KOCHI: There was a girl once who wanted to seek and explore. For her, life was not something to be lived but a joyous journey where adventure smirked at the corners. As she was ushered into her husband’s home, her thoughts were on what lay in store for her and how she could give wings to whatever she aspired for.
“I was always fascinated by the story of Meera and her feelings as she stepped into her husband’s house with a heart full of love for Krishna and words that overflowed with poetic fervour. Beyond all the divinity ascribed to her, Meera was a rebellious spirit who aimed for an accomplishment that probably only knowledge of the self could give. But what awaited her in her new home was a different world where her aspirations meant sacrilege,” Sreekumari Ramachandran, who penned the biography of the 16th-century poet-saint, says.
Sreekumari’s fascination for Meera has taken her to Rajasthan, to absorb Meera’s fervour in the places associated with her, and even sang her bhajans at the place where she worshipped Krishna. “I have empathised with Meera and found her mind resonating with mine. I too was a girl in an exploratory mode, studying Economics at Maharaja’s College alongside a Visharad course with Hindi Prachara Sabha, and trained since young in dance and music with active participation in the arts fetes. But a marriage at 17 snapped that journey of mine. The new home I was taken to had a legacy spanning centuries and aristocratic ties to match, but was in no mood to acknowledge, let alone appreciate, my artistic aspirations. My husband was encouraging though,” she says.
What came as a solace to Sreekumari in that home was a 100-year-old library, a unique world of its own. “I read and read. For the next 20 years, till 1988. Fiction, facts, history, et al. Slowly, I tried my hand at writing and published my first book of short stories Nirmalyam in 1993. It was in Malayalam.”
From then, till now, Sreekumari has published umpteen short stories, fiction works, biographies, translations, and historical accounts. She also rekindled her talent in singing (she is B High graded artist now with the AIR), and even penned a treatise on the Carnatic genre. Her Malayalam and then translations from Malayalam to English and vice versa moved on to pave the way for books exclusively in English.
“The language is simpler, and more malleable to me. Hence, now I stick to just English,” she says.
Some of her books have been serialised as television shows, and some have been adapted, for which she has not even been credited, she claims.
“People pick up my stories that appear in magazines and I find them visually interpreted in a changed avatar. My husband did not want me to take up such issues, hence I have not gone to fight for any rights.”
But the publishing industry has found her a darling. The houses even now vie for her books that have an amazing range to them — from fiction to biographies to legends and lores and mythology, and now historical accounts.
“Legends and lores and history are what probably readers want now, I was told. Fiction is not much in. An English translation of a 2004 Malayalam novel of mine, Jalasamadhi, is awaiting release. But the Evergreen Legends of Kerala, a refurbished form of the Tales of Malabar, is actively finding space on the shelves,” she says.
The book is one of the three — the other two being Sakthan Thampuran: The Lion of Kochi and Ramayana for Young Readers — which is to be officially released between the end of November and the second week of December, in a hat trick of sorts and quite a feat for a writer, a housewife, and a mother of two. But she finds writing a passion, and the long hours that the activity takes enthrals her even now, at 74, and with an array of awards and recognitions to her credit.
The indulgence with words has grown with her over the years, resulting in a rich spread of themes — from stories of women in their traditional settings to the way society works within frameworks, to the dynamics of relationships that transcended traditional boundaries. Her translations too bear this variety.
“But a huge shift happened when I took up the work of translating M P Veerendrakumar’s Haimavathabhoovil from Malayalam to English. It changed me, my outlook, as I traversed the serene mountain tops through the words of the writer. It brought me closer to this land, its profoundness. From then, my work has been to search in the unseen corners of our culture and showcase that for the generations to come. It is the need of the hour, I feel, as people of today seem delinked from the depth of their past,” she observes.
For this aim, her work too underwent a huge transformation. “I was already in an observatory mode till then. But now, what I wanted to do sought research of several facets of life. My library came in handy, and so did my travels. Even before, when the kids were younger, we, as a family, used to pack lunches in the good old five-decked tiffin carrier and speed off to places less seen and travelled to. But now, the sojourns had an intriguing, intense purpose, to feel the poetry of the place over the centuries it existed bearing stories that gave the land its identity and character,” she says.
Such a study went behind her writing the biography of Sakthan Thampuran, the erstwhile ruler of Kochi. Her research into Sakthan Thampuran took her to a house near Kalady where he was reportedly born. “It was a sad scene, a house with such history lingering in its insides yet badly maintained. Read along with the way he is seen in the annals — as a ruthless ruler —, I felt he has not been given his due. As I researched further, I found his image transforming from a tough taskmaster to a man with empathy and a progressive administrator, responsible for the face of Kochi as we see now.”
The book she penned after such research is one of the three that is hitting the shelves in December. “I take my friends who visit me from across the country and abroad to such places. And they exhibit such keenness in the lores of the land and the traditions that I am more and more encouraged to present it all before people in the language they can understand.
Several students have come to me expressing delight at the translation of Aithihyamala, originally written by Kottarathil Sankunni, which throws light into the legends that marked Kerala. When translated into simple English, its reach was wider, with new-age children getting to know a Kerala that is hard to find now. That I could be part of such ventures, which are bridging cultures and times, is something that deeply satisfies me,” she says.
In keeping with her aim and her interest, Sreekumari is in the works of more such projects. “I want to be a conduit between the glorious past of Kerala and the generations to come,” she says. Her life is also proof in ways more than one that talent and a keen spirit can never be hidden or tucked away into oblivion. “What is natural, will sure find its way out. We just have to be conduits,” she muses.