[A. J. Thomas is a renowned Indian poet and translator who writes in English and Malayalam with equal ease. He was born in 1952. He secured his PhD in English, specializing in literary translation. He served at Indian Sahitya Akedemi in different roles. He was a former Guest Editor at the Sahitya Akedemi from 2016 to 2020. He has dozen of books in his name ranging from poetry to translation. To be precise, he has two collections of poems and six books of translation. Uday Adhikari of The Gorkha Times had a comprehensive talk with Mr. Thomas. The edited version of the talk is presented herewith.]
Recently you posted a picture of the shimmering waters of the Kochi Lagoon. I’m from Nepal and always get fascinated by the sea as we don’t have any here. You are from south India, and I can only imagine your relationship with the sea. Watching the picture you posted, suddenly it occurred to my mind that I should ask you about your childhood memories. I wonder if there were always books and seas around. Would you like to share your experience of growing up in Kottayam with our readers?
Like you, I too am a mountain-boy. I saw the sea for the first time in my life only when I was 21.
I was born at Karuthakunnu, Moonnilavu village, in Kottayam District, Kerala, South India, near the banks of the main tributary of the river Meenachil, (the one that features in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things), but I was brought up in Mechal, a village four miles up in the mountains north-east of Moonnilavu, where I lived close to nature, as did all rural people. I attended my lower primary school in the CMS L P School, Mēchāl, set in picturesque, scenic surroundings, at the foot of a rocky incline of more than a thousand feet by a gurgling stream, amidst a mini-forest.
After living in this hamlet for the first ten years of my life, my mother and I moved down to our main family at Karuthakunnu. I attended middle school and high school here. Mount Illikkan, or Illikkakkallu, our local version of Mount Everest, loomed high on the eastern horizon, which was actually quite near (when considered now through grown-up eyes), maybe three miles as the crow flies. The sight of this peak always whetted in my mind the awe and admiration for mountains, which had already been induced by the only environment I was familiar with–the mountainous terrain of my foster village, Mechal. The life story of Tenzing Norgay, narrated in our mother tongue Malayalam concisely, was a text for non-detailed study in one of my middle school classes. The way the author had described in ever-exciting language, how Tenzing and Hillary, and all those who had preceded him in expeditions to Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks dared the elements of nature, had fired my imagination.
My mother too had been fascinated by Mount Illikkan and used to tell me stories of how her father and brothers, living in another village down its southern slope, had braved the mountain several times and reached the summit while on their expeditions of felling trees for timber from the forests at its foot. The sunrise from its top was unforgettable, she said. The sun, rising like an infant, springing up in boyhood and growing into a brilliant youth whose blazing visage could not be countenanced! (Her only ambition in life was to climb that mountain. I had promised that I would help her in this and even planned to take her along an expedition to the summit. But it was not to be as she developed arthritis, though I climbed this peak twice, in those early days). All these had contributed to my love of the mountains, which I still cherish.
Though the Arabian Sea makes up the western border of Kerala, the southernmost state in the Indian subcontinent, I had not set my eyes on the sea yet. In June 1970, I had travelled by train to Chennai at the age of 18, and from there to Kolkata (Calcutta, then) and lived in Bandel north of Kolkata on the river Hooghly for two years where I studied in Our Lady’s House Higher Secondary School belonging to the Salesian of Don Bosco, privately preparing for the Pre-University Examination of the North Bengal University, Darjeeling. Our Lady’s House had a rich library and I made use of the opportunity to read some of the classics here. I had then moved up to Salesian College, Sonada, Darjeeling in May 1972 and lived there for three months in between, for writing my Pre-University exam.
Returning from Sonada, I left Bandel, moved down south and lived in Bangalore for six months in St. Anthony’s Friary of the Franciscans Second Order, at Adugudi, in the middle of the brushwood expanse near the John’s Medical College that was coming up at that time. From there I moved on to the Friary at Palmaner, Chittoor, in Andhra Pradesh (then). As I wanted to leave that organization too, take up a job and support my family, I sought the help of the Father Superior at Palmaner, who referred me to a Friar in charge of the Franciscan Friary at Madavaram, Chennai and advised me to meet him after some time, when there would be a vacancy available. I left for home at Karuthakunnu soon, an in another three months I moved to Chennai, to live with my father’s youngest brother, biding my time for the promised job. I had not had the occasion to go to even Marina Beach to see the sea in Chennai during that period.
Having realized finally that I would not be able to get the promised job in Chennai, I left for Malabar and had landed in Thalassery railway station from The Mangalore Mail one day, late in the afternoon. I had only heard of my father’s acquaintance, Bishop Sebastian Valloppilly, who had been our parish priest at Karuthakunnu during his younger days. Now he was the revered Bishop of the Diocese of Thalassery, which held sway in the high range areas of Malabar and the adjoining Wayanad, Nilgiris of Tamilnadu and Malnadu region of Karnataka. He was a powerful man with great connections in all echelons of society. He could surely employ me, I had vainly thought. But, ever the inveterate migrant farmer at heart, the prelate drew my attention to another paternal uncle of mine who had been an immigrant from Moonnilavu, and settled down at Nelliyodi, a village on a steep mountainside of Kottiyoor, west of the Peria ranges 40 kilometers east of Thalassery. The bishop highly recommended that I purchase a hoe weighing at least eight pounds, and till the soil alongside my uncle!
