In his poem 'Kavalam' in the anthology 'Pathumanippookkal' Dr K Ayyappa Paniker has made a nostalgic reference to his ancestral home and its surroundings. The poem evocatively recreates from the distant past the rustic ambience of Kavalam, a part of the water-logged Kuttanad area where the main mode of conveyance used to be the ubiquitous row boat. Before the road, the bridge and the cars came, the poem says, the boatman had to be hailed from the other bank. During day-time visibility was good, but in the night one had to call out aloud. 'The lone wick of the small lamp, at times, would reflect on the ripples as a long moving line.'

The poem is in the form of a conversation between two people, possibly the poet and his female companion, who wants to know if she is being taken to Kavalam in this fashion.

'Is that the way you are taking me there?'

'I want to go to Kavalam.
Want to see all the places.
The door of the log chamber, the central court-yard,
The river landing, the basil platform,
The school yard and the riverside.

Will I get a plot there?' she asks

and the poet's reply is a counter-question:

'Will it be sufficient to see the final resting place?'

Dr Paniker had set apart a plot of land on the western side of his traditional family house, Olickal tharavad, at Kavalam twelve years ago to serve as his final resting place. It was here that his body was brought from Thiruvananthapuram for cremation on August 24, a day after he died of complications arising from a prolonged lung disorder.

After the last respects were paid and the body was consigned to the flames, I looked around for the 'mantaram' and the pomegranate planted by his great grandmothers Laachi and Uppali fondly mentioned by him in his celebrated poem 'Kudumbapuranam' (Family Saga). I could not easily locate them as there was an abundance of trees and plants in the
premises where he was laid to rest.

But the basil platform, the central court yard, the river landing, the door of the log chamber and the school yard were unmistakable in their identity. They were there exactly as they had been conjured up in his poem 'Kavalam.'

Dr Paniker probably had a premonition of his death much before he was admitted to the hospital. In fact he had tried to avoid hospitalization for long, to the point of resistance. He used to say that walking into the hospital was easy, but there was no guarantee that a person would walk out the way he walked in. Most probably he may have to be carried out.

But despite such a bleak outlook, his first phase of hospitalization in April went off well and he was discharged in a far better condition than he was at the time of admission. But with his lung capacity remaining very low, he had to be mostly confined to his room and be on
the constant support of the oxygen cylinder. For a person who loved to travel and meet and talk to people, who used to regale listeners with his ready wit and repartees, this solitary confinement was in fact a tall order. It was a miracle that he had not shown any symptoms of depression.

But his second coming to the hospital in early August was in a far worse condition. Apart from the very serious lung disorder, there was an untreatable fracture on the spine. And with attendant complications there indeed was no hope.

Perhaps aware that death was stalking him, Dr Paniker had wanted to make many arrangements in regard to family matters and his literary pursuits much before he went into the hospital. In respect of the latter, one of the things he did was to ensure that his voice was preserved for posterity. He said there were video recordings of readings of some of his poems but a majority of the readings of his poems by himself was on audio tape. Since the tapes were not dependable and were liable to damage, he wanted all such recordings to be copied in compact disc format.

This was a slow process as he was not sure which audio cassettes in his vast collection contained the recordings. He and his second daughter Meena painstakingly went through the collection and came up with the wanted cassettes in twos and threes. Though readings of almost all of his major poems like 'Kurukshethram,' 'Gothrayanam,' 'Passage to America,' 'Kadevide Makkale,' 'Mrithyupooja,' 'Dukhamo Sakhi,' 'Purushanallee Nee,' 'Hoogly,' 'Sarakoodam' and many of the humorous poems were thus rendered to CD format, he was a little unhappy that the tape recording of one of his personal favorites,
'Gopika Dandakam,' could not be located.

In his vast and varied output as a poet Dr Paniker had dealt with almost every subject under the sun: life and death, love and marriage, friendship and enmity, science and technology, man's follies and foibles, nature and environment and what not. As a social critic he was devastating in his sarcasm while as a torch bearer to the society
he was at his illuminating best.

Death, in a way, finds a subdued presence in many of his poems, as in 'Kavalam.' Some times its treatment is somber and overt, sometimes matter of fact, sometimes plain funny, depending on the mood of the poet. In the 'Epitaph' that he had written for himself in a poem of the early 1980s he said :

'Here lies the body of Mister Panicker
Who at the end of his panicking days
Agreed to lie still for a while.
It is not known what happened to his soul,
If indeed he ever had one.

He was not quite unlike anyone of us while he lived.
His flesh, to tell the truth, often revolted
And upset his delicate sensibility.
Space he could never control to his liking,
His sense of time, you know, wasn't strong either.

He had of course in his wallet many a theory;
The things he could touch, however,
Told him a different story.
All his life he was patiently
Learning how not to live at all.

Who knows, perhaps
Given another chance
He might do a better job of it than before.'

Perhaps only Dr Paniker could look at himself and say like this. A consummate artist in the realm of comedy and sarcasm, he could entertain audiences or readers by poking fun at himself.

'I had an enemy called Ayyappa Paniker,' he says in another poem.
'At times he tried to stare at me and frighten me.

When I stared back at him,
He might have felt frightened too.

Some day or other he is likely to come back.

Since he left I have been depressed
For want of someone to frighten.

Why should I frighten anyone
That doesn't frighten me?'

