How Nature Speaks to Us: A Little Kitten's Encounters With Life and Death

THEY SAY cats have nine lives. Maybe. The other day, as I watched a little kitten’s encounters with life and death, I realized there is something in this old saying.

It was a new-born, just a few weeks old, still suckling on its mother who had given birth to five little ones this time. The mother is called Surumi, may be because she has beautiful eyes and she has been a favoured one with kids at home.

I think Surumi invited herself to our house the same way her ancient ancestor had walked into the abode of a tribal family in Mesopotamia, who had settled down to a life of agriculture some 12,000 years ago. Ever since, cats had been domesticated and women and children had a special relationship with them.

So Surumi was part of our household ever since she was a tiny kitten, and when she gave birth for the first time a few months ago, she had a poodle of five. They were living in the small work area near the kitchen and a few weeks later the little ones started playing around in the yard. But soon she lost all the kids for some reason or the other, and one of them got run over by my office car one day as I watched helplessly.

The driver had parked the car in the courtyard and nobody noticed the little kitten which found a nice place to play beneath the vehicle, and as I was coming out of the house, I saw the driver move the car a bit forward and then, a terrible cry erupted and in a moment I saw the blood-splattered body like a soiled piece of cotton behind the wheel.

I was shaken as I witnessed death taking place just in front of me. It was Surumi's last surviving offspring in her first delivery.

So this time, as she got pregnant again, I was keen she had better luck as a mother. She gave birth to five again, and one of them simply disappeared a few days later. Probably the stray dogs on the prowl might have made an excellent meal of her. These days the street-dogs have developed a taste for blood as they feed on slaughterhouse waste, dumped everywhere.

She was living happily with her remaining little ones and, everyday as I watered plants in the afternoon, I watched with amusement their play in the garden, often running and fighting and then training themselves in climbing up a tree or trying to catch a fly or a lizard. Surumi was not only a good mother, but a vigilant guide and a watchful teacher.

Day before yesterday, as I was sleeping I heard a soft mewing after midnight in my bedroom and I realized one of the kitten had got trapped in the room. But it was afraid of me so much that as I tried to coax it out, it withdrew deeper into the recesses of the room. Early in the morning, she got wind of her mother and ran out of the room, like an arrow released from the bow.

I remember it was the one with a long black line on the back of her white fluffy body. It was a weakling, often preferring to keep herself close to mother, while her brothers and sisters played around.

My wife was away and I had to get some breakfast ready before the children went to college and so I hurried to the kitchen. As I was working, I heard the same soft and weak mewing again, this time more terrified and pathetic. I looked around, but there was none to be seen. The mother and kids were there, but this time one of them was missing: the black-spotted one again.

It was surprising. The terrified mewing was heard continuously, but she was not to be seen. I searched all around and as I looked into the well in our little compound, I saw her precariously perched on the small round ring just above water.

So she had managed to fall herself into the well. It was unbelievable. The well has a protective iron ring around it with small holes and above it my wife had kept a wire-mesh net to stop leaves falling into the water. It was simply beyond me how she had got over all these obstacles to fall into the well.

But I had a rescue mission on hand. There was no way to climb down the rings and try to rescue her for two reasons. First, I could not go down easily because it is beyond my physical powers and secondly even if I went down how could I get hold of her? She was so terrified and surely she would struggle and might even jump, and that would mean both of us ending up in the water.

It was a tough to decide what to do. Then my friend Devadas, a historian who incidentally has written about Poochakkanam, the cat tax that Arakkal royal family in north Kerala had imposed on the beaches to protect the cats, rang up. He suggested sending a bucket down and trying to coax her to jump into it. I had requested Sujith, another friend, to come and help me in the rescue mission and we both got the bucket ready and tried our luck.

The bucket went very close to her and of course she knew it was a rescue mission. She touched it with her paw and as it moved a bit, she withdrew again in fear. It happened a few times.

Then I thought we should keep the bucket there and allow her to take her on own time. Let her decide whether she must choose life or death. And summon the courage to act. So we tied the rope on the iron grill and waited...