It was evening when the bishop turned me out of his palace in that unknown place, from where I had to walk all the 40 kilometers as I had no money on me. When I reached Peravoor, 12 kilometers en route, it was 9 pm, and pitch dark. I found refuge in the local church after I described to the vicar all about my peregrinations till that moment and about meeting the bishop and his advice to me. When I opened up about the bitterness I felt towards the bishop who turned me away at dusk into those strange, darkening streets, the priest said the bishop would have been wary of a disheveled young man who wandered into the palace in the evening; the priest insisted that I forgive the bishop. In the morning, I left on foot again, after breakfast, and reached Nelliyodi in the late afternoon, climbing almost three thousand feet. This was in early 1973, and I was 21.
The bishop’s palace at Thalassery had belonged previously to Justice V R Krishna Iyer, the revolutionary judge of the Supreme Court of India who proved to be daring enough to throw out an appeal of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi against her disqualification by the Allahabad High Court from running for elections, which prompted her to declare the Emergency in June 1975. (Krisha Iyer was the Law Minister of Kerala from 1957 to 1959, in the first Communist Government formed by EMS Nambudirippad.) Justice Krishna Iyer had sold this building to the bishop, as his beloved wife had died here suddenly, and he didn’t want to retain the house that evoked her painful memories.
This bishop’s palace was a beautiful colonial-style mansion, the ancestral home of the Iyers that perched above an array of jagged rocks lining the coast of the Arabian Sea.
Standing in the courtyard of the bishop’s palace, in the slanting rays of the setting sun, with a sinking heart on being denied employment by the bishop even in my penniless state, I had laid my eyes on the glorious sight of the golden orb sinking into the sea. Uncannily, I was to pen my first major poem in English, “The Setting Sun”, two years later, with this image recurring in my mind!
This was the first time I set my eyes on the sea in my short life till then!
Nithya John is grateful to you for agreeing to pen down the foreword to her poetry-prose collection. You are simple and easily available when someone needs you. How do you manage such time for everyone who needs you? You have broken the taboo that writers are usually moody. Where did you learn such simplicity? Doesn’t such a thing affect your writing?
All I can say is that I go by the dictates of my concern for anyone who genuinely wants to engage in creative writing. Nothing else matters at that moment when I agree to chip in.
Satchidanandan’s comment on your contribution as a guest editor of Sahitya Akademi’s journal Indian literature is very heartening and warm. Your labor in editing The Best of Indian Literature, two volumes, four book with 17 hundred pages is deeply felt. How was your editing experience with that?
At first as Assistant Editor, and then as Editor, of Indian Literature, I have been in the business of promoting the best of Indian writing in English translation, and original English over more than two decades. As for the Best of Indian Literature, it was hard work spread over eight years from 2004 to 2012, amidst other regular work. I did all the final editing works while teaching English in Benghazi University, Ajdabiya, Libya.
You thanked Abhay Kumar for selecting your poem ‘A Protestation’ for the collection Great Indian Love Poems. As a reader, I am curious to know about your journey of poetry and your shifting interest towards novel and translation.
As I said earlier, I was born and brought up in uniquely scenic surroundings, close to nature. The first ten years of my life that I spent alone with my mother in the tiny mountain Hamlet, Mechal, inspired in me poetry very early. My mother, though not formally educated, was a poet in her own way. She used to speak to the plants she grew, to the animals she reared, as if they were her own children. I grew up witnessing this kind of poetry in action.
Later in life, I began to attempt poetry-writing in my mother tongue, Malayalam. For the school’s hand-written journal, I had contributed a patriotic song at the age of 13. Later, when I was living in Bandel, away from my language and people, steeped only in English, I began writing poetry in English to the rhythms of the wavelets of the river Ganga, or Hooghly, at Bandel–to the sighing breezes across its waters, to the blue skies and white, puffy clouds….
Fiction-writing happened later, when I was living in the Bishop’s House, Mananthavady. I had entered a short-story writing competition organized at the Wayanad region level and stood first. That prompted me to write fiction, though I have done it only sparingly till date. My novel is still in the making.
Literary translation also happened much later when I was living in the Periyar Tiger Reserve, Thekkady, Idukki District, as an admin staffer in Kerala Tourism Development Corporation’s Aranya Nivas, a wildlife resort. It was in the year 1979. I will give a detailed account of it later, in answer to another query of yours.
‘What a joyous news!’ you said when Satchidanandan and H.S. Shiva Prakash won Sahitya Akademi Award and Jeet Thayil bagged the DSL prize. You seem to have good rapport with leading English writers from India and abroad. You have come a long way in the field of literature. Would you like to tell us how you were attracted to literature?
