The sun mellowed on the pages of Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology (1829-1947), edited by Eunice de Souza. I leaned against the wall of the State Central Library, Thiruvananthapuram, and ran my fingers down the ‘Contents’ page. Among poets from several states, including Gujarat, West Bengal and Karnataka, I could not spot the name of any bard from Kerala. This piqued my curiosity.
No one from my state wrote English poetry before 1947. Did not any Malayali share the same vein of nationalism and romanticism, as their contemporaries in the other parts of the country?
My preliminary enquiry yielded nothing but disappointment. My immediate poet-friends could not recollect any known English poet from Kerala before Kamala Das. Then, former editor at Sahitya Akademi, A J Thomas, threw me the first bait — the name of a poet from the 1930s, Manjeri S Isvaran.
Manjeri S Isvaran
Trained in English literature from various colleges in Kerala, I felt ashamed that I had never heard of him during my student days. My probe led me to a study on Isvaran’s stories by N Gopalakrishnan Nair, former Principal of NSS College, Pandalam. I found out that he was a great admirer of Isvaran’s stories and poems.
“I met Isvaran’s wife, Annapoorna Isvaran, in New Delhi,” says Gopalakrishnan. “From her, I got enough material for my research thesis on his short stories. During those days, before email and WhatsApp, it was difficult to get primary research material otherwise.”
Gopalakrishnan has treasured worn-out copies of Isvaran’s poetry collections in his personal library. He wishes that someone trustworthy would edit the collections, and bring out an anthology of Isvaran’s poems.
Isvaran was born in Tanjore, Tamil Nadu, in 1910. But, genealogically, he can be traced to Manjeri, Kerala. He completed his BA from Madras University, and was later appointed as the secretary and principal administrative officer of the National Book Trust in New Delhi. He resigned from the post two years before passing away in 1966.
Isvaran knew English, Malayalam, Tamil and Sanskrit. He, however, always wrote in English, as it came more naturally to him. He published 10 collections of poetry, including Saffron and Gold and Other Poems (1932), Altar of Flowers (1934), Brief Orisons (1942), The Fourth Avatar (1946), Oblivion (1954), The Neem is a Lady and Other Poems (1957), and Sinning Heaven and Other Poems (1984).
His poems glide from religious overtones and romantic sensibilities of his very early writings to overtly political and social themes in the later period. Many of those critiqued the caste system, the plight of Brahmin widows, and feudalism.
Isvaran’s poems reveal that he believed poets should not get contained in the ivory tower. In The Poet and his Public, he writes: “Of what use is a poem that is wrought like a lock/and its key/ cast into the middle of the sea?”
The imagery, and the flow and tempo of the lines, match the mood of his poems. In The Wait, for instance, he sketches domestic images that suggest the longing of a beloved.
“I sit by the hour, and mope and moon and mooch about,/till everything I see doubles, trebles/ and multiplies beyond number… Your comb, do you remember dear,/ With four of its teeth on its thicker half missing…Your razor lies impatient in its silver-case, Active every morn it bemoans its idle fate; (the unused sword in its scabbard it rusts) - your watch has stopped; I would my heart it stoppeth too;/ his order neat, this museum of your things/ so close to you, so much a part of you,/ clamour for your touch, cry for disarray.”
His Who cares for a Child’s Grief is another example of how an ordinary sight can convey extraordinary thoughts to a poetic soul. A child builds a sand castle and decorates it with sea shells. “Greater than all the works of skill profound,/was this,/a child’s fancy had erected”....
But then, a grown-up carelessly kicks it down, unmoved by the child’s ‘heartbroken cry’. The setting of the seashore and the image of darkness looming in as the adult, intruding on the child’s space, metaphorically speaks volumes about the child-to-adult transition of humans.
A couple of weeks after exploring Isvaran’s poems, I visited the Ayyappa Paniker Foundation in Thiruvananthapuram.
I found the volumes of Kerala Writers in English, edited by Ayyappa Paniker and published by Macmillan in 1983. Almost all the writers in the anthology wrote mostly fiction or non-fiction, except for Isvaran and Kamala Das, who had penned down many poems.
That would have been the end of it. But a few days later I stumbled upon Living Poetry: English Poetry from Kerala (Seven Contemporary Poets) edited by Gopikrishnan Kottoor, with a foreword by poet
K Satchidanandan.