A few minutes later, she decided to take a chance and jumped into the bucket. She landed safely at the bottom of the bucket and then she lay there like a piece of cloth, wet and shivering...

Now as I write this, I can see her playing in the garden, happy and without a trace of the terrified look I had seen then. But what keeps me wondering is how she got my message. How did she guess the bucket that came to her was the proverbial ship in the deluge, that hand of God coming to lift her to safety and deliverance? Is there a universal language that helps all beings to be in communication with each other? I keep wondering about the mystery of mother nature as I see her there.

Narayaneeyam and the Lord of Guruvayur

THE FIFTEENTH century Manipravalam poem, Kokasandesam, is one of the earliest texts that refer to the temple of ‘Kuruvayur’ which later became one of the foremost pilgrim centres in Malabar region. It was the reign of Zamorins, who came to power in 12th century with the port city of Kozhikode as their capital, and Guruvayur was on the outer limits of his kingdom and was a strategic location where his forces often used as a transit point during their raids to the southern kingdoms.

The temple and its deity, Krishna, had become quite famous by the end 15th century and early 16th century. Bhakti poet Poonthanam and scholar-poet Melputhur Bhattathirippad were closely associated with the temple and some of the historical information we have on the early days of Guruvayur come from their writings. Poonthanam’s Jnanappana, one of the early Malayalam texts along with Cherusseri Namboodiri’s Krishnagatha and Ezhuthacchan's Adyatma Ramayanam, give us an insight into the development of the bhakti cult in deep-south which all over India had, by then, been spreading a renaissance culture with focus on the language of the common people, unlike the more Brahmanical Sanskrit which held sway in the classical ages. One of the interesting aspects about all three poets is that they belonged to the northern part of Kerala, Cherusseri hailing from a region under the Kottayam Rajah while Poonthanam and Ezhuthacchan lived in the Zamorin kingdom.

One of the specific mentions of the age and time is seen in Narayaneeyam, the great Sanskrit kavya by Melputhur, who ends his poem with a note on ayurarogyasoukhyam, a reference to a Kalidina number which translates into a date in late 16th century according to the Kollam Era that was popular in this region. Since there are references that both poets were contemporaries, we infer that Poonthanam and Melputhur lived in the kingdom of Zamorin in 16th century.

Narayaneeyam is a text that is more pedantic and scholarly, and according to legends the lord of Guruvayur himself had commented he preferred the bhakti of the poor Malayali Brahmin to the vibhakti of the Sanskrit scholar-poet. Surprisingly, we see that Melputhur always held sway in the temple town despite the deep bhakti that we encounter in Poonthanam.

There have been a few attempts to translate Narayaneeyam into Malayalam, one of the well known works being that of C V Vasudeva Bhattathiri. Recently I came across a new translation done in Dravidian metres, Neythiri, executed by Balendu. This is a commendable effort for a variety of reasons, first and foremost being the difficulty of rendering a popular text into our language without losing its musical and poetic elements. As I went through the text I found it was a beautiful rendering of Narayaneeyam in Malaylam and it deserves a better attention from Malayali reading public.

I had a talk with the poet, who hails from Elanhi in Ernakulam and now lives in Bangalore, on his work:

On the poet’s devotion and inspiration to work:

I am a believer in God as a source of Divine justice. More than any of the famous temples I like Gramadevatha. I like the epics as the best purposeful fiction. Krishna is my favourite character. I don’t consider Rama as very significant. I like Ramayanam. I went inside Guruvayur Temple only after writing Neythiri. I have “read” in few sapthahams just to read Bhagavatham.

On Narayaneeyam:

Till 1994 my only encounter with Narayaneeyam was through P.Leela’s rendering. I don’t know Sanskrit. I tried to read Narayaneeyam, but could not make much headway till I joined a group of devotees in 1999 in chanting sessions.

The musical quality attracted me the most. I loved the literary excellence too. As a spiritual work I think Jnaanappana is better.

Idea of translating:

It struck me like a blitzkrieg (October 2002). It was as a means of understanding Narayaneeyam better. My close relatives have always liked my translations. (I know six languages).

