National The camaraderie blossomed in the cultural Foundation and worked actively for the milieu of Kerala. As Ayyappa Paniker was a success of the grand four-day celebrations distinguished teacher of English literature at of C. V.’s 125th Birth Anniversary in 1983. In the Institute of English of the University of October the same year, when the then Kerala and had a doctorate from a reputed dynamic incumbent, R. Kesavan Nair, U.S. university to his credit, I was tempted to passed away, Paniker, despite his inherent go to him with a request: to glance at my disinclination to entangle himself in the web serialized articles on Inner Space (deep sea of organizational or administrative chores, exploration) in the weekly Children’s World of became the General Secretary of the Delhi before publishing them in book form Foundation on my insistent entreaties. and suggest editorial changes. He gladly However, next year, Paniker gave up the took the text from me and handed it back in office when K. Janardanan Pillai, a retired a few weeks with a few corrections marked in Superintending Engineer and a devout pencil, which, he said, were not of much connoisseur of C.V. literature, came forward consequence. to don the mantle. The Foundation got the Paniker took a deep interest in regularly benefit of Paniker’s very imaginative attending all the preliminary meetings leadership again in 1987 when he accepted

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 21 the Presidency of the Foundation. series, “CVyute Hasya Sankalpam” (C. V.’s Thereupon the organization refurbished and Concept of Humour), by Prof. G.Sankara really moved into a glorious period of Pillai: versatile activities earning all-India renown. “C.V.Raman Pillai is in the forefront of the A man with sparkling intellect, radiating a rarely few Malayalam writers who have profusion of brilliant innovative ideas, ingeniously handled the nava (nine) rasas. I Ayyappaji, as I used to fondly call him, left think we can see another world of rasas like his mark on C. V. Raman Pillai National that only in Ezhuthachhan’s works. Like Foundation and endowed it with a Ezhuthachhan, C.V. also could effectively consummate literary legacy. Despite his delineate not only adbhutam, veeram, instinctive abhorrence to currying favour with karunam, hasyam and sringaram but also Ministers and others in authority, he always roudram, bhayanakam, bheebhatsam and, to came forward to meet them for procuring an extent, santham. That is why the financial aid from the Central and State Foundation is organizing this series of Governments for the Foundation’s literary treatises. The Foundation thinks that these projects which he considered worthy and treatises will help the study not only of the deserving. CV novels but also that of It was his earnest espousal A man with sparkling literary criticisms based on of the lexicographer Dr. B. intellect, radiating a rasavicharam and serious C.Balakrishnan’s proposal profusion of brilliant discussions of novels and to make an exegetic innovative ideas, Ayyappaji, dramas.”(Translation from dictionary of C.V.’s works as I used to fondly call him, Malayalam by the present that resulted in the left his mark on C. V. writer). Foundation’s epoch-making Raman Pillai National four-volume C.V. Paniker has further Foundation and endowed it Vyaakhyaana Kosham of espoused his views on with a consummate literary 4,000-odd pages, the first visualizing this project in his legacy. such dictionary of a single Foreword entitled author’s works in the history “Rasavichaarathheppatti Oru of world lexicography. It was on Paniker’s Vichaaram”( A Thought about Rasavicharam) personal approaches that this unique literary to the tenth treatise in the series, project got fairly large financial aids from “Vaatsalyarasam C.Vyute Aakhyaayikakalil” Government of India and Government of (Vaatsalyarasam in C.V.’s Novels) by Dr. S. V. Kerala, which could help bringing it to Venugopan Nair. Paniker says inter alia: fruition. Paniker also saw to it that each of “The eminence of reputed writers lies in their the four volumes was released by a luminary extraordinary ability in projecting life in its like K. R.Narayanan, the then Vice President of India, and Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, the totality. Great writers are those who have then Union Minister of Education. powerfully delineated the various rasas at the same time. Vyasa, Valmiki, Homer, Dante, Another original project initiated by Paniker Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the that threw light on C. V.’s genius was the like are those who have inherent in them a launching of a series of lectures by literary greatness that can be seen only through scholars on the delineation of the nine rasas in C. V.’s works or Rasavicharam. The many different approaches. In Malayalam, rationale for this project can be found in after Thunchath Ezhuthachhan, the one Paniker’s words as expressed in his writer, who has delineated an utmost variety Foreword to the first published treatise of the of rasas, is C. V. Raman Pillai.”

22 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY The treatise on each of the eleven rasas Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai and presided (besides the nine rasas two more – Bhakti over by B. K. Bhattacharyya, President of the and Vaatsalyam - were also dealt with) was Akademi. Eminent writers in various by a noted writer (most of the outstanding languages presented papers in it. Malayalam writers being Paniker’s friends, Paniker’s evaluation of C.V. as a novelist is they readily accepted his personal invitation made out in the following lines quoted from to study C.V. from such a point of view). Six his paper presented at the seminar : “C. V. of those treatises were published by DC Raman Pillai (1858-1922) is not only one of Books, of course, through his intervention. the earliest Malayalam novelists, but is easily It was in implementing another of Ayyappa the greatest of them all….C.V.’s narrative art, Paniker’s proposal that theatre lovers got the often transcending the boundaries of realism rare opportunity to witness the staging of all and reaching into magical realism, illustrates the nine published farces of C. V. Raman a difficult model for his successors.” It was, I Pillai. The plays were staged one by one believe, owing to his profound admiration for each successive year during the celebration C. V.’s genius that Paniker, on the request of his birth anniversary. from the University of Kerala, wrote a After completing the series on Rasavicharam, biographical study of C.V. in its “Malayalam Paniker as President of the Foundation Men of Letters” series. conceived another series of annual talks by With his pre-eminent position among the outstanding critics/scholars on each of the galaxy of Indian writers and close major characters in C.V.’s novels. friendship with the fraternity, Ayyappa Realizing the hitherto unmatched Paniker could fulfil one of his favourite significance of the publication of Marthanda dreams of publishing the truly great Varma (1891), C.V.’s first novel and the first creative Malayalam works translated into historical novel in Malayalam, Ayyappa English and other languages. The Sahitya Panikar suggested that the Foundation Akademi and the National Book Trust took celebrated the centenary of the novel in 1991. up the publication task. It was thus that Even The Hindu daily of Madras then the English translation of Marthanda Varma published an editorial eulogizing the novel’s by B. K. Menon (first published in 1936), publication . The centenary was marked revised by Menon’s daughter, Prema eventfully: The eminent Malayalam novelist Jayakumar, with an Introduction by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai inaugurated the Ayyappa Paniker was published in July, celebrations ; the Centenary edition of the 1998. The English translation of. C.V.’s novel, edited by Dr. P. Venugopalan with a magnum opus, Rama Raja Bahadur, by Foreword by Dr. Ayyappa Paniker and Prema Jayakumar herself, was published brought out by DC Books was released then. in 2003. Both were released at functions The Symposium on the novel was attended held by the Akademi and organized by C. by scholars like Dr. Meenakshi Mukherjee, V. Raman Pillai National Foundation in and writers like Neela Padmanabhan and Thiruvananthapuram. A Hindi translation of Ayyappa Paniker, and it was telecast by an abridged version of C. V.’s Rama Raja Doordarshan. Enthused by Ayyappa Bahadur, translated by Prof. N. E. Paniker, the Sahithya Akademi, New Delhi Viswanatha Aiyar, was published by the organized a National Seminar on “History as National Book Trust in 1993 and released Literature” in 1992. It explored “Historical at a function held by the Trust and Fiction in various Indian languages” and organized by Kerala Hindi Prachar Sabha focussed on “Marthanda Varma: A Critical in Thiruvananthapuram. Ayyappa Paniker Evaluation”, It was also inaugurated by presided over all these release functions.

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 23 My personal relationship with Paniker was earlier in the book Kathakalirangam and so marked by informality and affection. Our could tell him correctly. mutual contacts were occasional yet they It was perhaps owing to his regard for me as could leave in me a deep impression of his a writer and to his genuine wish to include admirable persona and charisma. Whenever me in his fraternity of writers that Ayyappa he worked on a seminar paper on C.V , he Paniker made me a member of the Authors would call and ask for my opinion on some Guild of India headquartered in New Delhi, of aspect of it. The calls would come during which he was a founder member and of day and night. Always he would ask me very which later I became Executive member for politely if I had time to listen to him. When he two terms. Thus when Paniker could get the wrote a paper comparing Bankim Chandra Authors Guild to hold its annual National and C. V., examining whether the former had Convention of Indian Authors in influenced C.V., he read out the whole paper Thiruvanathapuram, I had the opportunity to to me over telephone. Sometimes the call work as Paniker’s colleague along with would be to discuss some programme he D.C.Kizhakkemuri, Chemmanam Chacko, had envisaged for the Foundation. In April Dr. K.Velayudhan Nair and Ms. 1997 he came to Washington, USA, for a B.Sugathakumari in organizing the three-day literary conference . I was in San Diego, Convention successfully. California, at that time, where I had gone for my son’s marriage. Ayyappaji took time off I had always found this internationally his busy schedule to call me and tell me renowned Malayalam poet and English about the programmes the Foundation had teacher from a Kerala village, Kavalam, to arranged for celebrating C.V.’s 139th Birth have retained his rural naivety and stark Anniversary on May 19. simplicity; on all occasions, he was quite unassuming and wore the utterly simple Sometimes I used to wonder as to what dress of an ordinary typical Malayali, a dhoti impression he had about my literary or and shirt. Even while working as the Director aesthetic interests! Quite often he would tell of the Institute of English and also at formal me rather imploringly:” You should write your functions in the presence of dignitaries like reminiscences—at least about your life and State Governors, he would be clad simply activities and experiences in Delhi – please thus. I remember him in shirt and mundu, don’t put it off!” One day I was surprised with a crumpled kerchief thrown over his when this Muse of modernism in Malayalam right shoulder and wearing a fur cap, waiting poetry asked me over telephone whether I to receive the Kerala Governor for one of the would be free to listen to his latest long Foundation’s functions. It was a delight poem, Gothrayanam. And I really felt elated talking to Ayyappaji, ever cheerful, witty and when he visited us that evening with his wife cracking jokes on the spur of the moment. and younger daughter, Meena, and One day when he told me he would be away personally read out to me the entire poem, the next day, in reply to my query as to which had already been formally released where he was going, he showed me his and gained considerable acclaim from injured thumb, saying “My sore!!” He was critics. I think it was only owing to his never pompous or boastful and never in the personal fondness for me that he felt habit of complaining or talking about his prompted to render me this courtesy. On personal problems. another occasion I really could not guess why he phoned and asked me about the He was very meticulous in keeping origin of the Kalluvazhi chitta of Kathakali; appointments and in gratefully remembering luckily I had read about that a few days the help rendered to the organization he

24 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY headed. One night he rang me up and told Meena, saw me, she went and told him; the me that T. M. Jacob, who, when he was ailing Paniker came from his bed to the Minister for Culture had sanctioned a fair drawing room and sat with me. He was amount of grant for the prestigious C.V. gasping for breath and said he could inhale Vyakhyana Kosham project, was in hospital only 20 per cent of the oxygen in the air and and that we should go together that night that I, as a science writer, would need no itself to present him with a copy of the first further explanation. Even so, he could still volume of the dictionary. The dictionary had crack jokes; he smiled and remarked: just been printed. Ayyappaji came in an “Gupthan Nair (who died some weeks autorickshaw to my house and we together before) is still waiting to get entry into went and did the presentation. Heaven and M. Krishnan Nair (who died Ayyappa Paniker’s departure from this world earlier) has entered through the back door; was indeed a real grievous loss to me and so others have still to wait their turn!!!” A few left a big void in C.V.Raman Pillai National minutes passed by; he wished the Foundation that can never be filled. The last forthcoming function all success and then I saw of Paniker was when he was lying took a copy of his latest published book, a seriously ill with a lung infection in his compilation of some of his articles entitled house. Despite his wish that none should “Vyakthichithrangalum visit him, I went to his house on14 May, 2006 Yaathraadrishyangalum” and signed in in my anxiety to see him and wish him Malayalam with the postscript “Rosscote speedy recovery and also to apprise him of Krishna Pillai Avarkalkku” “Snehapoorvam” the programmes for the celebration of C.V.’s (With Love). Utterly crestfallen and sad, I 148th Birth Anniversary on May19. His house took leave of him that night, never to see him ■ was dark from outside. When his daughter, again.

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 25 Whither is Fled The Visionary Gleam? Remembering D. Vinayachandran, the late poet. V.G. Thampy

he Amazon forests have disappeared suddenly….’ ‘T This was how a young poet responded in the facebook on hearing the news of the passing away of Vinayachandran. In what better, meaningful manner can the vacuum created by his death, be recorded? It was in this way that Vinayachandran created spaces—they wandered about like misty winds, among the curves of hills and dales, into the unreachable realms of the word. The universe is just a word, he wrote; light and darkness severed from the plosion of this word. From it was born the solar and stellar, flora and fauna, man and woman, love, movements. Civilizations rose and fell through its deluge. His poems stood, bewildered, in the face of the mysterious ways of creation. A sojourn was made, albeit in the wrong direction, into the deep spaces of wilderness and the vast shores of human experience. Vinayachandran was able to create in the Malayalam language, those grandiose skies that only great poets of yesteryears could achieve. We have been left astounded at the depths to which his poetry could travel. As the tiger which carefully, cautiously, travails the recesses of the forest, he too let loose the tiger through the complexities of the word, awakening instincts that lie above the sensory, creating a humdrum within the silence. Vinayachandran left the mortal world creating luminous, grand sparks of poetic glory; it is no wonder that we are haunted by memories of an entire sky or the Amazon forests disappearing in an instant.

