Recently, a friend who does not know much Malayalam wrote to me that she had read only a few books in the language, but she had read and enjoyed the stories of Vaikom Muhammad Basheer. One forgets what an excellent storyteller Basheer was in all the brouhaha about his eccentricities and the peculiarities of his writing. I’m sure she meant the stories set in the village rather than the much studied and praised ones like Balyakalasakhi, Pathummayude Adu, Mathilukal, Sabdangal and others of their ilk.
Perhaps I am prejudiced because I have loved the characters from the first reading (the love has not waned with subsequent and repeated readings) of Anavariym Ponkurisum, Muccheettukalikkarante Makal, and Sthalathe Pradhana Divyan. That innocent world of little thefts, harmless competitions, small jealousies and love affairs that come to fruition and those that do not, doesn’t ever pall. The world of Anavaari Raman Nair, Ponkurisu Thoma (Martin Luther has nothing on Thoma who questions the church’s need for a golden cross when Jesus Christ died on a wooden one), Ottakkannan Pokkar who is defeated by his own daughter Sainaba (the heartfelt cry of the betrayed father is shouldn’t all girls be drowned at birth?), Ettukali Mammunhu and the supporting cast of Namboorissan and the hapless policemen against whom the whole village unites is such an idyllic one. How can anyone ever forget the boiled egg that somehow gets into the puttu that is served to Sainaba’s lover Mandan Muthapa? One goes back to this world for sustenance when the real world is frightening. The fifth of this month was the 15th death anniversary of Basheer.
Another anniversary, this time that of birth, is celebrated by a long overdue book. The birth anniversary is that of N N Kakkad (July 14) and the book, Kakkad Kaviyum Kavitayum by Dr N M Namboodiri. Tantravidya, in Kerala, is not magic as in the modern use of the word tantric. The tantri is the person who has the extraordinary power to breathe life into stone idols — one who can make dead stone take life as a god. This book analyses the oeuvre of the poet in terms of what he had imbibed from his background as a member of a family of tantris, what he had studied outside that world, and the experiences that he had as a thinking man in the modern world. The book was written some time ago and has been published recently by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi. It requires close reading, but rewards the effort. However, this book studies the range of poems from a particular point of view. Other views and other analyses are required if Kakkad’s poetry is to be studied with the seriousness it demands.
Two unexpected scenarists have been introduced to the reading public in the past couple of weeks. The fact that Lalitambika Antarjanam wrote the screenplay for the Malayalam movie Sakuntalam would have been news to most of us. And Bhashaposhini has an incomplete screenplay by Madhavikutty. I wonder what other surprises she has left in store for the reading public!
An interesting, if nostalgic, article about education — not of the elite but of the marginalised, ‘the children’, to quote late Prof M N
Vijayan, ‘who do not appear in colour pictures’, — was Atmavidyalayam by Maina Umaiban about the parallel college in her village. The fact that it stirred nostalgia in a lot of people was evident from the letters to the editor that came out in the following issues of Mathrubhumi Weekly. Her description of the building was so evocative that one lingered over it — “a wall built to half its height with red laterite stone, the other half covered by rattan mats painted with black oil, a floor of mud, a long building covered with sheets, stiff mats dividing it into four class rooms and an office room.” These institutions, which gloried in names like Nalanda and Oxford and Visva-Bharati provided education to those who could not aspire to regular colleges for reasons of distance, finance or academic excellence and a livelihood to the countless educated unemployed of those times. These too belong in the list of endangered species.