On other translations of Narayaneeyam into Malayalam:

I have seen a few translations. I did not see any that was worth talking about. Those which were in the sankrit vrithams had a lot of handicaps. I had seen only one like Neytthiri, in Dravida vrithams, but not before I had actually started mine. Well, I believe it is a sloppy work.

How long it took to complete the work:

Almost three years, from October 2002 to 25th July 2005. Spasmodic is the proper adjective for the process. Or rather like Punartham njatuvela.

What were the problems faced:

Mainly Pattery’s slesham. It is simply un-translatable.

Even Kumaran Asan had spoken about the limitations of our language:

I disagree. He was talking about language in general. Not about Malayalam specific, when he said, innu bhaashayithapoornnam.

As a translator how did you find these limitations:

My work is not exactly a translation. It is Narayaneeyam retold.

Where do you place Narayaneeyam:

Narayaniyam’s place is very high; should be at par with Bhagavatham and Ramayanam. But, it is in Sanskrit

Do you look at your own translation as a contribution to the rich tradition of devotional literature?

Well! Is it not better that I leave it for the readers to answer that. So far many (well known writers, spiritual gurus, and well read public) appreciated the work. Only three persons have pointed out mistakes. One is my wife, the two others had extremely good intentions.(Such good work should be spotless, they said.)

On Thunchan:

Thunchan is my inspiration. I believe Malayalam as a language has not progressed from where he had left it. His works are also punaraakhyaanams, not paribhasha.

What else did you do by way of original writing:

I have published six books for children. Three are collections of stories, two novels, one kuttikkavithakal. One of my stories is a lesson in 4th standard Malayalam text.

Details on the book:
Neythiri, Sahitya Manjari Publications, Onakkur, Ernakulam. Price: Rs.180.
Contact the poet: kavibalendu@gmail.com

T Ubaid: A Mappila Poet is Remembered on his Centenary Year

THE BIRTH centenary celebrations of T Ubaid (1908-1972), Arab-Malayalam scholar and a Mappilappattu poet, begins in Kasargode today.

Ubaid, like Moyinkutty Vaidyar in south Malabar, was perhaps one of the first mappilappattu poets who came into fame in Malayalam, in an age when this kind of unique traditions were not taken seriously and were dubbed inconsequential in the mainstream social and cultural circles. But, for Ubaid, his time and his tenacious efforts to bring this unique tradition into the attention of the mainstream proved to be fruitful and ever since his death, there has been regular memorial meetings in his home town ofKasargode where he had built up a rich collection of followers and admirers.

He hailed from a village in this northern tip of Kerala where Kannada and Tulu are as influential as Malayalam. This area has a traditional Muslim population, most of them highly conservative Sunnis and they had their own unique ways of expressions. Arab-Malayalam, a kind oflinguistic pidgin with Arab script and Malayalam and Arab words, was widely in use and mappilappattus were quite popular. They were written in special meters and were sung by local bards attracting the generally illiterate masses.

It was in the Samastha Kerala Sahitya Parishad meeting, an all Kerala conference of writers, held in Kasargode in 1947 where Ubaid presented his major paper on the tradition of mappilappatus in northern Kerala. The session was attended by famous writers and scholars like N V Krishna Warrier and P Narayanan Nair, editor of Mathrubhumi, who published the work in the weekly publication of his newspaper.

Ever since, Ubaid was a live presence in almost all the conferences of the Sahitya Parishad where he entertained his audience with recitation of his own poems. In later years, mappilappattus became a major stream in our literary tradition and the adaptation of mappilappattus as film songs like kayalarikathu ...made it hugely popular.

Ubaid was not only a writer and scholar, he was dedicated teacher too who had received the state award for his contribution to his vocation.

S K Pottekkad and his travels: A reminder from the past

IN CHARLES Dickens’ Hard Times, there is a poignant scene: Her father’s beloved dog returns to Liz one day many years later, reminding her of the poor father, who was no more…

S K Pottekkad launched forth on his travels all over the world from the little world of Athiranippadam in Kozhikode, which he immortalized in his book, Oru Desathinte Katha, the story of a desam. The street a few furlongs away, which had been his regular haunt from early childhood and whenever he was in his city, the S M Street, also became famous through his novel, Oru Theruvinte Katha, the story of a street.

