Myth and Literature – M. T. Vasudevan Nair (1933---)

 

M.T. Vasudevan Nair, a novelist, short story writer, screen play writer, film director, critic and editor is a prolific and versatile writer. His works depicted the problems of human life with keen social perception. He was awarded Padmabhushan, Kerala Jyoti and he has won Kendra and Kerala Sahithya Awards. He has directed seven films and written screen plays for 54 films. When he delivered a speech at Sahithya Academy, in 1995, he talked about the ways in which Malayalam literature has been influenced by myth, folk lore and legends.

M. V. Vasudevan Nair is of the opinion that literature has always been affected by the history, geography, myths and the provincial wisdom of the places of its origin. Ramayana and Mahabharata have a pan-Indian influence. “Aithihyamala” is the most sold book in Kerala, which is a compilation of regional legends. The genesis of Kerala itself is linked to a myth. Parasuraman decided to get absolved himself of the sins of committing kshatriya murders. So, he donated all his property to Kasyapa Muni. When the muni reminded him that he doesn’t have an inch of land as his own, Parasuraman hurled his axe into the sea, standing on Mount Gokarna. The sea retreated and gave up a piece of land that came to be know as Kerala. This myth has been the raw material for many poets in Kerala. When Balamaniamma connects the axe with sacrifice, Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon salutes the axe that was with the early migrant societies to pierce the depth of forests.

Though Kerala is a coastal area, our lieterature don’t have much sea related legends in it. In the novel “Chemmeen”, “Kadalamma”, the sea goddess, expects the women folk to live a taint-less life, while their men are toiling in the sea. Many criticized this novel and the film for upholding superstitions. But, the late C. Rajagopalachari justified the superstition saying, “What harm could come out of it, if the women of a remote locality continue being chaste believing in an old legend?”

Prominent Malayalam story writers of thirties and forties were under the sway of the concept of class struggles. But, the lives of our ancient writers are actually linked to several myths and legends. Ezhuthachan, the father of Malayalam language is the reincarnation of a ‘Gandharvan’ (an ethereal spirit). Similarly stories of divine and supernatural interventions are there in the lives of the Poonthanam Namboothiri and Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri.

However, in our modernist literature of O.V. Vijayan, Kovilan, Punnathil Kunhabdulla, N. P. Muhammed and M. Mukundan, regional folk tales are used with the status of parables and allegories. Moreover, young novelists like K.P. Ramanunni and T.K. Kochubava recreate the folk tales for contemporary times. They consider the myths and legends not as fabrications but as imaginary possibilities. Apart from this, they rediscover the past and blend it with the present as they echo our culture and civilization.

----Thulasidharan V 

Rain-at-Night – Sugatha Kumari (1934-2020)

 

Sugatha Kumari (1934-2020), an illustrious poet and social activist, won numerous awards and recognitions including Kerala Sahitya Academy award, Sahitya Academy Award and Padma Shri. She was the founder secretary of Prakrithi Samarakshana Samithi, an organization for the protection of nature and of Abhaya, a centre for destitute women. In Rain-at-Night (Rathrimazha) Sugatha Kumari not only addresses the rain as a comforting acquaintance but also identifies herself with the rain. It is a romantic poem juxtaposing a sudden downpour with the confinement of the poet in a sanatorium bed.

The poem begins with the weeping laughing and whimpering of the rain-at-night, who is referred to as the pensive daughter of the dusky dark. She is gliding slowly like a long wail into the hospital, where the narrator is admitted. She extends her cold fingers through the window and touches the narrator, who is in her sick bed, when the poet puts her hand to her ears, on her hearing the anguished cry of a mother. The rain at night comforts her. As the narrator has a diseased heart it can’t be cut and removed as other parts of her body. It should only be healed like this.

Rain-at-night, thus witnesses the narrator’s love and grief and lulls her to sleep. So, it becomes an auspicious night to the narrator, who is thrilled with joy. Actually, before the arrival of the rain-at-night the narrator had sleepless hours and was about to freeze into a stone. It gave more joy than the bright moonlight did.

Then the narrator says that she knows the kind and sad music of the night rain, her pity and suppressed rage, her coming in the night, her sobbing and weeping when all alone. And when it is dawn, she wipes her face and forces a smile. Then she hurries to do her routine work as the narrator does. As the narrator is also like the night rain, she knows all of these of the night rain. Thus, the narrator identifies herself with the rain-at-night. The different emotional status of the night rain are similar to the shifting moods of the narrator. That’s why she says at the end, ‘My friend, I too am like you’.

As the emotions of the narrator are expressed effectively in an imaginative and beautiful way and as it reflects a lament for the suffering sick, this poem is considered a fine lyrical elegy.

----Thulasidharan V

FIFTY YEARS OF MALAYALAM CINEMA - V. C. Harris (1958-2017)

 

 

V. C. Harris (1958-2017) was a teacher, thinker, critic, theatre personality and translator.  “Ezhuthum Parachilum” and “Spectres of writing” are the books authored by him.  Here, he traces the history of fifty years of Malayalam cinema beginning with Neelakkuyil (1954) and ending with “Padam Onnu Oru Vilapam” (2003).  According to him, the optimism of the 1950s changed into discontent and disillusionment in the 1960s.  The cinemas of 1970s and 1980s reflected the impacts of modernism and National emergency.  But the films of 1990s didn’t reflect the political and cultural turbulent  situation that had been there, then. However, the music in films has effectively constructed for all the people public sphere for their past and future.