26 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY We are aware of it, as we enter the depths of fly into the skies of eternity. Literary his poetry—poems filled with leaves, flowers, historians, critics, media persons, orthodox roots, branches, waves, shores, depths, theorists, all kept him at a distance, often empty spaces, heights, slopes… They isolated him. They even mocked at him. transport us, along with the wondrous Actually the most exemplary manifestations winds, through the vast canopy of the sky, of modernism were taking shape during his an experience that no small poet can impart. time. Some of the most beautiful poetic This kind of a wonder world constructs of the century can can only perhaps be created The night’s pulsations be seen here. The shock of by an Ezhuthachan, an Asaan Get thinner and thinner. seeing the heights which it or an Unnayi Warrier. We have The wondrous morn had scaled, the envy of stood dumbfounded, gazing With blossoms in line. knowing the diversities that in awe at the luxury of such I’m on my way, were depicted, or perhaps ecstasies in Walt Whitman, Would you like to join me? sheer ignorance at the Dante, Neruda, Octavio Paz; Together let us quest—whatever the cause, we have been taken into Begin begging… there was a shattering similar worlds by the breakdown of the Tower of Ramayana, Mahabharata, Homer and Babel. Everything had to be built up from the Shakespeare. Vinayachandran left the mortal remains, from where they were left off. What world creating luminous, grand sparks of else can help one read modernism along poetic glory; it is no wonder that we are with tradition? haunted by memories of an entire sky or the I had wished to re-read modernism in the Amazon forests disappearing in an instant. light of Vinayachandran’s poems. I even There is much in Vinayachandran that the started writing. With his physical presence Malayalee has yet to read. Let us not bind and energy, anyone would vouch that he one like him within the world of broken would live to a good eighty. I too believed imaginations, nonsense verse or pastoral that he is not one who would bow down to lyrics; they have a primordial beauty and grey hairs or bacteria that easily. As with his possess an inward richness which we are yet poems, he maintained a kind of strictness to feel or experience. Moreover, there is the with his life style too – with the dignity and wild ebb and flow of words, a determined self respect of a loner. effort to define the indefinable, to name the unnamable; there is the meditative use of the Walking down the steps at Kashi word which strives to seek the three worlds ; A shadow, like death there is the torrent of words that pour down Bathing in the seas of Konark on us as fresh showers, and more than all, there is the secular imagination with all its A chariot, like life…… adventurousness that cuts through Vinayachandran’s poems become a history everything else. of a journey that open and close both ways, These experiences, however, often went inside and out. Their anatomy is decided by unnoticed due to the narrow-mindedness of the footsteps of Buddha. He, as well as his a postmodern history constructed by creations, were an unceasing attempt to Malayalam. It continued to go unnoticed. No measure an eternity that transcend the one could perceive what the smith was temporal, which is ordinarily characterized by blowing into the smithy. They gave no heed the ticking of the clock. There haven’t been to the infinite desires of those creations, of many poems in the language which have the haste of the bird to break all bounds and matured with the season’s showers or with

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 27 the sun’s glowing warmth. They were poems clan, holding aloft the torch of poetry all that tried to create a new kind of beauty— along. We were all bachelors at that time, moving beyond the moral and immoral, by and so had the passion of love burning deep offering a diverse world of fragrances, within us. flavours, colours, sounds, kisses. The inward The night’s pulsations richness of modernism surprised the poet Get thinner and thinner himself, more than anyone else. The wondrous morn We shared a thick bond of friendship that With blossoms in line. was 35 years old. We began our journey I’m on my way, together even before I started reading his Would you like to join me? poems. He took me along, to India’s major Together let us cities, mountains and river banks. Begin begging… I remember having walked along the shores This is one of Vinayachandran’s early of Kalladayar as a college student, much poems—an invitation for a journey before all before going to Agasthyakut, Kutachadri journeys. and the Himalayas. He introduced me to an We took a train from Bombay on our return old gentleman from a reputed family at home. As we sat sharing our various Kalladayar, who used to sing Kathakali experiences, a youngster came and sat with vocals. We stayed there that night. The next us. He was on his way to Kodakara, near morning we went to the temple nearby. He Thrissur. He was a photographer and had recited to me lines from the strange novel his own studio in Bombay, which he had set ‘Uparikkunnu’, chanting them like a mantra. up four years ago, after leaving his ‘Podichi’ and ‘Uparikkunnu’, it appeared, hometown. He narrated to us the story of a were destined to be born more as poems. broken love affair. The girl whom he loved for 10 years was now married to a police officer I feel I should dedicate this note to the in Palghat. That was what prompted him to memories of my travels with my friend. His leave home. This was his first trip back to first steps began with the character of Unni, Kerala. We too shared our heartbreaking in his travel songs. It continued with Kunjan stories to him, and he seemed a bit relieved. Unni and the traveller on horseback. There Vinayachandran excitedly began reciting his was a certain method in the way he walked, love poems. Mindless of the other crossing rivers, seas, forests and desert passengers, he began to sing, loudly and lands. It was like a quest for filling up the clearly. Our pilgrimage by then wore a festive terrible void within him. He wrote no look, with each of us regaling memories of travelogues, although his poems were clear our lost love. As the train stopped at Palghat manifestations of his travel experiences. station, we had our biriyani. The young man Four of us college teachers undertook a two- too had a mutton biriyani. He noted down month trip across India in the 1983 summer Gopinathan’s address and put it in his vacation. K. Gopinathan, pocket. As the train began to move I noticed R. Gopalakrishnan, Vinayachandran and I, his expression changing slowly—suddenly all from Kerala Varma College. It was a long he leaped across from amongst us and trip, spanning the length and breadth of jumped out of the train. Although we pulled India, through great cities, the shores of the chain and stopped the train, it was not rivers and seas, mountains and the possible to locate his body at that time of Himalayas. Vinayachandran looked upon the night. His lost beloved lived there, in that this trip as the first step towards bigger, very village in Palghat. Memories of that longer journeys. He led us like the head of a night haunted all of us for a long time. We

28 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY even stopped travelling by train. waters to wash my face, my hands touched Vinayachandran has written about it. The the sides of a skull that was floating by. journey ended with love, and then with Some of the most heart-rending of death. Vinayachandran’s death poems were born He was always attracted by water and water from the horrendous sights provided by our bodies, and kept returning to them. It was travels to Kasi. interesting to watch him bathe, dive and The river Chandrabhaga, which flowed near swim in these waters. We began with the Sun Temple of Konark in Orissa, had Kalladayar. Later Pamba, Meenachil, Nila, dried up. The sea was a kilometer and a half Periyar, Souparnika, Cauvery, Padma, away. The river dried up at a point just as it Chandrabhaga, Phalgu and the other was about to converge into the sea. I can tributaries of the Ganges, whose names we never forget our conversation as we walked didn’t know. After hours of bathing we would alongside the sea. He spoke, sadly, about climb on to a rock and smear our foreheads our unfulfilled lives and desires. The night and bodies with bhasmam, the holy ash, was turned into a sorrow-filled sea of poetry. face the east and chant mantras. Then was We stayed the night in the home of the time for him to recite his own poems, Yogeeshwar, a young Oriya poet who owned which he would take out from his bag. It is a magazine called Chandrabhaga. very rarely that we come across such Vinayachandran surprised all of us that night musical clarity in Malayalam poetry. His by blending Malayalam lyrics into local Oriya entire body would sway to the tunes of the ballads and singing them out loud. poem. Like a squirrel, whose small body I remember walking with him through the turns from head to tail as it chirps, so too Buddha’s lanes. The first thing we saw as we would the poem become the poet, got down the train at Gaya early in the experiencing the ultimate. morning was the corpse of an old man. Near Vinayachandran used to talk very the worm-eaten body were a couple of enthusiastically about the Pamba. Once we youngsters begging for money to conduct even had a heated argument when he said his last rites. Disease, age, death—all that that Pamba was more beautiful than the transformed Siddhartha into Buddha—were Ganges. In fact it was these differences of the same sights that awaited us at Gaya. opinion that made our bond stronger. He The path to Bodh Gaya runs along the would go near women who had just stepped Phalgu River. It was a long walk, in the out of the river and sing rain songs to them. piercing afternoon heat, over bits and pieces They would shout at him, and he would of bones. The river had left behind just a little respond with a beaming smile. water, perhaps for purposes of washing and On a boatride across the bathing ghats of bathing. The villagers began digging for Kasi, Vinayachandran embellished death, more water. My friend too chipped in, reciting with his poems. I remember how he and poems. A fee of one rupee was charged for Gopi grabbed the oars from the boatman each to have a bath. Vinayachandran too called Dasaratha—they harnessed the boat took a dip, singing all the while, and there to each ghat and bathed to their hearts’ was the coolness of the moon that spread content. We saw, on the steps of the ghats, all over. vultures devouring the flesh of cows’ He stopped a horse cart and urged the rider carcasses, Pandas, who were throwing into to drain out toddy from the Mahva trees, and the Ganges, half burnt dead bodies. Our all the while sang ballads to the Bihari girl sight was often blurred by the smoke that who was sitting in the cart. We passed came out of the pyres. As I bent into the various ashrams of Buddha in many

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 29 countries; crossing wheat and sugarcane disparate entities like the sea and the forest. fields, we reached Nalanda. I don’t A walk along with Vinayachandran and understand why he sang ’kundhachechi’ as Asha Menon through the slopes of the we walked through the village streets that sleepy hills one morning—Vinayachandran moonless night. began to sing the ‘Anjithal Vinayakam’, just In the summer of 1984 we journeyed into the as the sun bent westward. We stood, sea. We bathed in the scorching sun, excited nonplussed. An unexpected wind blew down at the blue, green and black of the sea. As from among the dense woods and donned a he sang ‘sea songs’, the fishermen’s children white veil over us. I yearned to sleep on the came running over to join the fun. What slopes of the hill, along with those poems. followed was a festival, with my friend, the If the rain children and the sea outplaying each other. In the lagoon on the far side was a Philippine Is the loosened tresses ship that was completely dilapidated. It Of a maid looked like a monument of broken dreams What would her face that Punathil used to speak about, he said. Birds dipped into the waters and flew into the Be like? remains of the huge ship. In his poems can be seen—as in those of A bicycle journey through the island. In the Octavio Paz, in whom woman, Nature and school compound near the church, love are realized in a single instant—the Vinayachandran stopped the bicycle and penchant to encompass all into a moment’s penned a few lines—a ‘flock’of poems, like a bliss. There has been, perhaps, no other flock of birds. He took the children into the Malayalam poet who has caressed his sea, saying that the lagoon was the sea, beloved with so much tenderness. and that together, they could fill glass bottles The vagina, with ‘different coloured seas’. Lying At night, standing on the roof of the ship, we Flat on its back spoke at length about solitude, love, death. A slightly deranged man, Koya, sobbed that Becomes an ocean of stories. the sea was the ‘sorrow of Allah’. At The fragrance of sex emanates not in midnight, after everyone had gone to sleep, heaven, not on earth, but in hell. A love poet began the thundering of verse. It drifted who wrote the heavens with hell; one who down through the roof, like a heavy bolt of was intoxicated with love in his body, soul in thunder and a flash of lightning. If it had his flesh and consciousness in his dreams. lasted a little longer, one of us would have His poems were like the sea, gaining depth landed up insane. A star was drifting down, upon depth, without bounds or horizons. from the vast skies. He was bent on returning to a script that was A deep blue circle of sea. He remarked with a indecipherable, incomprehensible. At a point touch of vulgar humour that the sea should where the word and I meet, only an emotion be stripped naked. At dawn the next day he would remain, he said. went out to the shore and kissed a girl What died was my dream. How do I tell her behind her neck—a girl in blue jeans, who that I cannot see myself? These were the had come to see the island. It did cause words he spoke— this man, wedded to the some problems. Muse —as he walked slowly down the steps I have often experienced the sheer pleasure of Fate. ■ of embracing, of bringing together seemingly Translated by Dr. Dhanya Menon

30 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Short Story A Tiger and Some Stories Karunakaran

“Little by little, A man comes to resemble The shape of his destiny; A man is, in the long run, His circumstances.”

he incident took place at a time when the city was T handed over to the imagination of the sinners or, when just three or four doves were the witnesses, so said the Malayalee ascetic, who was a familiar figure to all. And this is the most important episode in the story which I am going to tell you. It was difficult to disbelieve the ascetic who wrote books on art and philosophy. This ascetic had told me that Vaikkom Mohammad Basheer* had read the manuscript, in Spanish (yes, in the author’s own handwriting) of a story of Jorge Luis Borges, the famous Latin American writer. (It was the poet Satchidanandan who taught me how to pronounce the name**.) Borges’s story was titled, La Escritura del Dios / The Writing of God, circa 1949 - 1950 or perhaps before that. I could not believe the statement of the ascetic. City, Sin, Imagination— I use these to describe those times, keeping in mind the story of racial riots and the great miseries of the people that took place in India then. Basheer had arrived at Bombay at that time. It was in Bombay (now Mumbai) that he had supposedly read that story. I did not believe it. Borges and Basheer. The land, the sea, the sky that had separated those two writers was so immense. Even the dove- witnesses could not fathom that distance which was set also

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 31 by imagination. In fact only imagination in her direction and feigned to listen. My could reveal the dexterity of the ascetic’s daughter, of course, did not believe it. story-telling. There were some tactic He had come from Cairo, on a fourteen day movements in the ascetic’s imagination akin visit to that prosperous country rich with its to finding the primeval relationship of truth oil deposits. It was a month frequented by within untruth. “But what I now tell you is not visitors. He introduced himself as Ibn- from imagination”, he said, ‘’whether you Haqam-al-Buqari. But in the usual way of believe it or not.’’ the Arabs, he said it would suffice to It was when I told him that Story is a disciple remember him as Abu Mustafa instead of of Lie; the only symptoms of truth would be his long name. ’’Mustafa is the name of my the robes it dons not to be orphaned, that son.’’ He had already spent twelve days the ascetic said, ‘’whether you believe it or here when we met him. He turned the not.’’ plaque written “RESERVED” towards us: “I To be frank, I recollected all this only will be here in this cafeteria all through the seventeen years after having met him. The night. I choose someone from those who ascetic is now dead. Otherwise , I would come here for a coffee. I predict their future. I have said all this only to him, invent their dreams. Sometimes I take them the ascetic who had showed to the shame of their past. They utmost sincerity to art and life. Even at that distance I calculate the value of my May be his memory might have saw his dead eyes predictions on their past and led me to another door in a beaming in anticipa- future and offer me dinars… single night. So the meeting of tion; for a moment I and thus a night shall pass.’’ those famous writers in the felt that blindness was “And the morns?’’, my daughter incident I first mentioned, itself a celebration to his asked. I was surprised since was intersecting. The place eyes. she behaved as if she had teemed with visiting Arabs, known him earlier. Abu Mustafa Europeans, Americans and Asians. Outside clapped his hands without the palms the posh pavilions of seven or eight touching each other. “ I will sleep like a child countries, a blind man was sitting alone and the whole morning’’ he enacted it to her, and drinking coffee. We were sitting some added, ‘’I need not go to any school.’’ He distance away from him. He smiled at our asked my daughter her name. direction. “What’s your name?’’ Even at that distance I saw his dead eyes “Meenaakshi.” beaming in anticipation; for a moment I felt “Meenaakshi; what is the meaning of that that blindness was a celebration to his eyes. name?’’ He called us to him: “Bring your daughter too and your coffee.’’ My daughter hurried to She looked at me. go to him. “The one with the eyes of a fish, a lady with Even as we were nearing his table, looking at beautiful eyes’’, I said “Meenaakshi.’’ my daughter he asked “How are you?’’ in “Meenaakshi’’, he said. “May God bless English with an Arab accent. As we sat in you.’’ chairs across him, he said to my daughter, “Ok, in which class are you studying?’’ “If you can repeat your name yesterday all “Third.” the time you were trying to sleep, I will tell you about the beautiful dream you are going “Is your school in this city?’’ to see tomorrow night.” He turned his ears “Yes,”