Today, SK’s statue overlooks the street and both the writer and his beloved street are eerily looking out of place in a city that is fast outgrowing its past, metamorphosing itself into a modern metropolis. For those who are familiar with the old Kozhikode, a city that has been the place for great writers and artists, who lazily spent their time in the environs of Mananchira, the tank that the old Zamorin built for his subjects, all these are part of a cherished memory.

Luckily a part of this history came back to me a few days ago, when SK Pottekkad’s first passport which took him to all parts of the world, suddenly came to us as a reminder of this past. It was 16 years after the death of the great writer, and almost everything that belonged to him had been consigned to oblivion, that this little dog-eared document that accompanied him everywhere suddenly popped itself up into our midst.

It was a passport issued to Sankarankutty Kunhiraman Pottekkad, Chandrakantham, Puthiyara, Kozhikode, Malabar, on March 16, 1946 by the Government of Madras, then part of the British colonial administration. It was lying in the possession of famous theatre activist and revolutionary writer Madhu Master all these years and his son, Thejas photographer, Vidhuraj, fished it out.

Three years later, after India became independent, on May 2, 1949, that SK set out from Bombay on a passenger ship to Italy. He returned after a few weeks and then on May 29 took another ship to Rhodesia and from there moved to other parts of Africa. In June he went on to Mozambique and then to Portugal.

In 1950 he passed through the Suez Canal, at a time when the canal was at the center of a global confrontation, and reached Switzerland. Two years on, he was in Malaysia and next year, in 1953, he traveled to Indonesia and then to Egypt. The story comes to an end on March 16, 1954 when the term of the document comes to and.

But SK continued his travels and through his dozens of books that gave a graphic description of what he saw in all those places took Malayalis to all those exotic locales widening our universe and making us a people quite at ease with the wide world outside.

A Techie Writes About the Other World; and How Familiar It Looks !

WE HAVE several genres of writing here like dalit writing, feminist writing, subaltern writing, etc, etc. Now it seems it is the turn of techie writing. I am not referring to technical writing, but writing by techies.

My daughter, who seems to have hit upon a gold mine of good techie writing, recently forwarded me a mail containing this story.

I paraphrase it for brevity:

Once upon a time there was an HR manager in a software firm who, sadly, was hit by speeding bus killing her instantly and she reached the gates of the other world for an admission. The chap keeping the records there had a problem because he did not know where to send her; whether to heaven or hell.

So he thought to give her a choice and told her to take a look at both the places. She thought there was no need to do that and said she would like a place in heaven. But he insisted and so she went first to hell.

The place looked really fun with a golf course, a country club and all the glitter she was used to back home. She enjoyed it immensely and then the next day she went to heaven to take a look there too. Not bad with plenty of clouds, trees, birds, good looking women, etc.

Then when it was time to choose, she thought she would prefer hell. Her wish was accepted immediately.

She was promptly sent there and when she entered, it was a totally different place that she saw. A real hell-like place with people slogging like rag pickers...

She asked the Devil what went wrong. It was not yesterday's place at all?

"Well", he said, "yesterday we were recruiting you. Today you are an employee here!"

Kadammanitta and the Poetry of Revolution

In memory of poet Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan who died on Monday, March 31, 2008.



I FIRST met Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan in 1977 or early 1978 when I was a student at the Malabar Christian College, in Kozhikode. I was a first-year degree student and in the first college union election after the Emergency, I was elected a university union councillor.

Those were unforgettable days. The nation had been coming to grips with the terrible experiences of the Emergency through the investigations conducted by the Shah Commission at the national level and in the State, the Rajan case was unfolding which later resulted in the resignation of K Karunakaran as chief minister. Indira Gandhi had been defeated in the election and the country was under the rule of the first non-Congress government.

We were young and committed to a romantic revolutionary politics, and the Students Federation of India had been making waves in campuses across the state. The established left parties were not known for their resistance to the Emergency, and the CPI openly supported Indira Gandhi throughout the 19 months of internal emergency, but the SFI was active in campaigning against the semi-fascist rule during the Emergency. Many of the senior leaders were in jail or were underground and at the national level leaders like Prakash Karat were active in the students’ movement.