As Kerala has a different socio-political history from the rest of India, it has a distinct film making tradition.  In 1940s and 1950s, the processes of artistic productions in cinema were determined by issues like caste inequality, class consciousness, nationalism and progress.  So, optimism and enthusiasm that existed then was found in “Neelakkuyil” (1954), jointly directed by P. Bhaskaran and Ramukariat.  As many ingredients like a local story, a modern secular subject and fine music were fused into it, it is still considered to be a land mark film in Malayalam.  A decade later, another similar film “Chemmeen” (1965) by Ramukariat that focused on the local culture and mythology of fishing community in Kerala, created another landmark.

The new cinema that emerged in the early 1970s, led by Adoor Gopalakirshnan, G. Aravindan and John Abraham was dubbed as “Art Cinema”.  It was a response to the shifting grounds of politics and aesthetics.  “Swayamvaram” (1972) by Adoor Gopala Krishnan was the inaugural film of this type.  In a slightly different but related way, “Thampu” (1978) by G. Aravindan came next and showed a village community facing the modernity represented by the coming of a circus troupe.  The questioning of religious practices by secularization and modernization was portrayed in M. T. Vasudevan Nair’s “Nirmalyam” (1973).  As National emergency was declared in 1975, all political and civil rights were curtailed.  As a few politicians, government functionaries and the police had all the power, people were disillusioned at this time. Though this period produced a crop of films, of which “Amma Ariyan” (John Abraham, 1986) is a remarkable example of this period. It is an important document on the rise and fall of the revolutionary spirit in contemporary Kerala.

In 1990s the liberalization, privatization and globalization began to play a crucial role.  So, this period began to articulate the concerns of women, the dalits and the adhivasis.  There have been attempts to refine the form and content of the cinema.  Shaji N Karun’s “Vanaprastham, the last dance”, (1999) portrayed an illicit relationship between a kathakali dancer and a young woman from an upper caste family resulted in an illegitimate child.  T.V. Chandran’s “Padam Onnu Oru Vilapam (2003) effectively redefined the subject of art in the light of shifting societal perceptions.  Apart from all these, the film music addressed all the sections of the society, created a public sphere, a space where all kinds of people can come together and share a common experience and chart out a common agenda for life today and tomorrow.

----Thulasidharan V

PICTURES DRAWN ON WATER - K.Sachidanandan

 

K. Sachidanandan (1946-) is a bilingual poet, critic, playwright, editor, translator, and fiction writer.  Having got his voluntary retirement from Christ College, Sachidanandan became the editor of Indian literature, the English Journal of the Sahitya Academy.  Currently, he is the president of Kerala Sahitya Academy and lives in Thrissur.  He is of the opinion that he translates poems from other languages to Malayalam and vice versa to enrich Malayalam literature, train his poetic skills and test the strength of his mother tongue.

‘Pictures Drawn on Water’ is a poem in five parts written in the wake of the great flood in Kerala in 2018.  It shows the different phases of the deluge.  It visualizes how a normal monsoon turned into a fierce deluge, all of a sudden.  It also comments on the courage and resilience shown by the people on their facing a tragedy.  Apart from these, it reminds something that we lost which now resides in the memory of slush left behind by water.  It is actually a translated one from Malayalam by the poet.

“As we look on” is the very first part of the poem. Here, like a long-known neighbour, the flood comes into the house, eats, and has a siesta and then forces the residents to leave the house. The water tells the awe-struck people of the house that there is nowhere else to go.  Here, the ruthless behaviour of human beings who encroached the river’s territory by blocking its usual paths into the sea is implied.  In ‘The Boat’, a sick mother, a pregnant daughter and a son who looks after all at home, are shown.  The three quarrel among themselves for the other to climb in the rescue boat which has space left only for one.  Tragedy makes human beings selfless and death fearless.  In ‘the cat’ we see an abandoned cat that wonders on seeing the fish that tickling him and laughing at him.  Here, the poet says that when there is no branch or wall to climb upon even a cat becomes a philosopher.

In ‘Slate’ we see a slate that sits under the water in the vacant house.  It remembers the words and sketches scrawled on its grey surface by tiny hands.  It also dreams to create a new universe within its four wooden frames and thus became a part of the earth and of infinity.  In ‘Slush’ we find the slush gathered in the house after the flood with the obscure memories of fields, pond and lily and blue flowers in the harvested fields, the flower collecting children, yellow butterflies, the ploughing bulls, seeds sowing dark hands.  Through these memories of ‘The Slush’, the poet says that the things that we had lost now reside in the memory of the slush left behind by the flood.  Thus the poet has effectively used the deluge as a metaphor for social and ecological concerns in the poem.

According to the poet it was the people who forced the flood to encroach their territory by blocking its usual path into the sea. However the flood makes human beings resilient. They have also realized that the earth is not belonged to them but they belonged to the earth. Thus the poem presents flood in a favorable light.

----Thulasidharan V