32 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY “What is the name of your class teacher?’’ Even though I hesitated to touch them, my “Annie George Pulinat Mathew.’’ daughter spread out all those papers before her. Very soon she declared the findings. “Indian?’’ “Which language is this, it isn’t Arabic or “Hmm.” English.” “How many kids do you share your bench “Neither,’’ he laughed. ‘It is not the language with?’’ of Indians too.’’ “This is Spanish.” “Six.” At once, a message vibrated in my head like He feigned to think. an electric impulse. I stared at those papers, still without daring to touch them. I said, “That means you must be sitting second This is the story written by the Argentinean, counting from the left, and fifth counting Jorge Luis Borges, “The Writing of God”… from the right.’’ He, Abu Mustafa looked in my direction He extended his hands and touched her without showing any surprise. His blind irises palm, ‘’I seldom go wrong, even if this is not twinkled inside those perpetually moving right too,’’ so saying, he laughed. eyelids. He said in English, “There you are. He was drinking a Turkish coffee with You are right.” special aroma. Arabs call it “Gawwa”. There ‘Now you must be wondering whose was a glass of cold water kept covered on handwriting this may be. Of course, it is the table. He asked me why I didn’t bring Jorge Luis Burges’s. One of the pages is my wife along, and if I am not on good written in English.” terms with her. He must have been Did I believe it? I don’t know. somewhere near his seventies. But when he laughed, his age went down to sixty, fifty, “This is the problem with the people who can forty… see’’; he said “Being blind, I don’t have such problems. When this came into my hands, I Perhaps imagination must be the realm of was not blind. So I too did not believe it blindness too. A place where you go in then.” search of something special, walking as if in As if inviting us to the labyrinth of a fortress, dark, with the help of a stick hitting, Abu Mustafa told us the biography of touching, drawing on the ground. At some Borges, as if it were his. Like Borges, he too point of time during the course of our was the librarian of Cairo University; his conversation, he took out a book from his eyesight too diminished with advancing age. bag placed close to the chair in which he His father and grandfather also had gone was sitting. He placed the book on the table. blind. It must have been the Holy book, Koran. He took out some papers kept safely folded “Actually, Borges had copied this story of his inside it. He did so just after I had revealed to and sent it to many libraries around the him that I am a writer and I write stories and world. This is what I came to know later”, he “Thousand and one nights’ stories are said. “But there are two obscure characters among my favourites. Yes, am sure it was in this story. A priest and a tiger. That is, a then. The papers bore signs of being live human and a live animal.’’ opened, read and folded back innumerable I first read this story in English at the famous times. He spread them before me as if ashram of the ascetic I mentioned before. revealing an archaic secret: ‘’This too is a One night, before sleep blessed me, I was story.’’ Abu Mustafa said: “written by some lying rubbing my feet to ward off the cold, other person in some other period.” when I saw a book left abandoned in the

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 33 corner of the room. At first, I felt lazy to get that night. I woke up dreaming of a waterfall. out of the warmth of the quilt and take the I was standing at a distance away from the book. May be the ascetic was sure that I will waterfall with some other people. The read that book that night itself. The waterfall sounded like the trumpeting of an bookmark must have been kept in the page elephant or the roar of some wild animal. I where the story begins. If a story is liked just was not sure, if what the people saw was the for its plot, it need not be a good one. But if waterfall or not. it is a good story, it will become mysterious Next morning, while we were having when you ponder on the experience of breakfast, I discussed the story with my reading it. The memories shall flow back to host, the ascetic. He asked me to tell the the springs of forgetfulness and get dried up story I had read and sat with closed eyes as in that provenance. if in meditation, intent on listening to the It was the story of a man sentenced to life. story. He said that Borges had sent this story A priest. Next to his cell was a tiger. to libraries all over the world. “Basheer had Through a small fissure in the wall of his cell said that he had read the story in Borges’s he could see the tiger at least for some time own hand written in Spanish.” every day. Apart from him, I did not believe it. the tiger was the only thing Basheer must have read the Perhaps imagination must alive and moving about. story at Mumbai Asiatic be the realm of blindness Gradually he came to believe Library sometime during 1949 too. A place where you go that a message of God has or 1950. He was friends with in search of something been inscribed on the body the librarian and had spent special, walking as if in of the tiger. The stripes on most of his days in the dark, with the help of a the tiger’s body were the library. Basheer has stick hitting, touching, words in which the message described that story as a drawing on the ground. was written. The writings of cruel and surprising reading God. Towards the end, as the experience during his sojourn story progresses, the priest seemed to in Mumbai. receive a holy vision. He saw a huge wheel made of water and fire. A wheel made up of “I never knew it from Basheer” the ascetic everything, with whatever available, in said. “It was M.T.Vasudevan Nair who told whatever way possible. He too became a me this.” part of it as a woven cloth, interwoven as a Vasudevan Nair told him about this while thread. Although the priest had cracked the talking about stories which join hands with message in the tiger’s stripes, he lost belief insanity and imagination. Vasudevan Nair in its power. Or perhaps it was as if he did and he had chanced upon each other at not care for it or long for it anymore; person Kozhikkode Railway Station. They were who no longer had any business with fellow passengers in the train headed for humans. Even though he was present in Olavakkod. M.T.Vasudevan Nair was their joys or disasters, he never had any working in Mathrubhumi weekly then. Their relationship with them. He even ceased to conversation on story and modernism remember who he was. He just wished that strayed on to the idea of insanity and the secret hidden in the tiger’s body be dead imagination. M.T.Vasudevan Nair told the with him. “Hence I won’t disclose what that story of Borges to the ascetic. Then he told legal document is ; hence I prefer to be in him about his reading experience of the story this darkness, hence I allow the day to and also about what passed between the forget..’ Wandering in that story I fell asleep story and Basheer.

34 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY “You might have heard about Basheer was sitting on the bed propped up M.T.Vasudevan Nair and his laconic nature,” by pillows and with legs stretched out. the ascetic said. ‘But I haven’t read this Basheer used to say that memories would story till now. My precise memory of the leave us through chill on the feet. So he story is as told to me by M.T.Vasudevan Nair always kept his feet covered. His bystander during that journey…” N.P.Mohammed said , “Guru is dreaming in The period of 1949 to 1950 were times of another language and is planning to write in hope and disaster in India. The wound of the that language.’’ “Which language?’’ assassination of Gandhiji had scarcely M.T.Vasudevan Nair asked. “Spanish” said healed. Nehru was formulating policies for N.P.Mohammed. N.P.Mohammed left the social equality and overall development Basheer under the care of M.T.Vasudevan of the country. Basheer had reached Nair and it was then that Basheer told him Mumbai to participate in a meeting of about his reading Borges’s story in Spanish. writers. This story written down in some old “I read the story seven times, in a language I papers came to Basheer’s hands from a did not know. But the seventh time, a voice book he found in the library. in the air told me the story in my own voice, Basheer did not remember which book it the voice that I hear.” was, but he was sure that it was in the Solitude is harsh. Imprisonment too. And so library where he read the books of Aravind is the loss of memory. In the helpless state Ghosh. He suspected that the book might of humans, like anyone else, the priest in be ‘Savitri” of Aravind Ghosh. In one of the the story faced his solitude armed with papers he found inside that book, it was memories. He sought those memories in written in English, “A story written by Jorge some form of life in his vicinity. He believed Luis Borges in his own handwriting.” But he that God’s words were inscribed in the could not read or understand that story as it stripes on the tiger’s body. And when he was written in a language alien to him. was convinced that he could decipher it, his Keralites became acquainted with Borges memories had faded to the point where he during the seventies when translations of his could not even remember who he was. He stories by the story writer V.P.Sivakumar lay as life personified of solitude…. appeared in some magazines. Basheer Basheer’s eyes were brimming with tears. might have pronounced those Spanish “Oh my God, my God” he lamented. words, sitting in the library, found out the M.T.Vasudevan Nair helped him lie down words in the story from their pronunciations, and held his hand. He said that while elucidated their meanings and grasped the Basheer was narrating the story for him, he story. M.T.Vasudevan Nair said that when he was seeing another dream. read the English translation later, he found the story to be similar to the one told by “Listening to him, I felt that he was narrating Basheer. When he told M.T.Vasudevan Nair something written on another page of that about this story, Basheer was undergoing story’’ M.T. told the ascetic. In the typical treatment in a hospital, for loss of memory. Borges way — dreams wandering in stories He said that two days ago he had seen a and Borges wandering in the dreams like a male buffalo and a king riding it. He said sleuth.” that it was the harbinger of his imminent Basheer dreamed that when his sister, death. Basheer told his visitors that he was Pathumma, drew water from the well in their sweating profusely as he hid in a pond till ancestral home, a tiger with nine spots on its the buffalo and the king left. When body came up along with water in the M.T.Vasudevan Nair came to visit him, bucket. Pathumma did not even feel its

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 35 weight. Like her pet goat, Pathumma placed If what Basheer said can be believed, all the tiger down. She began describing the these incidents take us to a fearful world of twinkle in its eyes, face, nose and the imagination. Although the way in which reddish colour of its lips. Basheer watched Basheer makes up stories borders around all these hiding behind the drumstick tree lies, the experiences in all stories were which stood close to the well. intense and true. M.T. concluded the incident “I heard the reverberation of the oceans, not thus, “ Basheer told me that the person who the forests, in the blue eyes of that wild stabbed him was a blind Arab…” animal. From behind the tree I requested I was sure that this blind Arab who sits Pathumma, drop the tiger back into the well, across us in the cafeteria is the same one or leave it on the road behind the house. who had stabbed Basheer years ago. Hence Behind the house it was forest for sure, and it occurred to me that I had the right to take there of course was an ocean under the well. the manuscript away from him by force. And Everything was unbelievable. that was an easy task too. I asked him imperturbably: Or perhaps these incidents might not have happened. M.T.Vasudevan Nair may not “Abu Mustafa, have you ever visited India?” have asked the ascetic to tell him such a “Mumbai?” story. Hence it might have been a telltale His cheeks twitched, eyes moved. To my story, I decided. The ascetic invited me to the surprise he felt around for the papers till then garden in his ashram. He claimed that some kept spread out on the table, collected them, special type of butterflies frequented there. and began folding them in haste. While speaking to me about the butterflies and flowers in a natural way, with ease, he “Once.” took me back to the story he was telling. He stood up all of a sudden, bid us farewell Basheer decided to steal the manuscript of and walked towards the door of the cafeteria. the story of Borges. With this intention he That sudden action instilled fear in me even reached the library the next day. in that hustle and bustle of the crowd. At no time did he display the mannerisms of a He had hidden a knife in his pocket. With blind. Not only that, he was a man of great much dexterity, he managed to steal the height and strength than I had estimated. I manuscript. But in the afternoon, at about 4 could not even dare to imagine trying to stop o’clock (he lived in Baikula), he was stabbed him or snatch those papers from him. I by someone in front of the zoo near Victoria feared he might stab me as he had stabbed Garden. The money he carried in his pocket Basheer. If so, I may die in front of my was also stolen along with the manuscript. daughter. He never turned back. Also in that Not only that, the murderer carried Basheer heavy crowd he never bumped onto anyone and laid him down in front of the cage of the nor did he touch anyone. Next instant, all his leopard. “Even when my life blood was wild movements disappeared. draining, I lay there unnoticed, without crying, looking into the eyes of the leopard. “ But I saw him again once more. “Vasu, do you know what made me hold on That was in one of those pavilions, with to life?” Basheer asked M.T. He himself gave some other visitors. He was with a caged the answer too. “The doves that sleeplessly tiger. He was calling out in many languages kept circling and flying above my body and that one could read the Holy alphabets in the soul all through the night, the witnesses to stripes on the tiger’s body. He walked this incident….” around the tiger’s cage.

36 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY “Can any one of you read it?” he asked, crowd into whose hands it landed. I could each time in different languages, in different not find out his nationality or language. I just voices. “Anyone?” heard the request of my daughter perched Some of the visitors tried their luck. My on my shoulder. daughter was getting restless to see what “Let me down, father… down please..” was going on there. I carried her on my “Oh God !” for a moment I had forgotten her. shoulders and moved a little ahead into the I brought her down hastily, kissed her on the crowd. At that precise moment, he stood still forehead , held her close to my chest and gazing at our direction as if he had seen us. walked past the pavilions one by one. What emotions does the look of a blind man Breaking the silence that had accumulated evoke? Fear or Pity? I could not sort it out till then, my daughter asked me: then, not even now. Also, that distance, the “Father, did those people gather to see the crowd, all seemed to topple our meeting. The tiger?” papers that he took out from the pocket of his pants and waved above his head were “I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps to see that the story of Borges and it was also the booty man who was with the tiger. Didn’t you hear of Basheer. He raised those papers above what he said?” his head, folded them in emptiness and My daughter looked at me in disbelief. shouted out in Arabic, “Here, take it. I don’t “Didn’t you see, father, there was no one need it anymore. I cannot forget anything with the tiger. The tiger was crying, like a too.” The crowd that enveloped him and the child, like me…” tiger are still there. But his voice fell into my ears alone. A voice strewn with holes and I placed her on my lap. The car passed wounds. Chanting of words… like a man streets, vehicles, buildings, men, city, and standing alone in his life. the breeze that never showed up in the story till then began rushing in. I lowered the I wanted to cry. Or perhaps, my eyes welled window glass of the car, and began up with the springs in which my stories are searching for a story to tell her and her elder born. My vision blurred. Hence I was unable sister that night; beginning with either, ‘once to catch those papers, that story, he might upon a time’, or ‘this evening’… ■ have hurled at me. I could not find out in the Translated from Malayalam by Gita Janaki

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 37 The Return of the Non Resident Indian A Critique of the Cultural Capital of Malayalam Poetry A.C. Sreehari

eturn to one’s own roots is a trend prominently visible in R Kerala since the 1990s. Films, novels, stories, poems and Rmany other discursive forms have documented this return of the migrants in multiple ways. Not only “nitaqat” but a call from one’s own native place can make one come back.The coming back has most often been taken for the retrieval of one’s own lost space and at other times as the revival to celebrate the nostalgic feudal glories. It’s this political climate that constructed the mindscape of the artistes or the writers of the 1990s which resulted in the much debated cultural artifacts of the period in Malayalam. This paper attempts to contextualize the issues of the return motif within the politics of cultrual homogenization that Kerala was to witness in the 1990s with reference to a poem of Attoor Ravi Varma, a poet of great distinction in Malayalam. A literary text is a complex product of the society from which it emerges. It is embedded in the ideological values of the period that produced it. Recent criticism is interested in seeing how the work expresses the various cross currents present in the society. Such a reading cannot be separated from the politics of the text as well as the author, which are based on the specific political contexts which produce it. From this theoretical standpoint, this paper attempts to bring out the politics of the long narrative peoem, “Naattil Parkkaattha Indiakkaaran,” written by Attoor Ravi Varma in 1994. The

A literary text is a complex product of the society from which it emerges. It is embedded in the ideological values of the period that produced it.

