THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A voice grieving the ways of the world- this is what most of the poems in the books ‘Nilapakshi’ and ‘Ripples of Love’ introduce to us. Through these debut works, B K Sudha Nedunganoor, an English Teacher at Venjaramood Government Higher Secondary School, Thiruvananthapuram, has ventured out into the world of literature.
The tone underlying most of the works is melancholy- with the narrator using her poems as a means to escape into her world of perfect peace and bliss. ‘Nilapakshi’ starts with a poem ‘Ashantameeyatra’, where the author talks about the weary journey that is life.
‘Engiluminnum nilakkaata nenjile
tudiyumaay tudarunnashantameeyatra
koode chalikunna padangal tan novu-
menti njaninnum tudarunnuyatra’
The poet sees the reflection of her own dejected self in the faces of every weary passerby burdened with their own woes and difficulties. Though the narrator wishes to walk alongside them and share their sorrows, she later realises with despair that she herself has been tied up with ‘social ropes’, being forced to tread narrow pathways, having to walk through the weary journey with bleeding feet till the very end. She laments on how relationships now have been woven around profit and wishes to go back to her carefree childhood days in the poem ‘Oosharabhoovil’. Through ‘Iniyum nee paduka’ and most of her other works, the poet grieves the horrors of the woman tied down to duties of an obedient daughter, wife and mother, restricted from expressing herself in any other way. She laments how the society has become a difficult place for women. In ‘An Advertisement’ the narrator speaks about the irony of youngsters running behind shrewd political agendas, violence and terrorism.
Yet, along with the melancholic tone, lies an essence of longing for life. The author speaks of her dilemma in ‘Moham’. While she knows that the journey will come to a halt some day, she hopes that the journey never ends. In ‘An Intoxicant’, the narrator compares life to an intoxicant, to which she is addicted. She wishes to get more of it and sips on to it slowly so that the experience may never end.
While the poet praises the beauty of the lotus in a poem, she narrates the grief of River Ganga who wishes to come back after leaving her abode in Lord Shiva’s matted locks of hair to flow freely in the world unknown. While she wishes to revive her nostalgic memories from her childhood through her writings, her love and devotion for Lord Krishna is depicted in some of her poems.
Her collection of works deal with a variety of topics. However, reigning supreme among them is nostalgia with a tinge of melancholy. The narrator expresses best through her poems in the vernacular language.
The collection includes poems written by the author over the span of over two decades. While ‘Nilapakshi’ is a collection of Malayalam poems, her other book ‘Ripples of Love’ contains English works, most of them translated from the former.
Sudha’s ‘Nilapakshi’ has been published by Evergreen books while ‘Ripples of love’ is published by Partridge Publishing House.