A day to remember, a life to cherish

In memoriam: Kamala Surayya

Year 2000. When I passed out of JNU, after completing my Ph.D, I wandered about a few years in various places in Delhi in search of a place to stay and a work to support myself. It was difficult to find out a place, if you’re alone and jobless in this city. So, I started telling the landlords that “I am a writer”. And it did click with my landlord in Vasant Kunj who was a school master with whose family I had a long association ever since. He valued education and it didn’t matter to him if I actually authored a book or not as he was contented with the idea itself. For me, there was nothing new in this as I had been living this imaginary world since my childhood where I did all my reading and writing; a samantharalokam, which Kamala Das had talked about, a world parallel to the mundane reality. Kamala Das alias Surayya, one of the most influential writers who wrote in both Malayalam and English, poem and prose, literally inspired every girl to keep a diary and she believed every woman to be a potential writer (Diarykurippukal, Current Books, 1992).

This summer, as I travelled from Delhi to my hometown in Kerala, I was thinking of the charcoal portrait of Kamala Das which artist Sajitha Shankar made. This portrait has allowed me to revisit the conundrum of confounding popular conceptions of her. At first look, I thought, no, this is not Kamala Das. This was in 2009, immediately after Sajitha drew it. Gradually I began to understand it; her kokkirukku, the black talisman tied tightly to her neck and her kumkum, the red moon on the forehead are strong cultural markers to which she very dearly adhered to, for most part of her life. In the last phase of her life, Kamala Das chose to wear purdah, veiling all those marks including the silver streaks of hair and unveiling a new person. Sajitha’s black and white portrait peels off the layered person, portraying the possibility of being and becoming; her intense compassionate eyes, a constant to all avtars.

 A couple of days before the 31^st of May, Sajitha told me in her usual lightness, ‘come over, Sree, we will do something for Ami…but informally’. ‘I am fed up with the made up programs and its hassles’. ‘Same here, Saj’, I said. ‘Let us just meet and talk’.

One cannot organize a meeting like this. It gets organized itself. Like the way the dawn breaks out from the womb of darkness and gathers all the mettle and passions of the sky, falling as rain drops and sun rays intermittently, falling on earth and merging with the river, filling the day’s canvas in creative spirit…we gathered at Gowry Art at Kallar on 31^st May, 2016 to remember the writer who meant different spirits to different people. Agasthyar Mountains and Vamanapuram River are our generous hosts this time.

Madhavikkutty, the person and persona come first whenever Malayalis remember her. It’s nobody’s clever craft but she herself, who skillfully instituted her images in the imagination of people with such varied performances of the self, splitting it into many and reconstituting them into innumerable characters who, like her, blur the boundaries of the real and the fictitious in such suspension of belief. Is this me or you or her?

We- Sajitha, me and my sister Sreelatha- woke up early morning after a late night dinner on the previous day; we got ready for the car ride to Gowry which is about 42 kms from Palayam where we started our journey. Sajitha was narrating her dream visions of the previous night as we were dusting the glass frame of her 3 ft x 3 ft charcoal portrait of Ami. The night before, I informed Sajitha about my intention to pluck the deep purple kadali flowers from her garden to give to our beloved writer. She carefully cut a bunch of flowers and gave it to me in the morning before we drove down to the Palayam mosque where Kamala was resting.

We reached the junction where the church, the temple and the mosque stand, holding hands. ‘Let us buy and plant saplings of Neermathalam’, the iconic tree made into a celebrity plantation by Kamala Surayya’s pen. ‘Let us get some red roses to place at her earth bed’…we made plans after plans as we circumambulated the Juma Masjid in the early morning quietness of the Thiruvananthapuram city.

We walked into the mosque’s graveyard which lay parallel to the Chandrasekharan Nair Memorial Stadium and looked for Ami’s grave. We couldn’t identify any tree with certainty, we realized! We asked a visitor who was reading from the Quran inside the mosque. He came out holding the book close to his chest and said smilingly and apologetically, ‘I can’t say for sure which one it is’. But he pointed to a spot and we started walking towards that point.