38 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY poem stages the return of the middle class collection of poems Attoor Kavithakal (2012) NRI, represented by the image of Lord Siva, and the collection of the poems of the new which I argue is also part of the institution of generation poets edited by him namely a homogeneous, cultural superiority that Puthumozhivazhikal (1999) stand as prevailed in the 1990s. testimonies to this. The British and other western powers had A Non Resident Indian is the central image of plundered India during the colonial rule. It the poem, “Nattil Parkkattha Indiakkaaram.” has been argued by some for long that Gods The story of the long narrative poem goes and Goddesses thus plundered have been like this: In one sleepless night, from the turned into mere show pieces in their deserted inner shrine of a temple, Lord Siva museums. People who went abroad in steps out and walks through the streets. He search of wealth, in the 1970s and 1980s, reaches a city and tramps through the most often to the gulf countries, returned as market places. He is welcomed by a foreign fundamental Hindus, a malady which made tourist and is carried along with him to his its prominence more in the 1990s. The one land and placed in a museum. He who has time materialists who had questioned the been abroad feels himself uprooted, existence of Gods have returned and widely alienated and longs to come back: this is become members of temple reconstruction the point where the poem ends up. committees, putting into practice what the K.C. Narayanan, a prominent critic of an elite poets or artists had imagined. The poem of Thrissur sensibility, in his detailed our interest is to be reread in this context as introduction to the poems of Attoor, names it addresses the issue in a very subtle and Lord Siva of the poem as an N.R.I. sensitive way. (Narayanan 318). He is alert to the Mainstream Malayalam poetry most often tremendous power and emotional force of may be seen to have assumed the narrative the lament in the poem. His stress falls upon structure of a temple culture, and an the tragedy of the individual-god and the analysis would be an eye opener to the recurrent motif of the protagonists of Attoor zealous scholars. The central image of the to return to their native land. He shows no poem would be installed as the chief deity concern for the larger political dimensions of within a temple structure. Thrissur is the poem other than which sourround the considered to be the cultrual capital of author-God. Dr. C. Rajendran in his Kerala where the temple of Lord Shiva stands collection of essays goes to a further extent at the centre of the city. This obsession with by giving it a post colonial tag (Rajendran the central midland has been a 2006) but sidestepping the essentially predominating factor in Malayalam poetry political questions that are raised by the with the highlands and the costal regions context of the poem. Both the critics interpret being marginalized from the poetic terrains. it in terms of the questions of pure literature, A kind of patriarchal, feudal textualism is not of politics and history. It is in this context dominant where the power is centripetal and that this paper makes an attempt to locate the author-god is the dictator. Thrissur is the the poem within the larger political realm of meeting place of thousands of devotees the 1990s wihch had viewed revivalistic during the “pooram’’ days very popular tendency in terms of religion, caste, gender nowadays as one of the biggest carnivals of etc. Kerala. In a similar way, a resident of the city The Enlightenment vision in India, as Attoor Ravi Varama has been considered as elsewhere, was to supposedly nuture the a poet of Thrissur and a patron of the new idea of demystification or unmasking. It was generation poets in and around Thrissur. The expected to initiate an unfolding of a new

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 39 tradition of social criticism that sought to rid come under scrutiny in the West. Moving the world of the sacred and the magical. from the realm of colonial capital and then to However, what it effected in actuality was the market, it is this consciousness that they shrouding of multicultural specificities which return as revivalists with nostalgic were denigrated as barbaric and uncivilized remembrance of things past, most often while superiorizing a unitary culture as the criticizing secularism as a pseudo ‘Euro- secular and the modern one. The tradition of centric shit’ or the vestige of Nehruvian demystification assumed that manifest nationalism, exposing their upper caste reality, after a point, is not trust-worthy. If one frustration and a claim on nation. tore the mask off that reality, one would be Theories of emancipation, however radical closer to the truth, or to more justifiable they may be, may lead to sanctions for new certitudes. After the demystification, the forms of violence and oppressions. This may certitudes that sustain the manifest reality be seen in the revivalist phase post 1990s in and supply its standardized interpretations Kerala, and Attoor’s poem, written in 1994, would be unsustainable. It was the hope of demands a more subtle reading for the same the protagonists of this reason. One could find here tradition that a new society, If one tore the mask off that an individual who is left a new social vision, and reality, one would be closer with only these choices: to even a new human to the truth, or to more be a tourist, a voter, or a personality could be built justifiable certitudes. After the consumer, the losers of based on this new demystification, the such a perspective always hermeneutics. But as far as certitudes that sustain the being the minorities who religious minorities were manifest reality and supply are turned mere objects. concerned, this tradition of its standardized interpreta- It is such a context that the demystification led to their tions would be unsustai- recurring motif of return in interiorizing of their religious nable. Attoor’s poems ought to be identities, while at the same read. The contemporary time it led to a return of the gods/NRIs to standardization of a hemogeneous religious an imagined primordial space where they are and cultural identity. As far as Kerala was believed to be safe, is again a myth one has concerned this was to imply the prioritisation to interrogate with an (alter)native reason. of the upper caste Hindu identity as the ‘The simple’ reason that P.P. Ramachandran, marker of a modern enlightened self. a poet of the Attoor’s collection of poems, Although enlightenment reason sought to has been employing to address issues in his drive the Gods off the temples, they remained recent poems would not help one in the consciousness of the upper caste understand the complexities of the day. In his public in a more subtle form, which was to 2006 poem “Vinda Silpam,” he imagines an hit back with added fervour given the ideal situation where differences peacefully situation. The Indians had effected co-exist; resolving the issues. It sounds to a enlightenment in the style of the West during serious reader like an excerpt from a press the early years of the previous century release of the government on ‘Unity in (Nandy 2003). Since then we lived in the Diversity’ campaign, resulting in an intellectual edifice primarily built by the oversimplification of the political climate of European Enlightenment. Our concepts of an Kerala in the post 1990 period. ideal society and meaningful social criticism The interrogation of the lament so loud in are coloured by this heritage. But in recent the poem of Attoor in the early 1990s years this enlightenment vision has finally becomes significant in this context. A

40 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY question as what made his Siva sleepless; be, the offspring of secularization, effected in urging him to step out of the temple would India in the Western style. Disoriented by a bring answers that are not so much literary. changing world, they desperately seek The period after Indian independence saw meaning in the packaged versions of faith, the involvement of the state administration in vended by gurus and bloodthirsty religious the management of the properties of the fanatics of India. It has nothing to do with Hindu temples. Even as the provisions of the faith, tradition or community. It is a product new Constitution of India were being of uprooting, breaking down of community discussed in the Constituent Assembly, ties and weakening of faith. Thus, expatriate some of the provincial legislatures had Indians in the First World reportedly financed begun to enact laws for the reform of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that religious institutions and practices. Thus the demolished the Babri Mazjid in 1992 and administrators choose to spend the triggered countrywide violence. endowment funds on opening hospitals or Organized religious and ethnic violence has universities, temples of the modern world,’ thus become a part of our public life. That is rather than on more elaborate ceremonies in why Mr. L.K Advani, the leader of what many the temples, ensuring the proper supervision consider world’s biggest revivalist formation, of what is after all a public property by that the BJP Hindu nationalist forces in India, the time. Many of the new state interventions like man who headed the demolition of the Babri land reformation bill in Kerala were far- Mazjid, could openly say in an interview with reaching in their departure from traditional The Times of India, that he is not much of a Brahminical claims that the inmates of the believer. temples had to go in search of more secure The RSS, established in 1925, and which places for food and shelter. They went became a political presence since the 1990s, abroad out of their rich culture capital, in has not had its heads who could be called order to make money. It is to recapture the believers. They openly had flaunted their lost glory that the NRIs return as communal disbelief; often trying to show how powers and assert their identity, legitimized scientifically minded they were by attacking and made respectable by the soft approach Hindu rituals and idolatry. They believe that of the opportunist ruling class and the they were fighting for the political causes of dominant ideologies, which by that time had the Hindus, not defending Hindu religious begun to rule the public in their private life. tradition. Evidently, social scientists consider Enlightenment values began to be taken here that the violent and venomous furies of in the 1990s as the global middle class religious fanaticism are the direct products of culture to serve as the heart of global the modern, secular world. structure of common sense. It is important The multi-religious communities/societies are that these values have been shaping out facing serious threat in recent years. The concepts of the normal, the rational and the forces of globalization and cultural sane, both within and outside the clinic. It homogenization replace their lifestyles. The has happened mainly because we still think official, democratic world in which we live that the west has answered all the basic has no respect for such traditions. It can be questions of humanity once and for all, that called an epic culture, not a linear, empirical, all it left for the other civilization to do is to historical concept of culture and community write a few polite foot notes and useful that modernity perceives. Healthy, normal appendices to these answers. The reality is individualism is possible when the that many of the social formations that look boundaries of the self are not as sharply like rebellions against secularism turn out to demarcated in terms of belief, faith or

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 41 identity, categories that the moderns feel have enough strength to come to grips with comfortable with. Our deepening cross- the problems posed by the Indian situation. cultural experiences demand that we redefine Apart from resorting to platitudes about the health and normal individualism to value of diversity, respect for other ways of accommodate a different concept of the life, and the need for furthering the boundaries of the self. It is possible to re- understanding between different cultures, envision individualism, self-identity, and even they do not suggest any means for the borders of the self. In India, there are relocating the institutions of rights or examples of communities consisting of refashioning the practices of identity in order people from different faiths. It also means to get out of what often appears to be that the communities include individuals who political impasse. can be classified as belonging to more than Needless to say, many regard this purist one faith. version of the liberal doctrine as unduly rigid An attempt to address these issues could be and narrow which otherwise identifies with seen in the poems of some of the new the values of liberal democratic politics. But generation poets in Malayalam. P.P. the attempts to make room, within the Ramachandran, a significant name among doctrines of liberalism, for some recognition them, in Vinda Silpam, which can be of collective cultural identities have not considered as a corollary to the poem of yielded solutions that would enjoy wide Attoor Ravi Varma, tries to accommodate our acceptance. The charge is that it forces NRIs. One sees in it ‘images’ of metal, everyone into a single homogeneous cultural granite, plaster of paris and fibreglass step- mould, thus threatening the distinct identities ping out from their pedestals and creating a of minority groups, so that it is not pandemonium in a park. The Silpi welcomes everybody but only the minorities and the one of the frustrated images to a mud hill, a disadvantaged who are forced to forego their well without water, a harijan colony, a toddy cultural identities. Attoor and the poets of his shop, a red-coloured flag and stars. A split sensibility along with his benevolent critics could be seen at the top of the hill where the and readers often conceal a similar politics poet lives. What the poet is trying to draw is of discrimination. a picture of the culture of coexistence in Works Cited Kerala but the narrative is too ‘simple’ to Chatterji, Partha .A Possible India, Oxford University Press, carry the weight of the theme. An uncritical Delhi, 1998, p 249-253. revival of the Enlightenment projects will not Nandy, Ashis. “Freud, Modernity and Post Colonial Violence bear fruits in an age of liberalization in all (Analytic Attitude, Dissent and the Boundaries of the fields of cultural life. Self)” The little Magazine - Vol.4, Issue 5 & 6, 2003, p 8-18. The west had begun to talk about K.C. Narayanan, “Sahyanekkaal Thalappokkam”, Attoor multiculturalism since the 1970s Kavithakal. Kottayam: DC Books, 1999, p 303- (Ramakrishnan 2001). But a liberal political 327 theory in its strict sense cannot recognize the Rajendran, Dr. “Naattil Paarkkaatha Nataraajan,” Puthu validity of any collective rights of cultural vaauana, D.C. Books, Kottayam, 2006, p 43-45. groups unless it holds as a fundamental Ramachandran,P.P. “Vinda Silpam”, Bhashaposhini, Jan 2006, p 15. principle the idea that the state, and indeed Ramakrishnan,E.V. Desheeyathakalum Saahithyavum, D.C. all public institutions, will treat all citizens Books, Kottayam, 2001, p 118-119. equally, regardless of race, sex, religion or Attoor Ravi Varma, “Naattil Paarakkattha Indiakkaran,” other cultural particularities (Chatterji 1998). Attoor Kavithakal Kottayam: DC Books, 1999, p None of these liberal arguments seems to 137-144 ■

42 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY As You Bathe Your Mother Savithri Rajeevan

s you bathe your mother A be mindful asA with a child. Let the body not slip from your hands let the water be mildly warm Do not lather that body softened by time with the heady fragrance of soaps. Nor let the eyes hurt.

On her arms Which bathed and beautified you You won’t find the bangles you played with Nor will you hear their tinkling laugh.

That old ring which bore your tender bites will have slipped off her finger long long ago. But Now, on mother’s arms Countless pleats bangles of wrinkles shine with remembrance Seven or seventy or seven thousand, the colours on them?

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 43 Don’t trouble to count Just close your eyes touch, gently caress that tender body soft smooth in water’s mild warm flow. Then those wrinkles memory-filled will unfold Mother will slowly stretch her arms and bathe you again Steeped in oil and cleansing herbs you will keep emerging washed limpid, clean.

Then in return give your mother one of the kisses she gave you. As you bathe your mother, as with a child… Translated from Malayalam by P. Udayakumar

44 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Short Story Ricardo, Janaki and A Female Body K.V. Mohankumar

O LET : A Body Abandoned By Raghavan.” “T Janaki sat enjoying the beauty of the caption. The body cruelly abandoned by her man, the body that is now solely hers — can it be sold out to any one, may be to more than one person....? What would be the name for that trade— mortgage, rental, or selling? Which Ricardian attribute will be the apt one? She reflected for a while. The virginity of earth, its fertility and availability — — the three parameters that Ricardo has set to fix the value of land. Janaki stood nude in front of the mirror exploring the possibilities of marketing her body. The clock ticking away in the next room, her hungry children groaning pathetically in sleep, — all roused a sort of fear in her reminding her of the equations of time and body. The body is under the spell of time; so, is there time for one to wait further? The body is like a ripened tomato in the green grocery. Before it gets rotten... But there are certain norms for marketing also. Janaki, an Economics student for five years, knows it well. To whom should one sell the product? Or who should be the consumer? A beautiful phrase flew into her mind from the folds of memory — Potential Buyer! Who should be the potential buyer of her body? When the doors of her life seemed to close for ever, the first thought that had come to Janaki’s mind was of a soothing journey, a journey into time. “Shall we go for a long trip together, my dears?”