As I said before, my reading habit grew with school texts that inspired my interest. Then we had a school library which was not very well stocked, but had Malayalam books, among which I remember the master-works of great Malayam writers like Vaikom Muhammad Basheer (which I cherish even now for their magical language) and the Malayalam translations of world classics like The Secret Garden, The King of the Golden River etc. There were only a couple of English books. The one I remember vividly is Sohrab and Rustom, a retold version published in England. We were taught English only from Class V, but I was drawn to the language so much, that I had begun memorizing entire lessons and poems that appeared in my first English Reader. Soon I began looking around for English books to read, which our school library did not have. For that I had to wait till I joined a junior college in Aruvithura, Erattupetta — five miles downriver. After my two years there, when I failed to make it in the final exam, I embarked upon the adventure of travelling to the ends of the world—which was for me at that time, Bandel, near Kolkata. It is there that I began serious reading.
Coming back from Kolkata, doing a bit of wandering about south India as I described above, finally I settled down in my paternal uncle’s home in Nelliyodi, Kottiyoor, on the fringes of the Periya forest. It was a sheer climb of more than two thousand feet from Nelliyodi to the 42nd milestone on Thalassery-Mananthavady road, the nearest road in Wayanad, the southwestern arm of the Deccan Plateau. As I had got fed up with helping my uncle’s family’s farming work on the extensive hill-slope farm of about forty acres, and was left with no cash, I was raring to escape. That was when I remembered that the new Catholic Diocese of Mananthavady was formed only just a few months ago—in May 1973. I had gone to Thalassery bishop’s palace, around the same time, at a time when the new bishop of Mananthavady had been Father Secretary to that bishop! It was August by now, and I wanted to try out my luck with him regarding employment. So, one day I climbed the sheer slope of two thousand feet, literally clawing my way upward and reached the 42nd mile. Though there were buses and jeeps plying towards Mananthavady, I did not have any money with me to pay the fare. So, I walked the twelve miles to Mananthavady, under a steadily drizzle of rain that seemed like threads extending into the sky enveloped by soft mist. In fact, the locals had a nickname for the rain, “No.40” which was the name of a thread that the weavers of Malabar used! The weather in Waynad way back in 1973 was like that—No.40 rain falling most of the time, irrespective of summer or winter!
I luckily succeeded in convincing the new bishop, Rev. Dr. Jacob Thoomkuzy, who was a literature enthusiast, fresh out of a Master’s program in English Literature at Fordham University, New York. I made use of his literature library to the fullest. It was while serving the bishop as his private secretary that I resumed writing poetry in English. The bishop used to correct my poems! Here, I once again picked up my reading habit, and got involved myself in literary activities and the pioneering works of film society movement in Mananthavady, having been a founder-member of Sitara Film Society there. I got to know the literary and cultural figures of Kerala of the time, inspired by that cultural pot-boiling.
I had a moped at that time, servicing of which was possible only at Kozhikode (Calicut), about 110 kilometers from Mananthavady on the west coast. I had known that Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, the literary hero of my childhood and adolescence, lived at that time at Beypore, a few kilometers south of Kozhikode. I made bold to visit him, seeking his advice on literature and life. Over the next two years, I visited Basheer whenever I visited Kozhikode, perhaps a dozen times or more. This was a life-changer for me, literally. Slowly I got to know more writers. The film auteur G. Aravindan, eminent novelist M.T. Vasudevan Nair and others were notable names I came into contact with indirectly during this period.
After my three years in Bishop’s House, Mananthavady ended in September 1976 when I got a job in Kerala Tourism Development Corporation, an undertaking fully owned by the Government of Kerala, upon securing the first rank in a government test for employment that I had written. I was posted to Thekkady, in the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary (later, Periyar Tiger Reserve), at Aranya Nivas, Thekkady, Idukki District, the premium wildlife resort run by KTDC. I lived here for the next sixteen and a half years, where I met numerous writers, poets, artists, film and theatre personalities, when they came over to visit. The most memorable names would be Dominique Lapierre, Sir Angus Wilson, Salman Rushdie, M T Vasudevan Nair, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, Pritish Nandi, Paul Zacharia, Shashikumar (famous TV personality on Doordarshan and later President of Asianet), film stars and superstars from the Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi film industries, and others. Of these, Professor U R Ananthamurthy, then Vice Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University Kottayam, and internationally feted author, was instrumental in pitchforking me straight from my government service to the world of academics, literature, and aesthetics, enabling me eventually to get a job in Sahitya Akademi, (The National Academy of Letters), New Delhi.
It happened like this: I had entered the world of literary translation, when an Australian visitor, a young lady teacher, approached me with a strange request upon learning that I wrote poetry in English and had read my poems I gave her. She requested me to give her a taste of ‘Indian Poetry’. I said India has hundreds of languages and literatures, but there were at least two dozen major ones with impressive literatures. However, she insisted that she should get a sampling of the poetry of as many literatures of India as possible. It was the pre-internet era, and the only source was printed literature. I used to get access to leading English literary journals of the time like Imprint, The Mirror, and The Illustrated Weekly of India. Poetry in English was available in the first two; poetry in English, and an occasional translation from Indian languages were presented in the Illustrated Weekly. However, to begin with, I had to get translations of poetry in my own mother tongue, Malayalam. And there was nothing available. Therefore, I set about attempting translation of Malayalam poetry, on my own! That gave rise to my very first literary translations.