I remember the day when Emergency was declared, on June 26, 1975. We had already completed our SSLC examinations and as the news spread the students in our school at Koduvally took out a demonstration in the town and soon the police jeep came rushing in, giving us the first lessons of the Emergency rule, and all the demonstrators ran helter-skelter, most of us running home through the vast paddy fields…

Those two years were suffocating. Then in March 1977 Indira Gandhi called for elections and I remember that I was in a small town called Omassery near our village, coming home after a students meeting somewhere in the hills, when the news came through the All India Radio.

It was evening and suddenly a crowd collected in the town and in no time there took place an impromptu demonstration, people shouting slogans condemning Emergency and Indira Gandhi, in an expression of defiance after so many months of frustration. I forgot about going home and I was there in the demonstration, shouting slogans lustily as I never had had an occasion to shout slogans as we used to in all those 19 months...

It was then Kadammanitta came to our college one day. He was an imposing figure, a dark and stout man, with a coarse khadi jubba and dhothi, some books or magazines tucked in his shoulder bag…There was a lean young chap who came along with him and they said it was a poet called Balachandran Chullikkadu. I had never heard of this Chullikkadu and I didn’t care either, because I was so excited about this dark and stout man whose fiery lines had been etched into my mind.

In the two or three hours they were in the college, Kadammanitta and Balachandran recited many poems and I still remember the booming voice that hit our hearts directly, stirring something within us, telling us how revolutionary a weapon indeed was this poetry…

Since then I had heard Kadammanitta many times and at many stages, but all my memories of the man and his poetry of power take me to the first occasion as a young boy of 17 or 18, I saw him recite his poems in a thunderous voice. Kadammanitta was a symbol of defiant energy, a raw humanism that inspired all our activity and his poems brought something refreshingly original, something quite lofty and elevating to us who were small beings living through the most extraordinary times.

As K T Muhammed Departs…

A tribute to eminent playwright K T Muhammed who died in Kozhikode on Tuesday, March 25, 2008.



AS THE vehicle carrying the body of K T Muhammed left his home--the last rented home which he was to return to the landlord sometime this week-- I was there among the crowd, who came to pay their respects to this unique man who lived among us for the past many decades.

For KT, as he was known, spent all his life in rented houses in various parts of the city of Kozhikode, and his final abode happened to be in Pavangad, very close to my own home. Earlier he lived for many years at Puhtiuyangadi where one could see the dilapidated name-board of the Kalinga Theatres hanging in front,(then one day the old rope gave in, the board fell down and it was kept on the verandah, its paint missing in places),which managed the small group of theatre artists that staged his later plays. It was Sangamam Theatres which used to stage his plays but when he fell out with some of those behind it, he set up Kalinga with his brother K T Sayed as the key person running it.

Sayed was not only the manager of his theatre group, he was the main actor also, a role which ill-fitted his stiff manners. When I watched many KT plays in the late seventies and early eighties when he was active, I felt Sayed was not the man for his characters but Sayed thought otherwise and KT had no option but to accept it.

KT in many ways was a hapless victim of circumstances, and often he violently clashed with them through his powerful plays, his words interrupted with a heavy, asthmatic breath, his open expressions of feelings… he often wept as he spoke on the stage, and he was unable to complete a sentence without tears streaming out of his eyes. He was such a sensitive soul, for whom life was a long journey in loneliness.

He was born in Manjeri in 1929 as the eldest son of a policeman and had very little formal education. Early in his life, he joined the postal department as a packer in Kozhikode and he has described his life as a postman, in his memoirs published many years ago, which tell you about the city of Kozhikode, its wonderful cultural life, its poverty, its tradition and its struggles…

As a playwright, KT discovered himself because he had no contact with any theatre movements or any in-depth reading in world literature. But the early fifties and sixties in Kozhikode was a period of strong theatre activism around public libraries and reading rooms like the Deshaposhini of Kuthiravattom. Anniversary occasions of these reading rooms were the time for staging of new plays and most of Kozhikode’s best known theatre artists and writers like Thikkodiyan, Kunhandi, Kuthiravattom Pappu and others came up through this movement. KT was no exception.

