KUTTIPPURAM BRIDGE – EDASSERI

 

Edasseri Govindan Nair (1906-1974) is one of the major poets of Malayalam literature.  He was a recipient of Sahithya Academy Award for poetry.  ‘Kuttippuram Bridge’ is a translated one where the poet shares his feelings of surprise, happiness and anxiety on his walking over the bridge after its construction in 1953.

The eleven-span bridge on National Highway in Kuttippuram needed twenty-three lakhs and 58 months to get completed.  The poet stood proudly on the bridge and gazed upon the dwindling ‘Perar’ (Nila) river.  Though he was 47 years old then, he remembered playing ‘poothamkole’, his taking a dip in the cool waves before prayer and watching kingfishers, cuckoos and herons up above the river.  During heavy rains, the arrogant and boisterous river used to burst the banks.  But then the river was crawling to flow below the bridge.  On seeing it the poet chuckled and thought about the change in the river’s attitude.

Though he was delightfully considering the victory of mankind, an unknown feeling of agony haunted his conscience.  He began to recollect the fading picture of his village life.  The sweet and healthy village was actually bidding the final farewell.  The vast paddy fields, the houses flanked by fruit-bearing trees, and the hill valleys are slowly moving away.  The temple festivities with oil lamps, farmer’s songs that fill the day and the chills in the dead of light are all also disappearing and allow other things to come to light.

Granite, cement steel, tyre and petrol have started their reign.  Walls are rising everywhere.  The noises made by them and their movements quicken everywhere.  People move away from their native places.  All familiar faces are disappearing.  Strangers become neighbours.  So strangers need to be loved and all the loving and lovable friends have become outsiders.

As the bridge passes by the side of the temple of Malloor, the Lord Siva of Malloor has become a street deity.  The ‘Anthimaha Kaalan’ hill, which is standing high up and serene, would now spin like a top, spun by an egotist machine child.  Everything is getting changed.  Even the laughter and tears have become machine-like.  Here the poet disappointedly asks the ‘Perar’ river whether the river will also accept the changes and get changed into a canal of grief carrying sewage.  Thus the poet talks more about the change that is unfortunately inevitable, doing more harm than good.  That is why he says on standing on the bridge, an unknown feeling that streams inside “haunts my conscience with agony.”

-----Thulasidharan V