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 45 She asked her children, hugging and kissing with us ...not for anything in particular....but them vigorously. simply....” ‘Trip?” The term added What would Raghavettan be sparkles to the eyes of The virginity of earth, its doing right now? Kichumon, her younger fertility and availability — — Janaki thought for a while. son. the three parameters that Has he started lying with “Whereto ... Mom?” He Ricardo has set to fix the Urva, hiding in the chilling fondled her. value of land. cold of Delhi? “To far off places...never Janaki stood nude in front of Her thoughts went to the seen lands...to the wonder the mirror exploring the night when she found land of Alice....To Gulliver’s possibilities of marketing her Raghavan stealing into the Lilliput....” body. room of Urva. Urva was Janaki could not control her sleeping there all alone. laughter. What was he looking for in Urva — some ecstasy that was not given But Layamol eyed her with suspicion. by Janaki so far? Janaki had watched them Hoisting herself to Janaki’s lap, Layamol in the faint light shed through the key hole of shook her shoulders and asked in a the locked door. beseeching voice, “Can’t we live somehow Mom?” Ananthan, Urva’s husband , the only sibling of Raghavan , was struggling in the deserts Two shiny stars rolled out of her innocent to make both ends meet. eyes. “Mom, you are young. If there is no Raghavan justified his action in one of the other way, why can’t you also be ...like Anu’s dry nights. “Janaki, I have lost forever my mom?” love for you. You know, after that A cinder began to burn from within, incident....your ride in the car with that spreading heat all over Janaki’s body. fellow....Janaki, I know he had a passion for Anu is Layamol’s class mate. When her you...And you tell me that nothing father left them for good, Anu’s mother happened...I may believe you. But who will found a way of living as an actress in TV make my relatives, friends, and neighbours serials. Layamol had suggested it earlier too. believe it? Who can stop their wagging She did not wait for an answer. Instead, she tongues?” hastily went to the wash basin and washed Janaki was folding her night dress and her tear-soaked face. hanging it on the holder. She could only Layamol took Kichumon, who had fallen smile painfully at that comment. asleep on Janaki’s lap, and laid him on the “Raghavetta, wouldn’t it be more apt to say bed. Helping Janaki get up from the floor, that you are fed up with me... your wife, who Laya said, “Mom, you can take any has been living with you as your shadow for decision. Whatever it is, I will be with you. We the past 14 years?” know that Papa doesn’t want you.” Though dark, she could see his face growing Janaki was surprised at how fast Laya’s pale. voice had become firm! She had sworn several times with the flame She had attained puberty only yesterday. No of the sacred lamp as witness — “When I celebrations, no sweets. Even as the stain heard that my father was seriously ill, I was spreading over a piece of old rag, Laya wanted to reach there fast...Remanan was was thinking of her father. “If only he were going the same way, so I went in his

46 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY car....nothing more than that...believe me, The words of Remanan made Janaki take please....” the decision. “As soon as you hear that your father is “Oh, I am glad you still remember him and seriously ill... Remanan comes and takes me.” Janaki whispered gratefully while you in his car !”: Raghavan smiled entering the car. Remanan looked back from sarcastically. “Both of you were together for the driver’s seat and smiled. three to four hours...! People talk about it in “To forget you Janaki? That too, Remanan? such a disgusting way that I have lost all One life is not enough for that Janaki” my dignity”. They might have travelled about half the On rethinking, Janaki felt grudge and distance when Remanan suddenly stopped contempt towards Remanan. He had with the car under the shade of a tree on the side him in the car a girl, for whom he had of the road. Without looking back, he said, “ hungered all his life. Yet he chose to be Janaki, you know I am in the business of decent. Only if he had made any attempt, selling liquor. But my dream of intoxication is she could have easily put up with the tirade different. Even though I have conquered the from the husband. peaks of the trade, I don’t get any euphoria. She distinctly remembered that she was I’m disappointed that I don’t have you by my standing in a crowded bus-stop in the side. I can satisfy my lust now, just this sweltering heat of the day , waiting minute. Even the guardian angels on the impatiently for the bus that never came when earth are under my control. A liquor-baron Remanan’s car, an “air craft on wheels” like me can do whatever I want. No one halted in front of her. would dare to stop me. But I can never be a transgressor with you. I want . . . not only ‘Janaki,are you going to Thachottukaavu? your body, but your mind too. I want to Remanan enquired lowering the glass of the possess your soul as well.” window of the car. “No, please. I cannot do this, not in this ‘Yes.Got a call from home. My father is birth.” Janaki closed her eyes tightly, sitting seriously ill.’ in the back seat of the car. ‘You are going alone?’ When the proposal of marriage came from Raghavan’s family Janaki could only insist ‘Yea, Raghavettan is out of town.’ that she wanted to continue her studies. But ‘Come on then, I’m also going that way.’ her father over-ruled the objection: “There’s ‘No, thanks...the bus will come soon...’ no reason why you can’t continue your studies after marriage. The boy is a lecturer Before she could complete the sentence “the in your college.” aircraft on wheels” opened its back door fastidiously. Father was anxious to put down the burden from his shoulders. And her studies abruptly Father in serious condition... the bus may came to a halt with the nuptial bells. come late ....but what will people say on seeing her coming in a car with another When the car reached Thachottukaavu, the man? But again, suppose the bus comes courtyard was crowded with people. Her too late? Janaki was bit confused to take a father had already . . . decision. Before leaving for Delhi , on the pretence of “I too want to see my former teacher. Come completing his research, Raghavan asked on Janaki...get in please..., get into my Ananthan, who was home on a short Pushpak.” vacation, to drop Janaki and her children at

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 47 her parental home in Thachottukaavu. He opened the refrigerator and poured wine Raghavan told Ananthan ; “To tell you the in two cups. “Let’s start with fond truth, I just want to stay away till people remembrances of Omar Khayyam.” He forget about the recent happening. I cannot raised his cup. “A cup of wine ... and thou survive in the midst of this scandal. How can beside me...” I silence the talebearers around? While drinking the wine eagerly, she said, When Ananthan went back to the desert, “But I remember David Ricardo, not Omar Raghavan suggested that Urva resume her Khayyam. Don’t you remember Ricardo? It is studies. She had abandoned her M.Phil too early to forget him.” course at JNU half-way. Ananthan was “How can I forget him, Janaki? He was the happy “Wow...it’s a golden chance...Since one who came up with some nasty theory Raghavettan is also in Delhi, he can look that made all of us feel like fish out of water.” after you.” “Yes,yes...Ricardian theory of rent.” She was Soon poor Ananthan was lost in a mine excited. Do you remember that definition?” accident. Even the body could not be retrieved. He was buried alive in the depths of “Why should anyone remember all those the desert. rubbish?”Remanan adjusted the AC to bring down the chill in the room. Raghavettan never came back; neither did Urva. “But I do remember.” Layamol took her bath very early in the She gathered her breath and said non- morning. “If only I could get a sanitary falteringly: napkin,” she told to herself in despair. “I am “Rent is that portion of the produce of the fed up of these old cotton rags.” earth, which is paid to the landlord for the She looked at Janaki pleadingly. use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil.” Janaki was not sure of the way to Remanan’s office . She had to ask several She heaved a sigh of relief and said— “Oh, people. And when she reached there at last, thank God, I haven’t forgotten it yet.” he was not there. He had gone somewhere, “What makes you remember Ricardo now, but would come soon, someone told her. Janaki?”Remanan watched her curiously. In the courtyard , there were some flowering “What’s his relevance now?” trees...The Asoka trees. After throwing a smile at She waited under the shade Remanan’s curious face, of one of them. They While drinking the wine she stood up rather showered flowers on her eagerly, she said, “But I seductively. remember David Ricardo, body as if in a dream.... “See my body,” she said. not Omar Khayyam. Don’t It was noon when Remanan “This is the Earth mentioned you remember Ricardo? It came back to office. in Ricardian theory, and the is too early to forget him.” “Oh, you,” Remanan was owner of this land is me ...I surprised on seeing her have decided to rent it out, waiting for him. “You could have called me. I and you are the potential would have sent my car.” buyer I have found.” He looked at her tired face. “No need to have “Janaki”, He approached her. Placing his travelled all the way by bus. Please come.” hands on her shoulders, he looked into the depth of her eyes.”What happened to you, She followed him to his cabin. Janaki?”

48 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY “Ah! I haven’t completed it yet,” She placed “ Remanan, my condition has come down to her hands on his chest and spread out the that level...” fingers. “I know Remanan, how much you “Janaki, you...it’s too much...”,Remanan had longed for me and my body, and I have slowly patted her hair. “If you need money, come to make some bargains”. why can’t you ask me ?” She stared at his thick moustache and said, “Yea,” she nodded, “I will take some money “I have two suggestions.... One. Remanan as advance. Whenever you want my body, can enjoy Janaki’s body, solely as he just inform me. You know, every time you wishes, like the earth in Ricardian theory of plough, the earth gives out her virgin smell, rent. Remanan can enjoy this body right?” discarded by Raghavettan. You can plough the land with all your vigour. In that case, till While counting the money and keeping it in the agreement terminates, Janaki would be the hand bag, she was calculating in mind yours and only yours. — Should buy two or three packets of sanitary napkin for Layamol. Some sweets Two. If you do not want to keep me solely to too. Also one or two pairs of dresses. She is yourself, you can hire Janaki on rental basis also blooming into womanhood. ■ whenever you feel like it. But you may have NOTE: to book in advance, as other potential buyers also will be there. And, who knows, David Ricardo (1772-1823) was a British political economist. He developed theories of rent, wages, and profits sometimes you may have to wait in the which have now become part of classical Economics. queue.” Translated from Malayalam by The Author Dampness slowly began to spread on her cheeks.

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 49 Nature and Myth as a Feminine Language A Study Based on Sarah Joseph’s ‘Puthu Ramayanam’ Praseetha K

nce again Sita threw a valorous intensive look at the “O victor. Then she realized her change as similar to the scorched“O earth; earlier, the moment he touched, she would be moistened as the wet furrow and impregnated by the rain. From now, onwards his hand cannot sow any rapture on earth. No kiss can arouse any trembles and agrarian fragrance in the nerves of the earth. Here-after, she can remember only the harsh words that he spelled in the crowd, only the shock of the moment when she walked directly, into the scorching fire!” (Sarah Joseph 2006:56-57). Just like any other feminist writer Sarah Joseph also faced the problem of writing in a male dominated language. To liberate from the patriarchal system of writing, she has to form a feminine language as in the concept of ‘Ecriture Feminine’ that was put forward by Helen Cixous and in the concept of ‘Minor Writing’ that was put forward by Luce Irigaray. Sarah Joseph enables this type of feminine writing by her style of narration. The narrative style interwoven by Nature and Myth makes Sarah Joseph’s works very dynamic and political. This narrative style itself deconstructs the existing myths as well as language. But it should not be considered to be mere narrative style. Actually it should be regarded as a system of

The very challenge in using the myth and nature as a system of language is that both were defined under the patriarchal system. Myths have a political agenda that is to subordinate the weak and to praise the strong and mighty, though the strong and weak are the creation of these myths themselves.

50 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY language, which resists the patriarchal; a the epic. The idea of dualism itself becomes language which creates an unbound space the structural element which has liberating for feminine writing. potential to convey her ideology. The very challenge in using the myth and Plurality of Women nature as a system of language is, that both Most of the feminine writings are interpreted were defined under the patriarchal system. as representation of whole womankind. But Myths have a political agenda that is to the fact is that in this the faces of subaltern/ subordinate the weak and to praise the Dalit women will not be recognized. Sarah strong and mighty, though the strong and Joseph’s narration doesn’t unify the whole weak are the creation of these myths women. The subjugated women in different themselves. Sarah Joseph’s work Puthu situations like caste, class, religion, family Ramayanam problematizes this attempt at etc. raise their voices in this narration and encrypting and thereby sanitizing dominance the inter-textual space, which is embodied in over the subaltern. She acknowledges the the narration, unifies their voices through creative role of the reader and redefines the constructing and destructing the same text. traditional myth as a writer. As to Roland Barthes, ‘the best weapon against myth is The myth of Dandakaranya is a structural perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to element in four stories in the collection and it produce an artificial myth’ (Barthes, Roland, provides the inter-textual space which unifies 1993:35). Here myth provides rich structural the voices of women characters Araja, Sita, elements for redefining the myths and to Soorpanakha and Ayomukhi. The first story, form a feminine language. ‘Bhoomirakshasam’ makes clear the myth of Dandakaranya by connecting it with the Now everyone has realized the deep relation triumph of Dandaka over Araja and forest between women and nature in Sarah and the revenge taken by nature. And this Joseph’s works and this relation was studied myth itself is carried into the next story: in the light of Eco-feminism and Deep Kantaratarakam’ and then to Taykulam and Ecology. But G. Madhusoodhanan in his Asoka. And the myth narrates the situations article on Eco-aesthetics points out that the like dominance of powerful man over woman equalization of women to nature in a male and nature, and the subjugation of woman’s dominated society may result in desire under the culture and civilized men as antifeminism and so this itself is the well as women’s position as an object for challenge for Eco-feminist writers. Val men to show their power and pride. Plumwood’s book ‘Feminism and the Mastery of Nature’ also discusses the Thus the myth of Dandakaranya works as a alignment of Nature and Women as a part of conjunction in the whole text and itself Dualism, which is a colonial discourse. becomes a narrative technique to support the idea of Plurality of Women as a feminist But when we go through Sarah Joseph’s ideology. works both myth and nature form a feminine language to liberate the feminine writing from Nature and Women the male centered language system. Her The story Bhoomirakshasam begins with a Puthu Ramanayanam, collection of descripiton of the beauty of spring in the Ramanaya Stories is based on different forest. The flow is suddenly interrupted by a episodes of the Ramayana in which she remark on Araja, that she has no time to raises the questions of justice and injustice, enjoy the beauty of nature, though she war and peace, and the relationship between wants. And the remark leads to the character love and power, which is the central theme of Sukracharya, Araja’s father. And his

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 51 character is depicted by a word ‘jadaragni are questioned. Taykulam is a story which is that denotes the hungry. This word takes the widely discussed for its language and reader to the contrast between nature in narration which provide a feminine text. spring and Sukracharya who has a burning When the author makes an alignment belly. This fire controls Araja’s life in the between women and nature, the narration forest. Later Dandaka, the man who carries enables emancipation in the language and weapon in his hands and fire in his eyes liberal feminine writing that can be alternated conquers her. He, who built his kingdom with male centered language system, in ‘Madhumandam’ in the middle of the forest, which nature is subjugated to male believes that he has the power over woman supremacy. and land. ‘Mother’ as a structural element Men perceive women as well as nature as their property and they have supreme power In the story ‘Kantaratarakam’, Lakshmana on both. They invade nature and women to remembers the conversation of their extentd their territory. They consider both mothers-Kausalya, Sumitra and Kaikeyi. And women and nature as mere objects. But for he remarks that their thoughts and language women nature is emancipation. They identify are very poor. But the subsequent themselves with nature. They attain conversation reveals their dissatisfaction knowledge and freedom from nature. towards the Aryan supremacy and the craving for power. Their conversation forms a The quotation in the beginning of the paper language system which is out of the reach of is from the story ‘Asoka.’ In this Rama has men. conquered Lanka and released Sita. Sita was expecting the reunion with her beloved. But “Lakshmana has known that they had a she was asked to undergo the ordeal of fire secret language of their own. Hearing it to prove her chastity. He behaved like a makes us laugh. They were brought up with warrior who retained his pride, instead of as it as children. Being grown up, mothers a lover meeting his beloved after a long counted them out from their language. They period of separation. Here Sita recognizes have several matters to be shared without herself as arid land and Rama as a mere the concern of men.” (Sarah Joseph. warrior who can’t fertilize the earth he has 2006:39) conquered. She declares that she is Earth, Here the mother characters in the myth which is capable of extinguishing even fire. It present the woman identity which will not is Nature that gives shelter to the woman, yield to objectifying. Though they cannot consoles her and takes revenge for man’s overcome the patriarchal system of creativity, injustice to woman. Nature acts as a mother they were the unstoppable vehicle of to Sita. resistance and hope within the system. And In the story ‘Taykulam’, Soorpanakha is the metaphor of breast-milk also plays a role inseparable from nature and she stands for in the structure of feminine language. The the matriarchal system. She says: “It is former story ‘Chavunilam’ also uses this because of lust tree sprouts. For lust it yields metaphor of breast-milk. blossoms and the sea melts. If so woman is Kaikeyi yearns to feed her son Bharata and accused of her lust, the peril is to fertile soil” she grieves that her breast will be dry while (Sarah Joseph. 2006:59). Here women are he returns after the armoral practices. As well equalized to nature for the liberty to express as in the story ‘Taykulam’ Soorpanakha their selves, even their sexual desire. Here the remarks that they cut down her breasts, concept of morality and taboos on women ‘roots of her breast milk.’ The metaphor of