When Professor U R Ananthamurthy visited Thekkady in late 1989, I met him and presented him with my original English poems and translations. Even before that, I had met the celebrated Malayalam poet and critic and professor of English, Dr. K. Ayyappa Paniker, and he had approved of my poetry and translations, a couple of years earlier. This had given me enough confidence to show my work to U R Ananthamurthy. He was impressed and offered to enroll me in the first-ever batch of his brand-new creation in M.G. University, the “School of Letters,” which he had modelled on a School in one of the US Universities and was an integrated Literature/Creative Writing/ Translation/Aesthetics/Theatre/Film Studies facility. Here, I was free to undertake actual translation of Malayalam short stories with a detailed introductory study, as dissertation for my M.Phil. degree. I chose seventeen Malayalam short stores for this purpose and contacted the respective authors for permission. Besides, poets and authors, theatre and film directors frequented the school, at Prof. Ananthamurthy’s invitation. Professor John Oliver Perry, and Bharati Mukherjee from the USA, and later Jayanta Mahapatra, the eminent Indian English poet are just a few examples. Our faculty members, like the director R.Narendra Prasad, were multitalented personalities. Narendra Prasad was a literary critic, playwright and theatre director who later became an important movie artiste in Malayalam. Likewise, P. Balachandran was a theatre personality—playwright, theatre director, who became a film actor later on. D. Vinayachadran was a leading poet of the modernist era. There were so many other poets and writers who mingled with us daily.
To top it off, U R Ananthamurthy, who had become the President of Sahitya Akademi in 1993, had organized a five-day International Literature Festival on the banks of the River Periyar at Aluva, in which hundreds of poets, writers, filmmakers, theatre persons and artists had participated. I made friends with many of them at that time.
I had finished my M.Phil. course in 1991, winning a first class. Later on, I joined for a PhD program in the School of Letters, under the supervision of Professor V C Harris, the doyen of modern theory and translations.
In the meanwhile, I had applied for the post of Assistant Editor, Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, right after I arrived back on a literary and cultural tour of USA, UK and Western Europe, that lasted four months—the duration of a roundtrip ticket which I had won as part of the Prize package for winning the First Prize in an International Short Story Translation Competition. I joined in the new post in November 1997. As the President, Professor U R Ananthamurhty was my mentor, and the Secretary (CEO) of Shitya Akademi, the acclaimed Malayalam poet K. Satchidanandan was already a friend of more than ten years’ standing by then, my career in Sahitya Akademi began with a flourish, and went on for the next eleven years without a hitch. It was during this time, that my major works in translation and poetry were accomplished. It was here in Sahitya Akademi that I met thousands of Indian poets, authors and translators, and also important international literary personalities.
Apart from the annual Festival of Letters and Translation Prize Festival, and the various literary meets Sahitya Akademi organized perennially, I was also invited to different literature festivals around the country and abroad to make presentations and readings of my poems—like the Jaipur Literature Festival, Jaipur, The Hindu Lit For Life Festival, Chennai(in which I was member of the Literature Award’s Jury once), Brahmaputra Literature Festival, Government of Assam, Guwahati, Gateway LitFest, Mumbai, Bangalore Poetry Festival, Bangalore, Mathrubhumi Literature Festival, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala Literature Festival(KLF), Kozhikode, Chandrabhaga Poetry Festival, Konarak, Kalinga Literature Festival, Bhubaneswar, Goa Art and Literature Festival, Goa, and various others within the country, of which the SAARC FOSWAL annual literature festivals organized by Madam Ajeet Kaur holds a special place in my heart. It was here that I met, year after year, poets and writers from Nepal. I fondly remember Professor Abhi Subedi and a host of others over the last two decades.
Of the International Festivals I attended, the Annual Convention of the American Writers Federations during my visit to USA in 1997 holds special place. It was here that I met Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and others if my memory is correct.
My literary conventions in Perth, Australia (2011), South Korea, (in Seoul-2008, 2011,2013) and in Pohang (2008)), one in Pattaya, Thailand (2012), Kathmandu (2012) and Hong Kong (2013) brought me in contact with hundreds of international writers. I cherish meeting Prof. Tulasi Diwasa in Korea and also attending the Kathmandu conference at his invitation.
Of late, the several online poetry festivals and literary conferences I read my poems, or made my presentations, or simply attended, brought me in touch with more writers and poets. This seems to be the picture of the foreseeable future!
You seem to have deep interest in Bombay poets like Nissim Ezekiel and group. In many ways they were trendsetter in Indian English poetry. Keki Daruwalla, Satchidanandan, Kamala Das carried the legacy further then you, Jeet Thayil and many more are shouldering the tradition aggressively. I am curious to know the struggle you went through to establish yourself a known figure in this field. Were there any ideal figures to be followed when you were growing as a poet?