The anthology included poems by Kamala Das, Anna Sujatha Mathai, Meena Alexander, C P Surendran, Jeet Thayil, Vijay Nambisan and Gopi Kottoor. I wondered if there would be a predecessor to the eminent names here.
An email from Gopi confirmed that there was hope. He introduced me to Govinda Krishna Chettur’s poems. G K Chettur was a Kerala poet who wrote in English at the beginning of the 20th century.
G K Chettur
A few of his poems are available online, and his name is one of the 15 bards in Indian English Poetry Before Independence (A Study of Fifteen Indo-English Poets before 1947) edited by Krishna Kant Singh.
While tracing his biography, I came across a poem by his brother Sankara Krishna Chettur, too. To my delight, I found all three together in one book. A few poems of G K Chettur, S K Chettur and Isvaran are featured in one of the often-referred to anthology of pioneers in Indian English poetry titled The Golden Treasure of Indo-Anglian Poetry 1828-1965 edited by Vinayak Krishna Gokak, published by Sahitya Akademi.
G K Chettur was born on 24 April, 1898, at Mankara in Kerala. He completed BA from Madras Christian College and MA from Oxford. After returning to India, he entered the Indian Educational Service in 1922 as the principal of the Government College, Mangalore.
He married Subhadra, daughter of Appu Nedungadi, who had penned Kundalatha and was the chief editor of Kerala Pathrika. At Oxford, G K Chettur was associated with poets, including W B Yeats, Arthur Symons and John Masefield.
He had also met Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu and led the Oxford Majlis. He published his first collection of poems in 1921, which was dedicated to Yeats. His poetry collections include Sounds and Images (1921), Gumatarya and Other Sonnets For All Moods (1932), The Temple Tank and other Poems (1932), The Triumph of Love (1932), and The Shadow of God (1934).
G K Chettur’s themes centred on nature, beauty, love, and God. His love for nature and its philosophy are vivid in verses like this one in Sounds and Images: “Who gives a thought to them/ Beside the bold new blooms,/The flowers of yesterday?/ Bright as the rainbow’s gold/ They shone, but Yesterday”
His poems capture the pain and bliss of love. Sample these lines from The Triumph of Love: “We that have passioned sweetly for this thing/ Shall know no fear, knowing proud Death that seems/ So fierce, shall pale before the undying fire/ Of love made holy by our suffering.”
His grand-nephew, Anand Chettur, a businessman based in Bengaluru, helps me connect with the family. A relative named Parvathy Chettur says that even when G K was on treatment for cancer, he continued writing. “He spent many days at Coonoor, where his brother, Colonel R K Chettur, was an Army surgeon. Even then, G K never stopped writing,” she says.
“He was cent per cent Indian at heart”. Notably, in 2020, as an honour to his service of 14 years, Government College, Mangalore, brought out a collection of his poems titled A Journey: The selected writings of Govinda Krishna Chettur: Excerpts from Government College Miscellany, edited by N K Rajalakshmi. Its foreword was written by writer and critic Prof C N Ramachandran.
S K Chettur
The next bard, S K Chettur, was born in 1905. He joined the Indian Civil Service in 1939, and later served as chief secretary of Madras. A collection of his poems penned before and after Independence was published in 1967, titled Golden Stairs and Other Poems. He passed away in 1972.
His niece, Dr Lakshmi Chettur, says: “My uncle was outspoken. He was compassionate… he loved nature and animals. After work, he would go for a short walk, sit on the sands of Marina Beach and watch the sea for a long time. He used to say that the waves represented the universe and eternity. He liked to swim.
“He loved to watch kites circle the sky. Some days after work, he would rush upstairs and sit there writing. He would shoo away anyone who stepped into the room while he was writing. He used to write in Shankar’s Weekly and The Mail.”
One of S K Chettur’s poems recorded in Gokak’s The Golden Treasury is titled Red Lotus. It ends with a call for peace and non-violence: “Red Lotus in the pool, /Standing inviolate, / O lay thy petals cool/Upon the spears of hate, /And let thy travail from the mud/ Repeal the lust of men for blood.”
I am still thrilled over getting to meet these three poets posthumously, through their writings. Poetry flowed in their veins, and made them visionaries, critics and seekers of justice and peace. I hope posterity finds inspiration from such souls. Meanwhile, my search for legends continues.
The writer is a poet, translator and asst professor of English at BCM College, Kottayam.