52 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY roots equates Soorpanakha and Nature. lt time the dialogue forms a feminine structure also denotes the beginning of the of language. destruction of her race itself. Oral Language over Written Language “Asnata drishtumicchami To question the sovereignty of male author Bharttaram....” feminine writing uses oral culture as a part of “Asnata drishtumiccahami Bharttaram....” is its narrative technique. The story ‘Taykulam’ a dialogue in the story ‘Asoka.’ When she is is renowned for the language used in asked to take bath and be adorned to go in narration. To present Soorpanakha as a part front of the conqueror Rama, she repeats the of nature and to denounce their ownership of above dialogue, which means that she the forest as Dravidian people, Sarah Joseph wants to see her husband without taking uses a lanugage that belongs to oral bath. Here the dialogue itself forms the tradition, and the alphabets used in the ideology of feminine language. language as in the Tamil language, not as in The story begins with the description of Sita’s the Sanskrit or Malayalam language system. body through her own perspective and the That means there are only two alphabets in simile of destructed soil is used to start the each set of consonants. For example, in the description. And her body is dirty, not set of ‘ka’ the story uses only ‘ka’ and ‘nga’ because of her deeds, but because of the and excludes the other alphabets in the set- sufferings she had undergone. The only ‘kha’, ‘ga’ and ‘gha’- ‘mokamokam’ instead hope for her is the arrival of Rama. But she of ‘mukhamukham’; ‘chitha’ instead of ‘sita.’ was shocked by hearing the order, as ‘In the first story ‘Bhoomirakshasam’, Araja ordering a dirty one. Though she accepts it remarks that her concept of knowledge was later, at first she refuse. The order also different from that of her father Sukracharya. reminds the monthly occurrence of ‘restricted While Sukracharya recites the written slokas unclean period’ for womankind, in which she which have an embodied intention to give keeps away from man. Some other images advice, Araja sticks to nature and develops used in the story are also related to her own concepts and interpretation. Thus menstruation. Sun is compared to cold Sarah Joseph places the poetical oral clotted blood and later the sunset is language in opposition to philosophical compared to melting clotted blood which written language. falls into the sea drop by drop. With these In the story ‘Asoka’ Sita utters her dialogue in metaphors, the quoted dialogue questions Sanskrit - “Asnata drishtumicchami the concept of cleanliness and restriction to Bharttaram.....” it is countered by the other go to the husband in the state she is. dialogue - order to Mandodari, which is in a This dialogue follows another, order to the Dravidian tone. In the last story of the women in Lanka ‘Come just after bath wet collection ‘Kathayilillathathu’ (Which is not in as you are.’ The contradiction between two the story) Valmiki and Valmiki Ramayana, statements lively connects both women the well defined written text is countered by characters - Sita and Mandodari. After taking the oral song recited by the subaltern bath, Sita followed Mandodari. And the character thus assisting the ideology of contradiction points out the physical death feminine writing. of Ravana and emotional death of Rama as Apolitical becomes political a loveable husband. The second last story “Karuttha thulakal’ Here the dialogues themselves serve as (black holes), as its name indicates is the narrative technique to criticize Rama and his result of finding out ‘blind spots’ or exploring failure as a loveable husband. At the same

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 53 the black holes. The myth same time Sambuka’s of Manthara presents a new The story demythologizes the daughter questions him for reading of Ramayana, in Ramayana Myth. More than excluding them from the which Ayodhya is presented that it is a narrative technique Ramayana story. Hearing as a place of political to form a feminine ideology the song of Sambuka’s conspiracy. In the story which questions the children, Lava and Kusa Manthara acts like a spy sovereignty of the writer over question Valmiki’s position appointed by Aswapathy, the work. as Aadikavi. And the story Kaikeyi’s father. Hitherto in itself presents the duality the story Manthara is only a villain figure. But between oral and written language and in fact she becomes political and a strong positions the oral literature as more natural, character. Thus the myth becomes a unrefined and nearest to life experience. narrative technique that assists the feminine The story demythologizes the Ramayana writing in which women are presented active Myth. More than that it is a narrative instead of passive; political instead of technique to form a feminine ideology which domestic. Thus the narration of myth and questions the sovereignty of the writer over the myth itself liberates the feminine writing, the work. As Helen Cixous states ‘Ecriture’ is by politicizing the women who were apolitical beyond the control of writer, it happens in male dominated language system. naturally as in the case of Sambuka’s Strikes down the supremacy of Author daughter’s song. ‘Kathayilillattathu,’ the last story makes a Though myths are narrations in themselves, new critical approach on Ramayana and its here these myths serve the function of a author Valmiki. Valmiki Ramayana is a structural element to enable a femine writing metanarrative, in which the author himself as a whole. Use of nature and myth through says why he wrote the epic and then taught the techniques of dualism, equalization of it to Lava and Kusa so that they could retell women and nature, oral language, the story written by him. Characters in the dominance of men over women and nature, story themselves were the narrators – etc.form a narrative structure in total and the Valmiki, Lava and Kusa. Here in the short form itself constructs the ideology, the story the characters are presented by Valmiki ideology of ‘feminine writings.’ but the text itself gets emancipated from the Reference author and authorship. In the story Valmiki Barthes, Roland. 1993. Mythologies, London Vintage. says that the power of authorship is not Gibson, Andrew. 1996. Towards a Postmodern Theory of sovereign. The Brahmin child blames Valmiki Narrative. Edinburg, Edinburgh University Press. for bringing him back from death. At the ■

54 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY When the First Person Tells a Story Manoj Kuroor

train compartment–the story A Begins grinding forward, with just Athe three of us: a man who’s ill, his wife with him, and right in front of them a handsome young man. A usual kind of story, this, and yet to obstruct its telling, a narrative crisis around who I am here. (The question is who is the first-person here, but the answer begins and ends with ‘I’.) The husband has to sleep. But then what if the wife and the young man– so he sits up, wide-eyed. I’m him, or how do I praise her, veiling the undisclosed doubts of the weak? Mister Handsome casts a sly glance at her, and gives the patient bread and water. I’m him, or how do I, like a spider, weave and hide behind a web-trap of desires? She who says ‘Take a pill and shut your eyes, and sleep will come, let me switch off the light,’ and when he says ‘No’ and sits up, holds him close to her chest, wiping off tears. I’m her, or how do I, crushing the thorns of disquiet, smile tenderly? The deepening crisis must be Crossed over. Once begun, the tale

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 55 must be told to the end like hell. When all the three hide everything, I’m the fourth, not trapped in the tale, who is to speak of the whole thing. Come the next station, and I’ll board the train, sit at a distance, and tell you of the denouement. Translated from Malayalam by Dr. V.C. Harris

56 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Literary Ornithology and Vyloppilly Sreekanth C

One effect of global warming will be (is already?) a powerful increase in the severity of winds in northern Europe; the swallow has great difficulty in coping with the wind, so there is genuine possibility that within the lifetime of today’s students Britain will cease to be a country to which this bird migrates. Keats ode “To Autumn” is predicated upon the certainty of the following spring’s return; the poem will look very different if there is soon an autumn when ‘gathering swallows twitter in the skies’ for the last time. Jonathan Bate

Red to Green rnithology’ is “the study of birds”. Though early ‘O writings on birds were largely ‘anecdotal’ in character , ‘Oincluding folklore, or ‘practical’, including writings on game- bird keeping and falconry, the tendency from the eighteenth century on has been a shift towards more “scientific” study of birds, focusing on the internal anatomy of birds, bird ecology and bird ethology. (Ecology is the science of relationships; ethology studies the behavior of living beings for adapting with the surroundings). This ‘scientific’ shift in bird studies should be seen in the context of the evolution of the western science since the Industrial Revolution. The non-expert, informal strain in ornithology can still be traced in the accounts of birds produced during the colonial times. Writings of E.H Aitken (author of The Common Birds of Bombay (1900) and A Naturalist on the Prowl (1894), the founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society, are examples. One of the founding texts of ornithology in Malayalam, Keralathile

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 57 Pakshikal (Birds of Kerala 1958) by K. K. of time. It represents the speaker’s craving for Neelakantan, is also characterized by the an escape from this world, which is subject non-expert, informal strain in ornithology. All to change, to a world beyond the laws of these point to a curious trait in the nature and time. In the early twentieth development of science in general and century, the British poet, Robert Bridges ornithology in particular: the constant and wrote a poem, “Nightingales”, which mutual interaction between the expert answers Keats. This poem incorporates the (typically “Scientific”) and non-expert ‘voice’ or point of view of the bird also: (informal, popular, literary, non-expert) Beautiful must be the mountains whence discourses, with the non-expert one ye come, determining the course of the expert discourse. This non-expert/popular/informal And bright in the fruitful valleys,the strain of bird-knowledge can be termed streams, wherefrom ‘literary’, not merely because of its Ye learn your song: occurrence in literary works, but because it Where are those starry woods? Oh might I takes into account interrelationships among wander there, observed objective facts, bio-physical environments and varied ecosophical ideals Among the flowers, which in that and values. heavenly air The Soviet critic, Mikhail Bakhtin’s Bloom the year long! conception of dialogic nature of literary texts The remaining stanzas of the poem are the is relevant here. Bakhtin postulates that a nightingale’s reply: literary work is not a unified entity having a Nay, barren are those mountains and single meaning which is emanating from the spent the streams: authority of the author. A literary text is “a site for the dialogic interaction of multiple Our song is the voice of desire, that voices, or modes of discourse, each of which haunts our dreams, is not merely a verbal but a social A throe of the heart, phenomenon, and as such is the product of Whose pining visions dim, forbidden manifold determinants that are specific to a hopes profound, class, social group, and speech community” (Abrams 62). It signifies the existence of No dying cadence nor long sigh can different kinds of ‘logic’ or a multiplicity of sound, logic. The logic of literary ornithology is For all our art. different from that of scientific ornithology. Alone, aloud in the ruptured ear of men Bakhtin’s dialogism vindicates varied interpretations. The anthropocentric and We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and dominant interpretations often collide with then, the biocentric, ecological or environmental As night is withdrawn readings. From these sweet-springing meads and One of the most common bird species bursting boughs of May, represented in English literature is the Dream, while the innumerable choir of common nightingale. In John Keats’ “Ode to day a Nightingale” (1819), the nightingale is depicted as inhabiting an ideal realm beyond Welcome the dawn. the miseries of earthly existence. Its song is Keats’ Ode can be termed proto-ecological viewed as heavenly and beyond the passage as it anticipates certain themes which were

58 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY to become dominant concern later. Vyloppilly Sreedhara Menon redefines the Questioning of the driving assumption of grounds of aesthetics: the ‘beautiful’ should industrial modernity is a subterranean be ecologically right. Unlike the nightingale current in Keats. However, the central poems of Keats and Robert Bridges, assumption is anti-ecological: a desire to Vyloppilly Sreedhara Menon’s “Kaakka” does transcend the world as we experience it. In not serve as an object of the poet’s other words, the perspective is not pro- anthropomorphic projection. What is worldly. Robert Bridges’ “Nightingales” stressed in the poem is the function of the moves a step further and recognizes the bird in the ecosystem: its role as scavenger/ blinding idealism and anthropomorphism of decomposer, which is one of the three key the romantic vision. Bakhtin’s dialogism elements of an ecosystem, the other two helps initiated readers for approving more being, the producers and the consumers. than one voice—the anthropocentric voice of The bird, though black, is, thus, a proper Keats and the not-so-much anthropocentric and ecologically fit subject for poetry, or for voice of Bridges. literary ornithology. Both the nightingales Yet, literary bird- Unlike the nightingale poems of show the chronological studies are not pure Keats and Robert Bridges, progress of ecological ornithology or scientific Vyloppilly Sreedhara Menon’s consciousness and treatises. Menon “Kaakka” does not serve as an conscience; yet, they are presents a day’s full life object of the poet’s not ecological, but proto- of a young village girl— anthropomorphic projection. ecological. They from early morning to What is stressed in the poem is anticipate eco-voices late evening. The crow the function of the bird in the that commenced their positively participates in ecosystem: its role as scavenger/ vibrations and the interlaminating decomposer, which is one of the reverberations in the symbiotic life led by the three key elements of an latter half of the 20th rural families. The crow ecosystem, the other two being, century. The bird-poems comes to the rural the producers and the of the Kerala poet human house. Alighting consumers. Vyloppilly Sreedhara atop the tamarind tree in Menon (1911-85) are the courtyard, she wakes ecological and they exemplify literary up all those who are asleep. The housewife ornithology. Even an early poem of Vyloppilly is very happy at the crow’s arrival. She Sreedhara Menon like “Kaakka” (1940, The prefers the crow to other beautiful and Crow) is imbued with ecological perspective: decorative birds like multicolored parrots and the realization that every life form is an doves. The crow is also very delighted by the indispensable element of the ecosystem. sight of the human family life. --Symbiosis They may appear ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’ from a and companionship can be seen human perspective. The bird is described as: everywhere, in and around the home. Kooriruttinte kidaathi, yennaal Enjoying, contributing and appreciating the landscape, the crow declares loudly the glory Sooryaprakasathinuttathozhi, of village life. The bird is very careful in Cheethakal kothivalikkukilu- keeping her identity and conserving her birdly Mettavum vruthiveduppezhunnol biocontinuum. She seduces a young male [This daughter of darkness is an ally of crow. The poet is surprised to find that the sunlight; dark, servant-like crow has amorous Remaining unstained, she picks away dirt.] inclinations also.

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 59 outside, awakening the urgency of Literary ornithology is not just the study of biospherical egalitarianism. birds as seen in literary works; but, a foregrounding of the ecological interior REFERENCE landscapes, based on ecosophical values Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th Edn. New Delhi: Thomson Heine, 2007. like interrelationship. Bate, Jonathan. “From Red to Green”. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Ed. Externally, “the Crow” is a scavenger, at Laurence Coupe. London: Routledge, 2000. 167- the same time this bird instills life into the 172. rustic home. The bird functions as the Jothikumari, V. “Kariyilaampeechikal: Oru Paaristhitika Avalokanam” (The White-Headed Babblers: An emblem of the ecosophical value of Ecological Analysis). Visalakeralam. (March, 2000): interrelationship. Literary ornithology is not 30-31. just the study of birds as seen in literary Neelakantan, K. K. Keralathile Pakshikal [ Birds of Kerala]. works; but, a foregrounding of the ecological Thrissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1958 interior landscapes, based on ecosophical Slovic, Scott. “Nature Writing and Environmental Psychology: values like interrelationship. Scott Slovic the Interiority of Outdoor Experience”. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. indicates that ecological literature is primarily Eds. Cherryl concerned with interior landscapes. Menon’s Sreedhara Menon, Vyloppilly. “Kaakka”. Vyloppilly “the Crow” supplies a convenient site upon Sampoornna Krithikal. Vol. 1. Thrissur: Current which an ecological interpretation, that is, Books, 2001. 66-68. from the external to the internal is possible: Susanth. C. “Kariyilathozharaam poothaankeerikal”. the crow as an indispensable element of the Sasthrakeralam. Nov. 1998. 24-26. ■ ecosystem enters into our consciousness and changes our attitude towards the world

60 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Short Story Willing to End Nirmala

is mother never liked the cold weather, having lived next Hdoor to the equator on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. So, whenever winter started in Canada her body, mind and even the flu shots taken in November months could not prepare her for the arctic chills. It was always surrender. Amma had several pills to gulp down,three times a day,in her daily regimen. High blood pressure, cholesterol and that sticky old wicket – asthma. By November when the bitter cold starts to descend from the Polar cap the number of puffs from the inhaler increases. That’s when even uttering words become an ordeal. When she would try to speak with much effort Joy would get upset. -Amma,why can’t you be quiet? You are making it worse. His fury emanated from the helplessness – seeing her struggle to breathe – and was directed inward, but he fretted whether Amma realized that. Now she can’t talk at all, which filled up Joy’s mind with remorseful anger. This time when she contracted the flu her breathing became unusually agonizing. Amma slept with masks connected to oxygen cylinders. When her lungs could not handle that too, they moved her to the Intensive Care Unit. That’s how she got attached to a ventilator. Her tongue, pressed down by twin tubes violating her mouth under the guise of sustenance,

When he softly called out “Ammay,” she slowly opened her eyes and her limp hand in his warm palm came alive – pressing weakly. The white of her eyes had turned yellow.