My poetic role models were Kamala Das, Dom Moraes, Keki Daruwalla, Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, A K Ramanujan, R. Parthasarathy, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Eunice De Souza, Adil Jussawala, Gieve Patel and others. Jeet Thayil and Vijay Nambisan were my junior contemporaries. In fact, my first collection of poems came out in 1989, the same year as the first book of the latter two, Gemini, were published. However, I do not belong exclusively to the so-called Bombay Poets’ group, or do not have any specific poetry mentor.
Your literary reviews are very interesting. I read your review of Chandra Shekhar Kambar’s plays. It seems you are interested in criticism too. Are you satisfied with the contemporary criticism of English writing in India?
I am a literary reviewer of about three decades’ standing. I also write critical features on poetry, fiction, and non-fiction literature. The academic criticism of literature in India is far advanced than in many other Asian countries. However, if you ask me about the criticism of “English Writing in India”, it is far too vague a question. If you mean “Is there an adequate assessment of contemporary literary works in English in India?” then I would say that more voluminous and serious critical works need to come out.
You posted on 24 November 2020: “Please listen to my reading on 27th, those of my friends who have time.” Is literature only for those who have time?
It was my way of being solicitous of the time-constraints my friends may face, to attend my reading.
You recently participated in the poetry chain to post a poem a day. Did you enjoy the process? Did it contain some challenge too?
Yes. It is a challenging process to accomplish the best within a limited time. When it comes to poetry, such challenges further creativity.
What is the process of your poetry writing? Does the environment have anything to do with your mood?
Certainly, yes.
You often speak on Dalit consciousness. And in India, Dalit literature has been established as a powerful branch of literature which we can’t find in Nepal. We all know that such independent expression of Dalit literature involves struggle, sacrifice, and anger. What made you so attached to this literary movement?
Because I imagine myself to be always on the side of the marginalized.
You translated Perumpadavam Sreedharan’s novel Like a Psalm into English that deals with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s life. In an interview you explain in detail how Malayali writers were deeply impressed by Russian writers and the political scenario was no exception. Your saying reminds me of my own country Nepal where Russian novels by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev were easily available at moderate prices. I wonder if you too were a product of such an environment. Why did you choose this novel for translation?
Yes, I grew up on translations of Russian novels into Malayalam by accomplished ones like N.K. Damodaran. However, the English publications from Progress Publishers, and Raduga Publishers, Moscow, which were distributed from the Soviet Cultural Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, were my mainstay, like you describe was yours too, in Nepal. Yes, we strike common ground here.
I chose Like a Psalm…because it struck a chord with me. Like Perumpadavam, I too am an inveterate worshipper of Dostoevsky.
By the way, this novel has created publishing history in Malayalam. 20,000 copies of this novel have come out in by its 100th edition in 2017 over 24 years! Now, five years later, it is rumored it has crossed its 250 editions, and more than 300000 copies.
Your poems ‘Bengal in My Blood’, ‘Delhi, the First Time I Saw You’ and even your essay ‘Listen to the Falling Rain, Listen to it Fall’ are very nostalgic and full of childhood memories. When you write about the past, you go into details. Is detailing your style or you let detailing come unchecked?
You are right about my obsession with detail. It is indeed my deliberate technique. To share with my readers as much of my memories as possible. Many of my poems are also in the “confessional” mode. You will notice that I have answered your initial few questions above in detail, where detailing was called for.
“Like the rest of India, Kerala is racist and caste-conscious,” says Prof. P Sanal Mohan. How was your Kerala when you were growing up? What has happened to this highly educated state? As a writer, have you been affected by that disease called Racism?
I have certainly not been affected by caste or ‘racism’ as you put it, consciously. But caste being something that has come down over millennia, it would certainly have molded the social consciousness I have been a part of. And Professor Sanal Mohan maybe right. But I can assure you that in “this highly educated state”, caste distinction would not be visible as blatantly as in many other regions of the country. Education has certainly brought about a sea change over the last one hundred years at least, and the valuable contribution of great social reformers like Sree Narayana Guru and Ayyankaali, and the leftist ideology that has also flourished here over the past century, have ensured that no one dares to flaunt caste openly. It may certainly be there as a subtle undertone in social behavior and dealings between individuals. But there is certainly no approbation of it in literature or art. If ever someone dares to insinuate caste-pride or caste-prejudice in literature, that writer will soon be forced to shut up or shut down!!
The situation has worsened especially over the last decade as the country is swinging rightward inexorably. In my middle school days, I used to sit on the same bench (a long teakwood bench with a study leg midway too) in the common school, with a Brahmin priest’s son, a Kshatriya chieftain’s son (fallen on pitiable days, obviously!), a Muslim trader’s son, a tribal boy, and another one who belonged to the lowest caste. But we ate our midday meals together, sharing our various food items. There was no caste or community consciousness, then. But as our society progressed, perhaps materially very far, with affluence accrued from the ‘Gulf’ inward remittances by the expat laborers and employees, and the nuclear family proliferated, breaking up the traditional joint family system, people grew more selfish, self-centered, and less sympathetic to the poor and the needy. Communist-consciousness evaporated. Whatever caste and race concerns would have been exacerbated in such a fertile soil! But, again, there is no ‘on-the-face’ caste distinction in Kerala society as of now.
