The Bus Stop at Kandanassery
I have often seen Kovilan waiting for
a bus at Kandanassery bus stop,
as we have them today.
Mobile phones had not come into being. poems
At that time there were no luxury cars
The Iraq-America war had not taken place.
The BJP had not come to power.
Kandanassery was a far-flung corner.
* * *
Now it is all not like that. poems
As someone would say there is no house
where there is no matchbox,
there is no house where there is no smart phone.
The knowledge that the children of yesterday
had is no match for the knowledge
that the children of today have acquired.
What’s more, even political parties
are fattened on knowledge!
The presence of water has been found in Mars
The virus that causes AIDS has been identified
Should I say more, even the bus stop
at Kandanassery has been streamlined.
* * *
What was heard about time in the seventies –
Carl Sagan, Fritjof Capra, the cyclical theory
the meaninglessness of the concept of
space and time beyond the truth of atom
the spiral ladder of history
the villages laying siege to the cities
sub-nationalism, anti-fascism
and above all the renaissance values –
Nothing, Sir; everything is in linear progression
just like the superfast bus plying
between Guruvayoor and Kozhikode.
* * *
Both boys and girls with new and newer
information and knowledge about which
the likes of Kovilan had never heard
and with strings and talismans
worn on them are standing there waiting for a bus
Even though not a single person who has
grown to the stature of Kovilan is not
standing there, the world appears to have
made much progress.
And yet some dreaded old puzzles
have come home to haunt me.
* * *
That is to say, Kovilan is standing at an old bus stop.
In that scenario Kovilan is new and the bus stop is old
If so, what if Kovilan happens to stand at this new bus stop?
* * *
*Kandanassery is the home village of the renowned Malayalam writer Kovilan aka V.V.Ayyappan (1923-2010). He served in the Indian Army and wrote some of the best fiction that Malayalam has ever produced under the nom de plume Kovilan. Kovilan was a freedom fighter as well who lived the life of an ordinary villager.
Also Read: Selected Poems from Béatrice Douvre’s ‘Prisms’
Bone Poems
I had heard in the past in our poor village
there came once a time of want and destitution
fluttering its wings of restlessness over
the scanty supply of rice and kerosene and clothes.
Mothers had a tough time baking the thorny
rinds, nuts and stems of rotting jackfruits to feed
their children with apart from making them
eat the stems of plantain trees and colocasia leaves.
* * *
As time was thus dragging on, one day there came
a cart and from it were thrown out all around
many eatables of sorts, clothes, sweets and snacks.
Sitting in memory with their legs stretched out
many people describe it in many ways
unsure of whether it was a dream or reality.
The children swarmed the cart and ran
away with whatever they got and revelled!
* * *
That time is long gone, today the same children
have grown tall, nay they rivalled even their
own village in showing off in khadi, silk clothes
and suits having acquired the ability to translate
their own bodies into different costumes.
They are vying among themselves for a patch of
greenery, or a cool spring or even for the
refuse of food, pinching and plucking at each other,
hating one another all the way.
Even as Mother Malayalam implores her children
to not fight among themselves ditching one another,
and breaking open their heads.
* * *
Look, here is this guy who easily pockets a forest
even as another man sprints with a river
draped over his shoulders. And here is this man
who has knotted a mountain within the folded
edge of his dhoti and see this person who has
this green paddy field rolled up under his armpit.
Seeing their children grown big thus, the bones
laugh with a ringing sound in their burial pit.
* * *
*Malayalam, the language spoken in Kerala, is synonymous with the land itself.
Two Solitudes
I haven’t uttered even a single syllable
about my solitude to anyone
It was a solitary violet mallow flower
at the foot of the cairn drowning
in the glow of the dusk.
I haven’t asked you about your
solitude either. I knew that it was
a valley covered with snow.
* * *
We had desired to melt our solitudes
Into each other and to make it a valley
full of violets in bloom onto which
the soft shafts of the morning sun fell aslant.
Where else shall I scour for the
reason for our intimacy
I said thanks to time; and you to God
Then there came into being a bigger
solitude out of the two solitudes in fusion
And there was I the same mallow
by its side sans flowers.
* * *
Image Courtesy: Pinterest
One of the finest poets and lyricists writing in Malayalam today, Rafeeq Ahmed has published many volumes of poetry including a novel all of which are critically acclaimed. Rafeeq is also a renowned lyricist who has won the award for the best lyricist five times from the Government of Kerala. His collection Aalmara was chosen as the best book of poetry by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi in 2006. He has recently been awarded with Padmaprabha Puraskar. He lives at Akkikkavu in the Thrissur district of Kerala.
Ajir Kutty is a bilingual writer, poet and translator who translates between Malayalam and English. His translation of the short stories of Vengayil Kunhiraman Nayanar was recently published by the Sahitya Akademi. Ajir was chosen for the Jibananda Das Award for translating into English by the Antonym Magazine and the Kolkata Bhasa Samsad in 2022. He lives at Edava, a seaside village in Thiruvananthapuram District.