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 61 hung out dry, darkened and swollen. Most of ease, like a bow. The village fortune-teller, the time Amma was in a drug - induced armed with a caged parrot and deck of aged shallow doze. cards depicting Hindu deities had gaily When he softly called out “Ammay,” she predicted malleable thumbs stood for good slowly opened her eyes and her limp hand in luck. Now, touching her stiff and distended his warm palm came alive – pressing weakly. thumb he realized: The white of her eyes had turned yellow. -This is not my mother. There was swelling all over: limbs, face, The doctor had resorted to medical terms to jowls, even her eyelids were thrusting out like explain the changes she was undergoing, that of a boxer knocked down too many but they were wasted on the gas station times in the ring of life. owner. On their way back home, Sally with He saw her face clouded with sadness when her pharmacy background tried to explain she looked at him, a U Turn from her normal them in layman’s terms, but Joy chose to response. Her facial muscles were stiff, not resist comprehension. He was drowning in able to form any type of Amma’s deep furrows of emotion, so he did not sorrow. Her dried up As the primary care giver of understand how the swollen tongue made him Amma, Joy is supposed sadness was conveyed. Her speechless. How can he to give them permission to hair was all dishevelled, decide? The hospital folks remove the ventilator. The much shorter than its need an answer. child once Amma carried original lavish length – there on her shoulder should As the primary care giver of was more salt than pepper. decide on the death Amma, Joy is supposed to Her eyebrows were wild, sentence, by asphyxiation! give them permission to badly needing pruning. remove the ventilator. The There too, gray dominated. child once Amma carried on The crisscross lines on her her shoulder should decide on the death forehead resembled carbon rings on a felled sentence, by asphyxiation! tree, ready to recount a life story. Maybe the A plus seventy year old patient indefinitely on melancholy is incarcerated in the forehead ventilator; not a human estate, the Doctor furrows, Joy thought idly. had spoken in that trained clinically When he gently called her again she made benevolent tone they are all trained in. an effort to talk, but nothing made sense. Canadian Health Care is free, but The tubes helping her to stay alive are magnanimity has its own limit. They had pressing down her tongue. He could sense come up with a pragmatic solution, by the agony and increasing sadness on her making an orifice in her throat they could face. insert a tube and that would bring her out of The ventilator was making gurgling inhuman the ICU, releasing a bed for the more needy. sounds, not the familiar rhythm of asthma. Then she could leave life to a machine and Her lungs had sounded like a sparrow’s rest in a corner in the hospital. Joy can avoid chirp when she carried him on her the guilt of ‘pulling the plug’. shoulder,softly tapping his back or when But can Joy only see the deep stagnant hugging him as a child. That familiar tweet ponds of sorrow on Amma’s face? He could was his mother’s very own – assuring and feel tears flooding in her eyes but refusing to soothing. breathe. What does she want? A hole in her He reminisced her thumbs used to be throat, and let the machine breath for her? flexible–they would bend backward with Since Appachen passed away all decisions

62 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY were taken by Joy and Amma after a long They need the details of obituary memorial discussion. Now it is time to take the card as well. The samples had the birth toughest decision of a life time and Amma date, place, achievements and scripture had abandoned him. verses or famous quotes. -Is it right to continue like this? What is in her -Where would I find a slogan for Amma’s life! will? As always Jimmy has come up with an Hospital officials kept asking. Living Will; excuse for not being able to be a part of the that was the term they had used. To prepare ordeal. for the finishing line was not a concept that -Hey, as a business owner you are the boss appealed to him. Long term planning of yourself with flexible time and plenty of common in the Western culture was foreign cash. I don’t have that luxury and have to to Joy, especially on macabre matters –like dance to the beat of the white man’s drum. penning down the flowers you wish to have in your casket or the songs to play at the Jimmy had numerous excuses for not being after funeral snacks gathering, all jotted able to take Amma with him. . His children down when one is perfectly healthy. are very young and that would be unmanageable load on Usha if she had to -Have you made any arrangements? take care of Amma too. Besides, Sally First he didn’t get it – arrangements? When being a pharmacist will help with the medical the social worker handed over a bunch of procedures if Amma stays with Joy. pamphlets and brochures of nearby funeral Sally was the one more irked than himself. homes and cemeteries, he felt rage again. It is the inevitable, and he cannot keep her -Why do you put up with this? He is also a body in the hospital or take home. He can son like you. Was there ever one instance he prearrange the procedures with funeral has taken Amma to live with his family? homes. Select the right size room for Can’t he take her for at least a week? visitors, the body will be displayed in front of -Well, we can’t impose that on him. the room decked with plenty of flowers. There will be viewing period when people are -Of course, not! Such a cunning baby allowed to visit and pay respects. Visitors brother! Does he ever think that Amma took can sing hymns or play recorded hymns. All care of him once? Oh no, let us carry the these can be selected beforehand - the cross all the way! hymns, the order they should be played, the Joy would have no real answer to offer, so flowers, pictures of the deceased that the he would go into the terrain worse than family wants to show off, the viewing hours, anger – silence. Joy realized Sally’s point; he the last rites…. brought Jimmy over to Canada and Viewing period lasts two or three hours for a supported his university studies while couple of days. There won’t be any outburst struggling to pay the mortgage and other of crying or weeping. Visitors will be bills. Jimmy stayed with them until Usha elegantly clad in black as a mark of respect joined him which was after getting a decent to the deceased. A binder will be kept in job and getting married to Usha in Kerala. the hallway by the door to register the name, That’s when Joy had sold their ancestral two address and messages from visitors. You bedroom home back in the village to move get to keep that to tally the condolence Amma to live with him. afterwards. Jimmy and family will stay over for few days A collage of memorable pictures with one big during Easter, Christmas, Appachen’s stunning picture will be displayed as well. anniversary and summer vacation. Sally

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 63 marked each celebration as over-workload He clearly remembered every step they took period. ever since. Amma accompanied him to the -Why does it always have to be our place? grocery store the first time.Her asthma kicked Has he ever offered to have it at his home? in from walking too far in the sweltering sun You have to be stern with your slacker and she had to take many breaks on the brother. way back. The high pitch of the whistling from her lungs scared Joy. Finally when Sally would start to prompt her husband in they reached home Amma wearily sat down November. on the threshold at the doorway, too weak to – Tell Jimmy to host our family Christmas make it inside. She motioned him to bring dinner. her some warm water. Joy ran to the kitchen Joy would procrastinate till the end even and brought her warm cumin water set by purchasing Christmas gifts and would have the stove. Breathing with the whistles his excuse ready. ringing in her chest, she wiped the sweat off -How can you gate-crash into his home? his face and sympathetically enquired: -But he has no qualms piling onto us. -You must be tired, right? Sally would retort He smiled and quipped, -I am his elder brother and he comes -Me tired? This fatty bamboo! because I invite him. Joy vividly remembers his mother laughing By then his decibel level would rise and with the bird chirp in her breath. That was Sally’s irritation would find fresh fuel and the first time he saw her laugh since soar. Appachen’s passing. Next time when Joy offered to go shopping on his own he was -When was the last time we went on mildly surprised at the fact that Amma didn’t vacation? I would like to have a break too! object. On his way back he could see He has stupid excuses and you take it lying Amma anxiously waiting for him at the tip of down – for your cunning baby brother. their compound. She had a grand smile on Joy would have no real answer to offer, so her face as soon as she spotted Joy on the he would go into the terrain worse than road. That moment Joy gladly accepted the anger – silence.Amma cannot travel long responsibility of making Amma happy as his distance; with strict diet restrictions and age duty. Eight year old Jimmy was engrossed she requires homemade food and cannot in running after his cycle tire,kept in motion even imagine staying in a high rise hotel with a guava stick. room. For the past several years they haven’t been going out as a family at all. Jimmy Joy realized that Amma will never be able to and Usha often go on trips with their children. laugh like that. Once again he thought about her flexible thumb which had -Joy is too stingy, that’s why they stay at distended like a potato. home all the time! If they decided to introduce a tube into the He would make such smarty remarks too. trachea through the throat he could imagine Joy understands the situation very well, but her - lying in a hospital bed waiting for Jimmy is not a child to make him ‘behave’. death, day by day her face getting darker He has only Sally to share the burden. with melancholy. Days, months, years…. -Is Amma a burden! indefinitely? Joy felt awful on that thought. He was The other option was to pull her away from only twelve when Appachen passed away. the ventilator. The doctor had said that there

64 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY were many cases where the patient came as the warm water cascaded over him. back to life but considering Amma’s age and -What am I to do? Show me a way, Amma. condition that would be a miracle. Give me a third choice. Together we have -Either way the decision is yours. untangled so many difficult knots. Help me Joy got to decide ! He has the freedom to out, Amma. give Amma death sentence, by asphyxiation The artificial rain stroked his back gently like or let them dent her throat and set her aside a thumb which can bend like a bow. Joy’s to wait for death! The hospital officials mind and body stood still as time slowly needed an answer within twenty-four hours. ticked away in the shower bath. As always, Jimmy dodged from sharing the After toweling and drying up he came out of guilt. the bathroom and saw Sally on the sofa with -”You guys are older and smarter. Whatever the cordless phone. With teary eyes she you decide is acceptable to me; said; and we need it within twenty-four hours, was -Just got the call from hospital. Amma…. the ultimatum given to him today.” Amma had decided for him. The third choice! ■ As soon as Joy got home from the hospital So her son is left with a guilt - free life. he stepped into the shower. He felt like Translated from Malayalam by Jayant Kamicheril crying. He started complaining to his mother

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 65 Short Story Inkayi Sreelatha

nkayi stood on one leg, waving the eye gnats away from I his blurred eyes. He had long been standing there like this Ion one leg. Feather-light body and thin arms supported by a walking stick, he had been standing like this, from time immemorial, it seems. In front of him the rusted iron gates, sky-high, of the prison remained closed. “Inkayi, why do you suffer like this? Why can’t you sit down?” One of the passers-by may ask. Hearing this Inkayi will bring down his folded leg, fold up the other leg and continue his one leg posture. Like this , one leg after the other! Days....months....years have passed ..... “Inkayi, you are mad.” People will say. “Let it be... You people are very influential. You cannot understand Inkayi’s grief. Inkayi’s son, the only one human being Inkayi has on earth , the only one son to call me ‘appa’ is confined somewhere inside these closed doors behind the iron bars. The wind carries his smell. The salty taste of his tears is murmuring secretly in my ears...Inkayi, you be here itself....Do not go...your son will come right now... I am standing here waiting for his arrival. How can you call me a mad man? One day he will come out, opening these closed gates. Inkayi is sure of that. If I am not here when he comes, won’t all my efforts till this moment be useless? I want to see him at least once....before death closes my eyes forever.” Once upon a time. . .a time before Inkayi’s great great grand fathers, there lived the gods.When Inkayi was a small boy he

66 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY used to search the sky for gods. As he usually went somewhere in the town buses. grew up Inkayi became doubtful. Is nobody Both the prisoners and the policemen would there ? be joking and laughing as if they were Inkayi’s appa had told him that gods never friends. died. Then, why on earth Convicts behaved as if the hand couldn’t Inkayi see at least one cuffs were golden bracelets. of them alive? Perhaps they were Unwritten stories of Seeing this laughter and jokes sleeping when I looked for them, silent endurance lay Inkayi became suspicious. Have he consoled himself. That may imprisoned within they imprisoned people who be the reason why I couldn’t see the blurred eyes have not committed any crime . . them. Hence Inkayi also did the with gray lashes. the same way in which they very same thing which his appa have kept his Jogi inside the used to do. He sung several iron bars? prayer songs to his son. In that way prayer songs were passed on from generation to “Inkayi, times have changed. Tapa won’t generation, from tongue to tongue, from the do...in order to propitiate your thamprans, time of great great grand fathers... tapa is not enough. They need something more for attaining bliss.” Inkayi knew a number of prayer songs. His appa had recited a number of prayer songs People come with comments galore. to Inkayi. In one thottam the god opened the “Inkayi, you won’t get back your son during third eye on the forehead and spit fire on your lifetime. As long as there are women of wrong doers and sinners. In another thottam flesh and blood and men who are devilish the god sat on the back of holy Garuda and ,your son will remain inside the jail.” beheaded the sinners and demons with his People said so many things like that. Inkayi chakra. If Inkayi had got such a chakra he did not understand anything. Like electric could have taught the big bosses inside this posts on the side of the road he stood there, prison a lesson. numb, giving ears to all the comments. A The prayer song which Inkayi liked more is living corpse.... the one about the goddess who performed Unwritten stories of silent endurance lay thapa standing at the centre of burning fire. It imprisoned within the blurred eyes with gray was believed that at the end of the thapa the lashes. Seasonal changes do not make any god appeared and married the goddess. difference in Inkayi. Like a coconut tree Like that goddess, Inkayi is also doing struck in lighting Inkayi continued his tapa thapa by standing on one leg. He believed on one leg. deeply that one day Jogi, his son, will Carrying multi-coloured flags people went in appear in front of him calling him appa. rows like ants. They seemed to be very Around Inkayi people swarmed like flies. angry. Throwing their hands in the air people Police jeeps packed with robbers and were shouting many slogans. Inkayi didn’t murderers went inside the prison and came understand what they were shouting. out frequently. Yet he assumed they were angry with the Jeeps which came out carried policemen gods in the skies. only. But in the jeeps which came from “Thampra,gods in the skies are sleeping. outside there would be robbers and killers. They can’t hear what you shout,” Inkayi At times one or two policemen came out with wanted to say. He was sorry that they one or two handcuffed prisoners and they couldn’t understand his words.