“Cancer is a very aggressive and destructive enemy of our bodies. Even after treatment, the body is devastated. It is a very long process.” You posted on your wall and now we have had Covid 19 for almost two years. One tragedy after another. How do you cope with such times? Does the writing help to bear such painful times? Like many writers, are you also working on some books now? I have seen you participating in many Zoom meetings and felt happy seeing you so active in the technology. Do you enjoy such digitalized activities?
Covid-time has mostly confined me indoors. I have not increased my literary output proportionately, but yes, I have written a few poems trying to express the inexpressible, in this protracted yawning time when the 21st century opened its mouth and forgot to shut it and kept emitting its stench.
Yes, I am in the process of completing a couple of book projects I had already taken up before the beginning of Covid-19.
After leaving the post of Guest Editor from Indian Literature, you said, “I will now be devoting my time to writing poetry, fiction and translating literary works from Malayalam to English.” Are you working on any fiction or translation at the moment? After seeing your rapport with and dedication to poetry, an idea of a lengthy poem or an epic struck my mind. I wonder why the great poets who have the long tradition of epic writing haven’t tried to write it yet. Has such thought, of writing epic, ever crossed your mind?
Yes, I am working on a long-form fiction, even from before the Covid-time. Also, I am working on an epic poem. Will come out with details when these are accomplished. All in good time! Thank you.
***
Here are some poems by A. J. Thomas
Nagarkot-Sarangkot
Nagarkot
Perched on the brink of the basin
That’s Kathmandu Valley,
With fleeting views of the distant Mount Everest
And the Annapurna Range looming
Surprisingly near, along with Manaslu, Gauri Shankar
And many others, is like the comb-plume
On the crown of a foppish rooster;
Kites, falcons
And dragon-flies
Hovering around
Remind me of Mechal, my childhood haunt.
Sarangkot, on the other hand, stands sentinel to
Pokhara Valley that reclines like the Sleeping Beauty;
The Fish-tail Mountain, Machchapuchchre, rises
unendingly into the clouds before your very eyes;
Dhaulagiri, the White Mountain,
And Annapurna,
Appear here in yet other incarnations.
The home of saligrams, the Gandaki watershed,
Is just behind that mount before you…
‘God’s Own Country’ is the boastful appellation
My homeland carries;
But here’s Nepal, the true Deva Bhoomi.
***
Bengal in My Blood
The great river, with its muddied stream the color of mixed decanted tea
Loomed up like a ghost through a rent in the clouds
As the plane prepared to land. Bengal throbs in my heart…
The thread-like rain falling without stop
Is the connection between the heavens and the earth.
Down on the ground, misery, want and uncouth inefficiency
Quicken my Delhi-wrath; I fail, groping for the words of a language
I lost decades ago, lisp and try haggling with the taxi man, to no avail,
But it’s unbelievably cheap as it turns out!
What turns me off is the sight of man-pulled rickshaws in the veins that lead out
From the heart of Kolkata; three decades and more of humane governance!
Intransigence, complacence, egotism, arrogance, mediocrity, apathy, sloth
Set against the brazen inhumanity of the new ‘ivory towers’ of the MNCs
Choke me….
The food is leaden on my palate; the fear of cholera
Forbids my thirst….
Dakshinesvar beckons me…
Kali Ma blesses me…
The great temples of art and learning,
The icons of the nation
Reassure me…
This is our Bengal…our Kolkata
Take heart….
***
Four Decades Ago
What shall I say of one teat
I let go
And the other I groped to suck,
I, a kid in the world of experiences?
The last hope of survival
In my native soil lost
The long walk of eight kilometers in the wee hours
To catch Baby Express to Kochi, thence
A train to the end of the world.
My father by my side—the father didn’t know
What his brightest son could do
After his washout failure in the exams.
I boarded the Howrah Mail
With like-company of other bewildered lads
The coal-steam engine wheezing past rows of palmyrae
Reaching Madras Central, the vast
Hall with endless platforms, deafening din of people
And carts, and the pungent smell of bleaching powder
Unsuccessful in driving out the stench of shit and piss
From the open tracks, the tawny, shouldering heaps
Of putrid night soil and puddles and mangy dogs and pigs—
A void in the stomach, a sob in the throat….
‘What’d have become of my mother, sister and brothers?’
A sweltering day in the third class coach
Andhra running back on both sides
The mud-cup of hot tea peeling the skin of the lip
The water-melon’s sensuous red cooling the mouth
And stunning the sun’s demanding stare.
The coal engine spewing thick, choking smoke,
The cinders flying into the eyes….
Past the rocky haunts of Srikakulam, in the news lately
For Kondappally and his comrades…
Past Chilika and waves after waves of storks
Against the heaven’s bounty of countless shades of gold….
