So far so close

In my mother’s collection of old photographs, there used to be a faded hologram with a US post mark. It arrived in my home sometime in the early 70s, when my brother was eight or nine and I was not yet born. It was of a bird, the details of which I don’t remember now. The bird would appear to move as we tilted the card. At times, it would seem that the bird had taken a step closer to us, the next, it moved away, inviting but always elusive. The few lines on the back of the hologram addressed to my brother were in clear, blue lines: Can you catch the bird? Try and see. The signature was in Malayalam: Ayyappa Paniker.

Ayyappa Paniker, valiammavan (mother’s eldest brother) to us nephews, reminds me of that bird. So close, so far. A familiar bird in a familiar landscape for a moment, a speck in the distance the next minute, searching the silence of the skies, poetry in motion. For me, he is a presence seen, heard, felt, read… Not merely the experience of printed word, but part of autobiography where the poet and the scholar were the last of the presences. He was the pivot of our lives, next only to father in influencing the ways the family conducted. Always a telephone call away for advice and opinion. So was he for all the members of a large family, including his own wife and children, that spread from the Olickal house in Kavalam (the eight-petalled flower he mentions in Kudumbapuranam). He willingly allowed them the privilege to intrude into his time and space. His poetry was located among them, and some times, was about them. Where does the familiar end and the unfamiliar begin? When does the personal become the social? Are they indeed separate? Worth finding out, he would have said in familiar times. The distance now is far too close to probe him for answers.

Wallace Stevens said there are 13 ways to look at the black bird: I do not know which to prefer,/ The beauty of inflections/Or the beauty of innuendoes/The blackbird whistling/Or just after.

All that one can say is: I know noble accents/And lucid, inescapable rythms;/But I know, too,/ That the blackbird is involved/ In what I know./ When the blackbird flew out of sight/It marked the edge/Of one of many circles.

The black bird is indeed part of a pantomime in the winter wind. Yet, we strive to freeze that bird in space and time. Paniker and the black bird. Wonder, what he thought of Stevens’ poem.

Memory is episodic, in pictures and voices. In one such episode, I see a photograph of brother and me. I wear a round, woolen cap. I remember the voice: This is an Afghan cap. Some people in Russia also wear them. Paniker went to Russia in the ’70s. In photographs, where he is seen in the background of the Urals/Caucausus, one can see the first glimpse of a beard that was to become a famous trademark in later years.

In another episode, this is more of a series, I remember him collecting stamps for me. I don’t remember when I told him that I collected stamps. For many years, he collected them for me. Every time I met him, he would wink at me and open his purse or diary. There, in the folds, the treasure for me would have been safely kept. Stamps with postmarks of the USSR and the US, the Queen’s head, some from countries unheard. He would write regularly to my mother during his second sabbatical in the US. Long descriptive letters written in blue fountain pen ink. Those envelopes would be heavy, the extra weight owing to the bunch of used stamps he kept for me, carefully plucked from personal mail, and, perhaps, friends. When he returned in ’81, he brought me a stamp album. Meanwhile, he had helped me build a collection of stamps, with the same attention he gave to writing and editing assignments.

I never caught up with him. Because, he grew with me. That is what he made me feel. In my boyhood, the conversation was a joyous exercise in innocent humour and word play, a trait we had seen with grandfather (Paniker’s father). As one gained in age, he added satire and irony to it, always cautious if the listener was with him when he spoke. Occasional remarks on writing and writers and political developments slowly became the thrust of the conversation. Pauses would now replace puns as he spoke. Abrupt questions and instructions would be given: Have you read Maneeshapanchakam? Should read. The distance I needed to run to catch up would sometimes be frighteningly long. I heard epiphanies on Takazhi and his magnum opus, Kayar, VT Bhattatirippad and M Govindan (two people for whom he had enormous respect) in Thiruvananthapuram and New Delhi. A stray remark in a journalistic assignment I wrote on Balamaniamma provoked him. He did not rebuke me, but in his true ironic fashion put my remark in perspective. It was again an epiphanic moment. It answered these questions: What is Balamaniamma’s poetry? Why is she such a rare and a great poet? How difficult is it to write on ethics and dilemmas? It was a new approach to reading poetry. My world of poetry was inverted that day. He made me aware of interior landscapes. His own poetry became more accessible. Balamaniamma was to him a poet almost as great as Asan. It was, perhaps, not just a coincidence that she released the first copy of Gotrayanam, which he considered his masterpiece. He seldom spoke about his work, always elaborating on others. Even the occasional personal remark would be to embellish an insight.

His lessons weren’t limited to literature, as many of his students would confirm. My wife and me, were told about adding leafy vegetables instead of roots in the diet, taught the many ways of making pachhadi. His subtle suggestions and silences taught us how to approach life, engage sorrows with poise. That’s how he connected the personal and the social. To be truly political was to be a non-conformist; to be honest to oneself, to expand the boundaries of thought and form. Poetry, he said without saying, was about daring the depths. In Kudumbapuranam, he wrote:

Ethra agadhatalathil ninnu varunnu
Nammude oru punchiri polum!
(From what great depths emerge
even our gentlest smiles!)

The man and the poet were inseparable. He did not compartmentalize life. Nor did he allow life to box him in. That explains the many themes and rhymes in his work. Life is not a single rasa, how can then poetry be. In Pathumanipookkal, he wrote: Oraliloode kelkunnathu palarude manogathangalanu (What you hear in a voice are the thoughts of many).

A biographical essay is also an exercise in writing autobiography. The best biography is that which is gleaned out of many autobiographies. The ideal biography of Paniker would be a polyphonic open-ended mural.

Amrith Lal : amrith.lal@gmail.com
01.10.2006