In the early 1960s when he joined the University College at Thiruvananthapuram as a Lecturer in English, Dr Paniker had already achieved fame as the main voice of modernism in Malayalam poetry. His celebrated poem 'Kurukshethram,' that sought to re-define poetic
sensibilities by freeing poetry from its romantic mould, had been published by then and was being hotly debated in literary circles. His students had looked upon him with awe as they realized that they were in the presence of intellectual brilliance. Apart from being one of the best teachers whose erudition knew no bounds, he had the aura of a pioneer of a significant literary movement.

In 'Kurukshethram,' among other things, he had made a clarion call for change, in the sensibilities as in everything else:

'Around us
The varied visions of a heaven on earth
Grow dim, dwindle and die;
What avails the journeying spirit
In its onward march?
What can self sustain?

Let us, then,
Move into a new frenzy
And wage an endless fight
To shape and re-mould
The world around
Nearer to the heart's desire.'

While 'Kurukshethram' marked a watershed in Malayalam literature, something that provided the impetus for change, Dr Paniker did not stop with his experimentation with it. He did not stick to any given formula for writing and continued to evolve his style in everything that he wrote, whether it is 'Mrithyupooja,' 'Gothrayanam,' 'Passage to America,' 'Kudumbapuranam' or the 'cartoon poems' or nonsense verse. And he touched upon every subject one could think of, from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the advent of space travel that opened up new vistas for technological innovation and ingeniousness to the pleasures of scratching an itch.

When Yuri Gagarin of the erstwhile Soviet Union ushered in a new era of space travel, it upset the prevailing notions of time and space. Dr Paniker had a poetic response to such an epochal event. In his
celebrated poem 'Hey Gagarin' he said

'Hey Gagarin, space traveler,
I come ,a wayfarer, get off my tracks.
Yield today to my mortal concerns,
To my poetic fancy,
To my creative urge
Before you measure out
All these expanses….'

He also called upon his fellow poets to

'Grow new wings to catch up with science
Across the recesses of the outer space.
The pioneers have unfurled their flags on the heights;
Break you your idols and bless yourselves.
Nothing is empty anymore, nothing is outside of us;
The whole universe is filled with subtle sensations.

Where is our telescope, where our thermometer?
Brandish the torch, fulfill the urge to create,
Cut off the barriers of time and space,
Keep the spirit ablaze that will burn up
Every trace of death dealing darkness.

Dr Paniker, for a long time the Director of the Institute of English of the Kerala University, had always been considered as a world citizen in the true sense of the term. Apart from having his doctoral studies and post-doctoral research in the United States, he had
frequently traveled to many parts of the world, attending international poetry conferences and camps, giving lectures and projecting Malayalam poetry at all such world fora. He had also utilized those occasions to imbibe the best of their literary traditions. There is a distinct segment of his poetic output that deals with his experiences and observations in those countries.

But wherever he went, he carried with him the ever fresh images of the village where he was born. He was a world citizen in outlook, but a Kavalam villager at heart. It was a relationship he could never snap even if he wanted to. His nostalgic longings for his village have found best expression in 'Kudumbapuranam,' that traces the history of the family from the times of his great grandmothers. In perfect word pictures he tells the stories of Laachi and Uppali his great grandmothers, of maternal uncle Kesava Panicker, a heroic figure who pioneered cultivation of paddy in the waterlogged Kuttanad, of Sardar
K M Panicker, a close relative who achieved fame as one of the most distinguished administrators and diplomats of the country. Apart from the tales of such leading lights of his family and the village, the poem also tells us, in the manner of gossip, tales of many of the village folk, such as that of hunchback Janaki and how her hump was straightened by neighbor Kittan though it was Raman who got a bad name.

Nostalgic references to his village have been made in many other poems as well. In 'The Village' in his latest anthology 'Pathumanippookkal' (translated into English as 'Poetry at Midnight'), he says:

'Now when you go to your village hereafter,
You should meditate for some time
In the incense burning memory chamber.

A river, a river bank and some men.
You take this picture with you.
To villages not like this
You take along these village memories as well.'

And his village memories will be in tact with him as he is laid to rest in the place from where he started on his long global journey.

Dr Ayyappa Paniker: A Biographical Note

Born: Sep 12, 1930 at Kavalam,Kuttanad. Studied at Malabar Christian College, Kozhikode, and University College,Thiruvananthapuram. MA Phd from Indiana University in the United States. Lecturer in English at the CMS College, Kottayam, University College, Thiruvananthapuram and Institute of English, Thiruvananthapuram. Later Director and Head of the Department of the Institute of English. During 1980-81 did post-doctoral research in the Harvard and Yale Universities. Had served as Chief Editor of Central Sahitya Akademi's compilation 'Medieval Indian Literature.'

Works: Ayyappa Panikkarude Krithikal -4 volumes. Indian Renaissance, A Perspective of Malayalam Literature, Indian Narratology , Mayakovisky's Poems (Translation), Cuban Poetry (Translation), Guru Granth Sahib (Abridged Translation).

Awards: Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry, 1975, Kalyani Krishna Menon Prize, 1977,S P C S Award. 1978,Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Criticism,1984,Central Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry, 1984,Distinguished Teacher Award, 1990,Mahakavi Kuttamath Award for Poetry, 1990,Mahakavi Ulloor Award for Poetry, 1990,Samastha Kerala Sahitya Parishath Award for Poetry,1993, Kabir Samman. 1996-97, Indira Gandhi Memorial Fellowship, 1997,Gangadhar Meher National Award for Poetry,1998, Asan Prize(Chennai), 1999,Panthalam Kerala Varma Award, 2002,Vallathol Award for 2004,Padmashree 2004, Sanjayan Puraskaram, 2005,Saraswati Samman, 2006 and Mahakavi P Kunhiraman Nair Award, 2006.

September 10, 2006