Hopes of offering my life in the service of the Lord…
Sometime in the night, long, unrelenting nightmares
About my mother and siblings dying of hunger….
On the platform at Howrah at last,
A repeat of the sights, sounds and smells of Madras Central–
The platform was dancing
As I stepped on to it after a continuous train ride
Of three days and three nights…
The electric train took us to Bandel;
The cycle rickshaw ride beneath the underpass
Odour of smoke from the coal-ovens and cow-dung-cake chulas.
Reaching the House, smells of freshly baked bread
And channa, soups and dessert, plantain and guava….
The yellow neem fruits on the mud-road
Crushed under the boots of the boys
The yellow-and-black gadflies sucking the juice—the clay-mud
Crusted around; from the pores in the mud, crawling
Millipedes and such—the Hooghly close by.
The burnt-coffee-smell of smoke from the paper and jute mills
From across the river, smart the nostrils
A lone boatman’s wailing song soothes the homesick
In the third floor dormitory with a free view of the Hooghly.
At dawn is heard the singing practice of some maestro
From neck-deep water in the river,
Some said it was Pankaj Mullick….
The only time thoughts of home caught me by the throat
Was in the refectory, when they sat down to meals
To the accompaniment of readings from
The Bible, lives of saints and spiritual books
For edification–and for improving the pronunciation
Of some of them lucky blokes selected now and then
From among the later batch of grown-ups, the boors,
Who came in with the knowledge of the ‘world–’
To renounce the world in saintly solitude
Suppressing bodily urges….Listening to tales of
the Devil trying to check-mate John Vianney and Don Bosco,
Dominic Savio shunning the adolescents’ invitation to sin,
Maria Goretti’s brave martyrdom, resisting sin; and listening also
To readings from Elected Silence: A Spiritual Autobiography of Thomas Merton
And his other books The Seven Storey Mountain and The Man on the Sycamore Tree.
The hypersensitive aspirants hastened to chastise themselves
While the practical, worldly ones yawned sleep away.
Days and nights, nights and days, of discipline and vigilance
Spiritual practices, yearning for self-torture and imitation of Christ
Mind as pure as the autumn sky, clouded suddenly with obsessive doubts
The body’s language, grammar–all unintelligible…
The great preceptor Don Bosco’s strict regimen
To escape sins of the flesh
‘Rule of Touch’ and ‘Rule of Pairs’
In the all-boys’ House….
Old man Thimpu carrying the boys in his cycle-rickshaw
To the doctor who certified them fit, checking even their genitals;
The Prefect of Studies checking the books they carried in from ‘the world’
And granting his Imprimatur.
Naxals snatching rifles of the placid policemen,
(who later began fastening them to their belts with dog-chains)
Decapitated bodies floating in ponds;
Night vigils by senior boys by turn, to protect the priests;
Genocide in East Pakistan;
Indian Army and Mukti Bahini snatching the country
From Pakistanis and making Sonar Bangla;
Millions of refugees flooding Calcutta (it was that then).
The history-minded amongst the boys including me, writing pages of ‘immortal’
Accounts of what they thought would reveal to the world
The magnitude of the genocide, the train-loads of dead Indian soldiers
Cleared daily from the grounds
Where they fought and died along with the Mukti Bahini;
And the Sabre Jets felled by Indian Ack-Ack Guns at Mogra,
The undulating wail of the siren
Sending the boys packed to the air-raid shelter in the cellar
With cotton wool stuffed in their ears;
The misery in the refugee camps at Krishnagar….
All forgotten in the euphoria of victory,
The future dictator and the Emergency, a step away.
Bullies and chauvinists striking terror, to be suffered mutely.
Strange affections and affinities
Of the hapless Santhals and other meek confreres
Who never were on par with the snobbish
Middle-class priesthood-aspirants.
A couple of months’ residence in Darjeeling;
The first sightings of rhododendrons,
And an exam done, straight from the quilts;
Chilly water from the taps inhibiting ablutions…
Deep brown hard-baked bread laden with crimson marmalade
With thick knife-swabs of butter for evening tea;
Walks along the winding road; tea-pinching Sherpa women
Of indefinite age smiling with toothless gums, their gigantic
Baskets slung from the head; orchids and sub-Himalayan
Tiny-leaved shrubs and flowers;
An early-morning trek of several miles to Tiger Hill,
To miss out the glory of Kanchenjunga at dawn, enveloped in the clouds and fog…
Failing to hear God’s call in turmoiled emotions,
Leaving the House for good…
Old man Thimpu’s cycle rickshaw once again
To the ancient Bandel Station
Fond impressions of the eternal river
And the vast sky reflecting on it, a silvery sheet….
Life’s many scenes played out; the script and theme
Changing over and over again with time…..
***
Four decades later, a visit in driving rain and sleet…
To this haven green in memory and
Oft visited in dreams and reveries over the years as the heart
Quickened in nostalgic anticipation…
The House no more, only the buildings remain
The ancient venerable Bandel Church face-lifted into
A gaudy, garish ‘basilica’….the maidan shrunken, decrepit…
A priest, years junior to me in the House
Fearful, hesitant to offer bonhomie. The river’s invite
Still irresistible. The path that led to the riverbank
Slushy, the sticky mud hugging the shoes
The tiny fishing village, with cute, black boats
Tucked away in the inlet-stream. The greenery
Of banana tees, colocasias, mango-trees and drumstick trees
The misery of the shacks and hovels, all unchanged
In spite of the few new terraced buildings.