It was the left political movement that gave strength and support to this new theatre movement. For the left, theatre was a vehicle for spreading their political message and naturally most of those who were associated with this theatre movement surrounding progressive libraries were writing on issues with a strong social and political message. K T Muhammed and E K Ayamu were among them and they addressed the social problems faced by their own community, the Muslims of Malabar. Most of KT's best known plays are a direct attack against the conservative values that reigned in the Muslim community and were clarion calls for change.

My association with KT was through his nephew, P M Taj, who was the best playwright of his generation. Taj and KT were poles apart, the uncle belonging to an earlier generation and the nephew the most vocal voice of an impatient new generation that wanted to rewrite and even upset the grammar of theatre. Taj was a visionary, an artiste who could see through the clouds into a new world of evil and unhappiness unfolding, but his plays addressed a world which was coming a decade later and not many around him could understand him. He too was a loner, drifting to aimless drunkenness, and dying quite early in his life, a bitter man.

We were close friends in the mid-seventies when we used to spend hours together discussing everything under the sun at the Ansari Park, now part of the Mananchira Square complex. It was there he used to speak about the plays he was planning to write and some of them later came to be known as classics in Malayalam, like Kudukka or the philosophy of those who are hungry, Mary Lawrence, Ravunni, Kanalattom, etc.

Taj had a different grammar and rhythm for his plays, influenced by the stylized body movement that was the hallmark of those days. It was quite different from the dialogue delivery style of an earlier generation and that is why, despite persistent demands from Taj, KT refused to direct any of his plays. Perhaps he was right: they were both great; but they belonged to two different worlds…

But now they meet in the same world where Charon might bring them together as his boat takes this gentle soul into the world beyond…

27.03.2008

The Riddle of Barbie and the Diamond: a story

THE CHILDREN were terribly bored playing with the deer and parrots, climbing tall trees and bringing the ripe mango down with a single arrow.

Forest has its own limitations in offering entertainment. So they started fighting each other, dressed up as Rama and Ravana in the mega-movies.

Then one day, Sita told this story to her children as the poet, old uncle Valmiki, was busy working on his new poem:

Look children, there was this time traveller who came across a diamond in a waste heap in the Indian city of Ayodhya.

He was a curious kind of traveller, who travelled across time and space, flitting from the Mesopotamian mountains to the Chinese walls to the forests of Kilimanjaro to the dream-factories of Los Angeles.

He had seen Cleopatra lying dead in her royal chamber with a little snake on her bosom and Helen abducting with Paris, Alexander crossing over to India and then Americans pounding the Afghans.

Then, wandering in the streets, he came upon this diamond one day, lying abandoned and uncared for in a waste heap and no one seemed to notice how valuable it was. He had seen jewels in their infinite variety in his travels and he knew it was a great original that even Cleopatra would have loved to adorn her bosom.

But those were the days of fakes and in this strange city people thought every original to be a fake and every fake, a great original. It was a confusing and muddled place. Even their dressed gods were moving about in decorated chariots while the ancient idols, lost out in the race, kept themselves locked up in abandoned temples. He also saw painted beauties in the streets looking like painted dolls sold in the shops, and often the girls resembled their own favourite Barbies…

It was then he came upon this diamond, half covered with some old papers. He could not understand how it came there, in such a state, may be its owner threw it away, like the kids kicking out old toys getting tired of them. Possibly falling in love with some fakes as this city was full of fakes of every kind, from every part of the world. He imagined this diamond came as a trust from his mother, who gave it to him lovingly as she passed on to another world, or perhaps it just came to him as he walked aimlessly along…But that is past and he must be cuddled up with his Barbie now, happily forgetting himself in her voluptuous secrets.

So, the lonely traveller took the diamond, polished it and kept it in his pocket. It was a wonderful diamond, radiating a fresh fragrance that made him feel young and happy. Its graceful beauty becoming a kind of fascination for him; he fell in love with it, and often he worshiped it as if it were an idol.