As we walked, a tree came towards us offering herself to be Ami. With a sudden current of excitement in our veins, we placed the flowers on her extended arms. A gush of wind blew away all our apprehensions and I saw my sister standing there speechless and Sajitha’s tears rolling down her cheeks…At that moment, we saw a couple walking towards the grave, next to the one we were standing. They came from the north, from Malappuram district. We followed them and they directed us back to the grave near to the tree where we were standing in trance, a moment before. At this point, the visitor we saw in the mosque also came running to us reconfirming the spot towards the north of the centre of the graveyard.

The wife, clad in purdah, came to us and offered prayers. ‘She died in the same year when my daughter was born. My husband came to attend the funeral’. After saying this, she went back to her husband and they both went way.

All the deep purple flowers fell down from the tree by then…we picked them up from the ground and placed them in the new spot where we saw a lemon tree at the feet portion and a small decorative plant at the head. We clicked a few photographs there and seeing this, the watchman asked us to stop. We quietly came out and got into our car and resumed our journey to Kallar.

At the traffic junction at Peroorkada, the clouds in the sky formed into a woman and lay parallel to our vision…

As we reached Gowry Art, Sajitha called out for her neighbors in the village. One or two faces appeared and we started cleaning and arranging things. Vamanapuram River showed us colorful stones of different sizes shining in the   clear and calm water.  Knowing fully well how badly we wanted to run into the river every moment, the rain started playing hide and seek testing our energy and enthusiasm. At every nook and corner of Gowry, we sensed the presence of the woman figure, observing us and listening every word we uttered. When the rain stopped, we walked into the river, which is now full with water from above.

A space like this must be every writer’s dream, every artists’ solace, a necessity for the woman artist. I remembered all those women who wake up with untold stories, planning to write them down after all the work is done. After the day’s grind, she goes to sleep, tired and empty, wondering where all the story babies had gone!

Sajitha’s all-encompassing vision of life and work is one dream of Madhavikkutty coming true. A hope and an inspiration for all. Artists of different persuasions and perspectives come to Gowry for short term residency.

At lunch time, Sajitha explained how relaxed she feels about it now. After tumultuous periods of struggles and sufferings, she now looks forward to open- minded people with understanding to come together and create. ‘I can’t do everything alone. It is quite a relaxation when people come with understanding and co-create’.

In the room in the upper floor, we moved around with ease, half of us in thoughts, half in actions. In front of the charcoal portrait, we kept the books of Kamala Das from our personal collections. ‘Ami was a generous giver’, Sajitha remembered. ‘She used to distribute her silk saris and jewelry she gathered with great enthusiasm. I was also a recipient of not only such lavish gifts but her time and fullest understanding of the trials and tribulations and desires and passions of what constitutes a woman’s creative journey…’

We talked away the afternoon until young volunteers from a charitable society called ‘Rays’ came with books and bags for distribution to children in the locality. Kani tribe, known for their traditional practices of healing and holistic lifestyles are one major population in this area. As Arun, Vishnu and Babita from the Rays were sorting out educational kits, school going children began to pour in. The next day, June 1^st, is the school-opening. We spent the evening with children, singing and talking. We planted jackfruit and chempakam in the Gowry Art campus.

I spent the late evening in Ami’s room, reading and scribbling. Sajitha went out with my sister for a drive and returned with food for the night.

Should everything be copied? Every image be shared? Every story be told? As observed by many, Kamala Surayya was a writer who turned every stone pelted at her into a story; her creativity saved her from alienation and self destruction. She was so transparent that she appeared as self-contradictory to the world. And, it was her creativity which helped her to deal with the intrusions of the external world. She remains a conundrum for both traditional and modern sensibilities.

The river kept on playing music…now, at the centre-stage of the growing night, she is dancing.

Glow worms swam in the room with us.

by

Sreekala Sivasankaran