The road to the station is the same; same the lump
In the throat that rose as I left on a cycle-rickshaw
For the station last, four decades ago.
The heart of Bengal
Still draws me close; the squalor and hopelessness
Of the villages and towns and the metropolitan streets
Of Kolkata save for me a familiar wag of humanity’s tail.
I, like Yudhisthira, look towards it…
the end of trials and tribulations.
***
The Dogs of Ajitgarh
(The Mutiny Memorial is the gothic tower built on the Northern Ridge (visible from the This Hazari Metro Station) adjoining the Delhi University North Campus, to commemorate the 3000-odd English officers and men who were killed in suppressing the First War of Independence of 1857. During the Mutiny, as it was called, hundreds of thousands of the residents of the city and the rebel soldiers were killed. The Mutiny Memorial stands at a point a few meters uphill from the Burra Hindu Rao Hospital (formerly Fraser House). This site, which served as the command center for forces connected to the slaughter of several hundreds of thousands of Delhiites in two episodes five centuries apart (This is the spot where Timur encamped and oversaw the slaughter of more than 100000 Delhiites over three days and nights in 1399), also feature in persistent ghost stories narrated by famed local raconteurs. The Mutiny Memorial was renamed Ajitgarh or the ‘Site of the Unvanquished’ by the Central Government on the 25th anniversary of Indian Independence in 1972, and a new plaque was installed, explaining that the “enemy” mentioned in the original inscription by the British at the site, are “the freedom fighters and martyrs of India who fought bravely against the repressive colonial rule in the First War of Independence.” I, along with my daughter and my niece, visited Ajitgarh and other nearby monuments on 16 July 2016. The visit inspired the poem.)
Crushing a rebellion is the bounden duty of all power-centers.
Over the blood of the warriors of
The first War of Independence, was built
This Mutiny Memorial to celebrate the Company’s dead.
A mid-July afternoon. Post-lunch inertia-ridden
We trundle up the Ridge Road. The air
Dripping humid beneath the thick summer-green;
We swim up, breathing through our mouths.
Climbing up the base, we hardly make a round on the plinth,
When deep growls from the dark recess stop us.
Several pairs of glowing eyes flash. The first one stalks out
Menacingly, blocking our path, followed by another,
Then another, a couple more, in a convex arc formation,
Loath to brook history’s twist—Ajitgarh.
***
Sarmad Shaheed
(I revisited the Juma Masjid area and Ballimaran sometime ago, which inspired two poems. The first one is on the Martyr Sarmad who was executed by the Emperor Aurangazeb)
The king is naked, cried the innocent child.
Power is naked, the unsheathed sword.
Truth is naked too. Innocence can see it.
The two often clash in battle, sparks flying.
Sticking to nudity is the ultimate truth-speaking.
That’s what Sarmad did–the absolute unconformity,
Outside the frames of the established.
If Mansūr Al Hallāj declared ‘I am the Truth’ chanting Ana’l Haqq,
Sarmad did something similar, saying only the La Ilāha part of the kalimah
Leaving out illā-llāh, perhaps implying
‘There’s no God outside, but within oneself.’
Dazed by the unravelling, Aurangzeb had him beheaded
Outside the Eastern Gate of the Juma Masjid
Where the headless Sarmad danced on the steps
Carrying his head in his hands, before giving up the ghost,
As the legend goes.
Standing on the very steps, I frame a picture of his Red Dargah below
With the Quila-e Mualla, — or, the Exalted Fortress which was eventually reduced to
The simple Lal Quila to suit the latter-day reality of total decrepitude–
Looming in the skyline behind.
***
Ghalib’s Haveli in Ballimaran Road
[In spite of being in Delhi for the last 22 years, I was visiting Ghalib’s Haveli on Ballimaran Road, off Chandni Chowk, for the first time.]
The timeless poet shares his home now
With a shop—never mind, faring better than many
Of Delhi’s beloved bards who upheld
The Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb,
And yet have left no earthly trace.
One can only gaze around at the relics of his life
With a lump rising to one’s throat.
Such exalted conceits, word-craft, humor;
Unbending sense of honor bruised by
History’s nasty turns. Perpetually in debt
Yet never perturbed in his angelic self.
Homeless, ever roaming in spirit, he’d have little value
For a majestic dwelling place like this.
He’d even forgive the garish facelift given
To his long-lived-in, one-time quarters.
He knows these, and the countless tomes churned out about him,
Are well-meaning attempts to keep his memory alive. He’d even forgive
This, my lame verse in his name.
·
Enjoyed reading the Indian writer/ scholar.very detailed questions of Udaya bhai with proofs of his wide reading habits and very pleasing answers of the interviewee scholar. Badhaai .