But he was only a traveller given to the life on the streets and he knew he could not keep the diamond in his shabby baggage. It was a queen deserving royal bosoms. And a traveller must renounce everything, for travellers and sanyasins cannot keep valuables.

He must travel light, meet all kinds of people, good bad and indifferent, traversing jungles infested with robbers and oceans brimming with pirates and he could not peril his own life and endanger this beautiful idol, leaving it in the hands of robbers…

Then his travels became a search for locating its truthful owner and one day he found him, a prince with long and curly hair and enchanting eyes, who lived beyond seven seas.

Then it was a problem how to restore it to him. The traveller befriended a great bird whose powerful wings could take it across the seas effortlessly and he trained it to take his charge beyond seven seas, into the land where the prince lived.

One day, he saw it fly off with his beauty, deep into the blue sky, the lustre of his diamond still fresh in his memory…

Then Sita asked her children the following questions:

Children, what do you think the traveller felt as he saw the bird take off with the diamond in its bosom:

a) Happy, that it was going back to its rightful owner?

b) Unhappy that he was losing the diamond he loved more than his life.

c) Relieved that the last temptation in his life was over?

d) None of the above.

Come back to me with your answers tomorrow, my kids, she told them and sent them on to do their homework.

(Courtesy:ndtv.com/books/writingroom)

Writer Hits Jackpot, Thanks to Finance Minister

An unconventional recognition for Vaikom Muhammed Basheer on his centenary year.


EMINENT WRITERS, especially those who are dead and abandoned by the readers in an age of television serials and cyber chat, are back in circulation: They are hot property in the annual budgets in India, where every budget presentation is a media event.

It is surprising this annual ceremony of presenting the coming year’s income and expenditure accounting, which could be as interesting as the annual company reports certified by a chartered accountant, gets the television TRP ratings that beat even the best reality show now available on the mini-screen. Perhaps, it has to do with the simple truth that the greatest music for mortals like us is the noise of a shower of coins. And on the occasion of budget presentation, we think of what it could bring us by way of tax concessions and other pecuniary benefits.

But the ministers presenting the budget are mindful about the importance of the day when they would be the cynosure of every eye, not only in the Assembly or Parliament hall but outside in almost every home where there is a TV set. They are acutely aware of the fact that on all other days of the year, they are generally a hated lot because they hold the purse-strings and finance ministers, all over the world, come as stingy scrooges as a rule.

That is why finance ministers take every precaution to appear as natty as a young girl going to her first ball, and poetry comes handy to a finance minister going to present the budget, like music to a youngster in love.

Harvard educated Palaniappan Chidambaram has presented five budgets in a row, the second one to do so in India after Dr Manmohan Singh, and all of them accompanied a couplet or two from his favorite Tamil poets like Thiru Valluvar. Thiru Valluvar is a great sage, but he was never known outside Tamilakam and now look, he has become a household name even in the northern cow belt!

This week it was the turn of our own Beypore Sultan, whose centenary year this is. Kerala Finance Minister Dr T M Thomas Isaac got hold of Vaikom Muhammed Basheer and his novel, Pathummayude Aadu, to explain his budget proposals and his financial constraints. He said like the writer who was facing a huge and expectant crowd at his family house on a rare visit home, making all kinds of demands on his wallet, he too was faced with plenty of demands and an emaciated treasury. The small household of Basheer and Pathumma in Thalayolapparamba is a microcosm of the entire state of Kerala, he said, and assured, like Basheer to his family members, that things would be fine next time. Just wait and watch!

That indeed was a master stroke. The story of Pathumma and her goat is well known and the tale is such a hit with readers that the book has run into several reprints. It describes the scene in the household when Basheer, after a brief spell in an asylum, returns home for some rest and recuperation. There he encounters the coups and counter-coups of his mother and sisters, brothers and their children and distant relatives and the non-human members of the household like cocks and hens and others, among them the she-goat that Pathumma nursed so lovingly like a child, has a prime place. The goat is central to the dreams of Pathumma for a great and happy life, and she makes the greatest coup of all, by devouring Basheer’s newly published book that he had kept like a treasure deep in his box.

