Thumbing through the pages of ‘Prayapoorthi Akathavarkku Mathram’, one might feel as if reading a notebook, with words and symbols scribbled on it. But this is a poetry collection, and the author Manuj Brahmapaad, on imparting a rare visual language to his work, opted for this attractively unusual layout.
“My book is for people who still remain a child in their minds. For them, I am conveying the happiness in my mind,” says the author, who is an artist. The book contains a set of poems written by him 10 years ago.
If one moves their eyes to the top left of the page, there lies another interesting fact. Instead of the page number, you will see the Malayalam alphabets beginning with ‘Aa’, the first letter in the Malayalam alphabet, to ‘Ra’, the last.
“Fortunately, the alphabets were enough to count the pages. If it had crossed the limit, I would have tried the ‘koottaksharam’s’ in Malayalam,” Manuj beams.
Now, let’s go to the content and move to page number ‘Da’. It calls for a walk down the memory lane, to the days when we played ‘connecting the dots’ at leisure time.
Manuj has portrayed in the book three such games and the score earned by the players including the game played between him and his four-year-old niece Abani. The book also keeps many such surprises in the pages.
The book is to be released by sculptor Kanayi Kunhiraman at Fourth Estate Hall at Press Club on Monday at 5 pm. Following which, there would be a ghazal by T Padmakumar and a veena concert by Soundar Raj.