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 67 Inkayi asked himself. Is it so? Are the gods His newly wedded wife also accompanied of the high skies sleeping all the time that him. She was a very charming girl. There was they cannot see this poor Inkayi of the earth no other girl as beautiful as she in Inkayi’s standing on one leg in tapa? ooru and in the neighbouring oorus. Unlike Why don’t they see him performing tapa other ooru girls she took bath every day. continuously even in the blistering summer? When she returned after bathing the Are they not happy with his tapa? Won’t they fragrance of champa flower permeated the come down to bless him? air. Inkayi’s heart throbbed in agony. Inkayi didn’t foresee that it was his last sight of them. Before his eyes closed forever he wished to see his son once again. Only once. His Thereafter many springs bloomed. desire to see his son and hear him call Many times flood water flowed along river ‘appa’, was intense. Siruvani. In front of the prison there will always be a Vela festival was conducted several times at sentry standing in his out-post. He always the temple of Lord Siva at Malleeswaran keeps a very long tube in his hands. Inkayi Muti. had seen it occasionally spitting fire and Wild elephants and wild boars came from killing people. Sentries took their turn day by the inner forests of Anamooli and Sholayar day. That day the sentry was a young man. and destroyed crops several times. ‘Japan Young enough to be his own son. folks’ with flat noses came with the Bada Babus of block Panchayath. Inkayi touched the young man’s feet in prayer and pleaded his cause. Their tongues recited the manthra of extension and development. By enrolling “Who is your son?When did he come here? people from all huts of ooru as members, The man was generous enough to ask that. societies were formed. When had he come there? Inkayi asked the ‘Japan people’ they introduced themselves: question to himself. When had he arrived at the prison? “We will buy anything and everything you It had been a long time since Jogi bid good collect from forests be it tusks or honey or bye to his appa and left the ooru, the tribal tiger skin...In return we will pay you settlement. Before that he worked at the generously.” house of the Bada Babu of the Block The guide explained it to ooru people. Panchayat who had come from the city In the absence of his son, the only earning downhill. member of the family, what can Inkayi do? The Bada Babu retired from the Panchayat After thinking deeply he finally set out from and returned to his native place. He offered the ooru in search of his son and daughter- Jogi high wages, as high as one hundred in-law and went to the city downhill. rupees. Jogi was lured by the promise of one Keeping the scent of their bodies as signal hundred rupees. Without wasting time he got he reached the city where bestial human ready to go to the Babu’s place. beings cut open the bellies of their enemies “Appa, I am going.” and drank their blood in day light. Seeing Thus saying Jogi left the ooru. He had this Inkayi was scared to death. stuffed his knap-sack with the tusk of the There was only one difference between elephant which had died in the deep forests, people of the city and the tigers and lions of peackock oil and tiger’s nails. the forest. The latter did not wear clothes.

68 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Blood relations butchered each other— and decent? Take off his dress.” husbands their wives and vice versa, “But sir, we have to let him sit with us in the parents their offsprings and vice versa. same jeep.How can we Sir, with such a filthy Families committed suicide together. The air beggar?” was polluted by the smell of blood. From all “Oh, that is true. O.k., there is a way out.” foul smells the fragrance of champa flower stood apart. The MLA pulled off Inkayi’s dhothi and shirt and threw them down on the reddish This fragrance beckoned him to a multi- ground and trod on them once or twice. No storeyed building. longer white in colour, it looked like the He narrated his grief to the people whom he dress of an Aadivasi. met there. He couldn’t understand what went “Ah, now it is O.K. An aborigine must look around him after that. like an orginal aborigine , A number of people flocked not like a city bred man. around him. Their number They dumped him there Then only will he draw swelld as he had unfolded and told him to wait there sympathy from people.” his grief. They spoke among till they returned with his MLA sab explained to his themselves. son and his daughter-in- gang. “It is really very good that law. Inkayi never saw them again. He was never taken “You know, people’s this old man fell into our sympathy is our trump own hands.” M.L.A., Babu in a procession again. Nobody bought him rice card. That alone will bring told his gang. “Friends, I will victory to us.” play a game with this and and liquor. give that son of a bitch a They put a tri-coloured kick in the ass. If not, you towel around Inkayi’s neck can call me by your dog’s name.” like a garland. His group members became suspicious. They made him climb into an open jeep and About whom is our Babu talking? took him around in procession shouting slogans. Finally they reached a conclusion. He may be referring to the minister for Home Affairs. The jeep stopped at each and every junction. Inkayi also got down along with them. The leader gave instructions to his MLA sab accompanied them in another pure companions. white ambassador car. At a junction. Some bathed Inkayi with plenty of water. Inkayi was made to sit on a chair which was “Oh, this beggar is stinking like a poultry kept in the middle of the newly erected stage waste bin. He has not bathed ever since his along with the MLA sab and other leaders. birth. I cannot think of sharing the same seat Like thunder MLA sab delivered his speech. in the jeep with this dirty creature.” Inkayi was frightened. Several times he After bathing him, they dressed him in white thought of returning to his ooru. dhoti and shirt. Then the thought of Jogi came to his mind When Babu the MLA came he scolded his and also that of his daughter-in-law. That group members. thought dragged him back from the “You cattle, who told you to make this fellow temptation to return. clean and clad him white? Will he draw The Leader delivered his unobstructed sympathy from the public if he looks clean speech like thunder. The people who had

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 69 flocked in doubled his energy. forest wealth. It is said that this poor “My dearest countrymen, I am asking you. aadivasi brought elephant tusk, tiger nails They claim their party to be that of the poor and peacock oil to sell. I am asking you, this men. But what have they done to this poor man and his kinsmen live in thick forests. aadivasi? Innocent aadivasi couple who Elephants, tigers, leopards, deer and have come from the dense forests to the peacocks and the like also live there. He city! This poor aadivasi’s son and daughter- might have got an elephant tusk from the in-law...... ” body of a dead elephant. He is not a Veerappan, the bandit-king, but a very poor His speech was broken. A sob choked his aadivasi, poorest of the poor.” throat. He took a handkerchief and wiped his tears. Again the leader’s speech soared up to the skies and echoed back to people’s ears. “The newlywed young girl is now missing. It is believed that she is killed after being “Taking the moral responsibility of this raped. Ample evidence is there.This heinous incident the minister for Home Affairs and crime is done by one of the ministers and by the Chief Minister must immediately resign the son of another minister jointly. The youth from their posts.” who loved his wife dearly is accused of this The people who had assembled there crime and also of all similar crimes done in clapped loudly. One from their group climbed this country in the past years and is confined on to the stage and put a garland of behind bars. The Chief Minister had assured currency notes around the neck of the leader. us many times that those who sexually Poor Inkayi. He did not understand a bit of harassed ladies would be whipped and the drama which was going on around him. confined to prison. Why is he silent now? Like an untimely visitor from an alien planet “Excuse me, I am a partner in this United he remained seated on the chair. Since he Front of ruling parties. But I am more didn’t know how to sit on a chair he became committed to you who have trusted me and restless. He got up but sat down and got up cast your votes in favour of me and sent me again at the very next moment. He looked at to the Legislative Assembly than to the ruling the faces of others with fear. party front. Wrong doers are wrong doers. I He could not understand what was being am not willing to hide their crimes just discussed by them. At intervals he could because of the fact that they are my own hear ‘aadivasi’ ‘rape’ ‘murder’ etc. Frequently party members. I am requesting the the names of his son and his daughter-in- honorable Chief Minister.. . law were muttered in a low voice. (His voice roared up to the skies and echoed MLA sab took Inkayi to another office. Like back into the ears of people) the Advocate or vakil thampra of his own “. . .to demand the resignation of the ooru he saw there dozens of vakil thampras. minister for Home Affairs taking the moral They took his right hand thumb and affixed responsibility for this incident. He alone its impression in some papers. MLA sab told should be blamed for the destruction of the main vakkil thampran. “This is a prestige justice and peace.” issue for me. I will rest only after this issue is The speech came to a temporary halt. He resolved. If a Habeas Corpus is filed nobody took three or four sips from the green can hide Jogi anymore.” coconut which his people had brought for Inkayi’s grief was written down in white paper him. and the letters spread like black ants. His ‘This poor man is accused of plundering thumb was pressed again and again in the

70 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY ink-pad. MLA Babu asked him to bow down see how many new stars arise in the political in front of some VIPs. When he was asked to skies.” bend his head, he bent even his spine in Inkayi didn’t fully comprehend what she front of them. He could identify many of said. And also why they laughed pointing at them. The majority of them used to come to him. He didn’t know what was there in him Agali at the time of elections. All ooru people to be laughed at. would be supplied with one hundred rupee notes, country liquor and new clothes. One A girl and some boys came with a box to single day all aadivasis like obedient sheep take photo, carrying a three-legged stool. would flock behind the ooru moopan. They asked inkayi several questions. They Together they would go to the school at the talked without break in a language which top of the hill, the school where no child Inkayi didn’t understand at all. studied. Then they told him in his language that men There Babus from the city mark their left and women of all houses will hear everything hand thumb with ink and put impression uttered through the mouth of their with the right hand thumb in their books and megaphone. They will listen to Inkay’s woes. give them pictured papers to cast their votes. They can see Inkayi’s sufferings through the photo box.May be Jogi and his wife are “I agree. I will never ignore the request of hidden from him by some black magic. MLA Chandran.” Said a Bada Babu with a laugh. He resembled a very fat Pig. When the programme is relayed the matter Somebody told Inkayi that he was the will be brought to the notice of everybody. Minister or Manthri Thampran. The Manthri Jogi and his wife can no longer be kept in Thampran consoled him. custody. At the very moment Jogi and his wife will be released. Thus Inkayi can happily “Don’t worry, every thing will be O.K. Within go to his ooru with his son and daughter-in twenty four hours you can see your son and law. They encouraged Inkayi. He answered his wife alive. I will bring them out.” all their queries. “Home Minister Gaganesan’s words are In those days Inkayi’s menu was very true....what he says he does.You can believe pompous. He drank to the full. Multi his words.” MLA sab also consoled Inkayi coloured liquor in beautiful bottles was and led him to a very large office. There he served to him. They also promised to show saw many men and women dressed in him his son and daughter-in law soon. sweet smelling beautiful coloured clothes. Thereafter he didn’t see the MLA sab for a Sitting behind the tables they were scribbling few months. Inkayi heard his kinsmen in books and papers. Meanwhile they were saying: speaking loudly and laughing too. “Our leader is busy with oath taking and One lady who had a very thick gold chain assuming charge. After he takes charge, around her neck told another man: within twenty four hours Jogi will be brought “Xavier, to be an aadivasi is better these before you. days. These folks possess star value. If an One day he saw the MLA. He was in an aadivasi caught a cold, that becomes a two ambassador car. A number of cars including three column news in the newspaper. If an two police jeeps accompanied him. Alarm aadivasi dies of hunger there are chances for was ringing loudly. MLA babu had already even the ministry to collapse. Look at this forgotten him and his issue. Thereafter on man. His son and daughter-in-law are another day they took Inkayi to a vacant missing. That is the issue. Let us wait and place. They dumped him there and told him

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 71 to wait there till they returned with his son of the man who had caused many a and his daughter-in-law. Inkayi never saw commotion in the socio - political spheres. them again. He was never taken in a “Give me back my son, thamprraa” Inkayi procession again. Nobody bought him rice cried heart - rendingly. The prison which and liquor. All had forgotten Inkayi carried his son in its womb stood with absolutely. Suddenly a wind with the smell of insatiable hunger. Inkayi knew nothing. What Jogi’s tears encircled Inkayi. His tongue had happened to his daughter-in-law who tasted the sourness of Jogi’s blood. He was as strong as the idol of malamkurathi, heard the waves of a distant cry. As if the tribal goddess? Did the lords shut him in drowsy, Inkayi walked forward. prison to snatch the tiger’s nail and tusk? The wind which carried the smell of tears had Where can he search for his son and his brought Inkayi here. From then onwards it daughter-in-law? was a second birth as a human tree among the many types of trees growing in the jail Inkayi knows nothing... nothing.. courtyard. A tree which neither knew hunger Translated from Malayalam by Prof. K. Usha nor thirst, a dumb and deaf fellow. ■ Sometimes the channel people came competing with each other to relay live show

72 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY The White Dog Kuzhoor Wilson

n the village, I There is a one-legged dog Which runs after white cars. Like the devil confronted with the Cross And, defeated, It withdraws whimpering and moaning. Sometimes, I see him when I return late at night, He has, times galore, without actually saying it, Said that he is leaving alone my car which is not white. Long before he became a white one-legged dog, He was a young white doggie. A white piece of cotton wool, A tiny dandelion That ran, jumped and flew with abandon, At his favourite turning. The decree That vehicles may not crash into dandelions Was not enforced in our place. On an evening A white car Had struck him down And sped away without stopping. Every time a white car Comes through that turning, He runs after it on his single leg

MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY 73 Sometimes he touches it, Then whining and whimpering, Retreats and lies down, eyes closed. Forgive me For giving a wrong simile in the beginning. It is not like the devil Confronted with the Cross.. Towards that white car which didn’t stop, Which reduced A dog’s life To one leg, The white dog, the old tiny dandelion Has some other feelings Translated from Malayalam by Anitha Varma

74 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY Malayalam Literary Survey wishes to form a panel of translators who can ably translate from Malayalam to English.Interested persons may apply, sending an English translation of any Malayalam poem, fiction or non-fiction, not exceeding 1000 words, along with the original in Malayalam. The entries will be screened by a committee who will select the panel.

Send to : Editor, Malayalam Literary Survey, Panel of Kerala Sahitya Akademi Thrissur - 680 020 Translators e-mail : [email protected]

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Dr. K. Sachidanadan Nirmala 7c, Neethi Apartments, 107, Lowinger Avenue, 84 Ist P Extn, Ancaster, Ontario New Delhi-110092. L9K 2P9, Canada Dr. Harippad Vamanan Namboothiri Dr. Dhanya Menon Nalanda, Vyrasseri Mana, Vettuveni, Sruthy, Adiyat Lane, Harippad - 690 514. Poothole,Thrissur- 680004 Kureepuzha Sreekumar V.C. Harris Karingannor, Kollam Director, School of Letters, Rosscot Krishnapillai M.G. University, Kottakal, MLR 130, Priyadarshini Hills, Sasthamangalam Kottayam Trivandrum - 695010 V. Smitha V.G. Thampi Sreerekha, Kavikkad P.O. Jethavanam, Thrissur West Palace Raod, Kuzhoor Wilson Thrissur - 20 Mullakkaattu Parambil, Karunakaran Kuzhoor P.O. Elempulavil, Kaippuram P.O., Thrissur - 680 734 Via - Naduvattam, Palakkad - 679 308 Sreelatha A.C. Sreehari Akash, Kolazhi P.O., Alappadambil Cheruvally Thrissur - 680 010 P.O. Eattukudukka Jayant Kamicheril Kannur 670 521 2109 Buckman Avenue, Savithiri Rajeevan Reading, PA 19610, USA 19/598-4, Mudavenmugal, Anitha Varma Poojappura, Sree Krishna Vilas Palace, Thirivananthapuram Fort Tripunithura K.V. Mohankumar Ernakulam - 682 301 Sopanam, Navami Gardens, Udayakumar Sreekariyam P.O., Professor, Dept. of English, Thiruvanathapuram-17 University of Delhi Praseetha. K. Senior Fellow, Guest Lecturer, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Centre for Comparative Literature, Teen Murti House, SSUS, Kalady New Delhi - 110011 Manoj Kuroor Gita Janaki Cheriyakuroor, Parampuzha P.O. Chandrajith, T.C. 5/471, Kottayam- 686032 Indira Nagar Road Peroorkkada, Sreekanth C. Thiruvananthapuram Karthika House Valayanchirangara P.O. Prof. K. Usha Perumbavoor, Reader, Dept. of English, Ernakulam - 683556 NSS College, Ottapalam

76 MALAYALAM LITERARY SURVEY