The Opposition says Dr Isaac’s budget reminds them of another Basheer character, Ettukali Mammoonju, who claims fatherhood of every child born in the village. The only problem with him is that he is impotent.

Let that be. But one thing is certain: The Kerala Finance Minister has hit upon an idea that really enthused cartoonists because today’s morning newspapers are awash with Basheer and his goat.

Now I am waiting for the next budget, not because what it might hold for me but because I am curious to know who would be the next writer to hit the jackpot.

Rabiya: A Story

WHEN I was a child my mother told me the story of a frail old man, who set out to remove a hill. The village called him a foolish old man because he looked very foolish indeed. He told everyone this hill must go. It prevented the sun entering the village early in the day.

And people laughed, saying silly old man, how can you remove it? It is such a big hill and you are a frail old one.

He ignored them, reasoning one day he will win, as day by day inch by inch he will conquer it. If he failed to complete it, then his children will take it up and then their children…He went on working, and the sun laughed at him from above, burning his skin with his cruel rays.

But somehow, his story spread, people came to help out, and one day, the village saw the hill gone and instead there was a playground, a beautiful playground where children played ever after…

When I heard this story, I never dreamt I would meet someone like this frail old man till the day I met Rabiya.

Rabiya lived in a little village in Malappuram, a place buried in poverty and backwardness, most of its population poor and illiterate Muslims.

When I met Rabiya, she was already famous in the village. She was 23 or 24 and very beautiful, her face radiant with a smile and her lips firmly closed with an expression of determination. Her legs were as thin as a reed as she had been hit by polio in her childhood.

She was one of the rare women in her village to attend school and she had to stop before going to the college in the city as she was poor and also a cripple. But she retained her love of books, her love of reading and in her spare time she took to her books.

It was then the local government took up a project for total literacy. The government officials said one reason why they were backward and poor was the lack of literacy among the population.

The volunteers spread everywhere, organized campaigns urging the people to join the total literacy mission's study centers set up even in remote villages. It was more like a celebration in the villages, there were daily demonstrations by educated youngsters going from place to place, shouting slogans about the darkness in their minds, staging street plays in impromptu theatres, organizing slideshows and talks, all to entice people to the new movement for total literacy.

But the response was poor as the poor villagers thought they had better things to do, like planting a tree or harvesting their fields, than struggling with grammar.

Why should we learn now, as our youth is gone, our life is gone and do you think we would need to write letters to our children living next door, they asked derisively.

Then one day they saw Rabiya on her wheelchair, ambling her way through the dirt paths of their village, going to every single household and meeting every single villager.

She told them, 'Look uncle, these letters are our friends, these letters opened the gates of wealth and progress to nations everywhere, they opened the gates to heaven. And its never late to learn, never late to do a good deed in our life. Even on the last day of our life…'

Her wheelchair became a common sight in the narrow bylanes and school children always went after her, and often they became a long march through the village, the kids shouting slogans Rabiya taught them, hailing the literacy mission.

Slowly she saw her little classroom flooded with villagers and they learnt the letters and grammar sitting up late in the evening, with the kerosene lamps giving them light…

Those who visited her school heard the singing of the nursery rhymes by the old men and women even from a distance, their voice rough, and with a blush on their wrinkled faces, they displayed their new books, proudly read out from their texts…

When after two years of struggle, the province became totally literate and an old woman Chelakkodan Aysha, again from her village, declared it 100 per cent literate, Rabiya was there to celebrate the occasion.

It was not a small occasion, there were television cameras and an army of newspaper reporters from all over the country, because it was a great feat in a world where poverty and illiteracy reigned supreme.

Rabiya's story became famous and people came to meet her, and she received many awards too. Then years after when I went back to the village, it was a different scene.

The government had changed, and the new rulers had little enthusiasm for literacy campaign and the village slunk back to its moody existence, the villagers back to their cynicism and dull routine life.

Rabiya was there in her little home, hoping for a day when the struggles for big ideas will come back, when a new fight to remove the hills of poverty will come back to her village to light up their lives.

(Courtesy: ndtv.com/books/writingroom)