Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan

(1935-2008)
Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan was born in Kadammanitta, Pathanarnthrtu
district. After completing BA from NSS College, Changanasseri,he joined
ffe Govemment of India's Postal Audit and Accounts Departmentin 195?
and refred from service in 1992 as Accounts Officer. A fellow-travellerof
Communist movement in Kerala, he was elected to the Kerala State Legis
Assenbty as an independentcandidatewith the support of the CPI (M)
1996. He was active on the cultural front and had sented as the Presidentq
the Kerala State Library Council and the Purogamana Kala SahityaSangh
the ProgressiveWriters' Association of Kerala.
Kadammanitta started writing poetry in the early 1960s and soongain
recognition as a major voice in Malayalam poetry. He is among the mostwidely-
read and admired of modern Malayalam poets. In spite of the emotionalteno
of his poetry and the deep sensuousness of his language, the poetic voicethat
emerges from his verse is that of a fierce savage who distrusts and denou
the false values associatedwith the civilized world. His poems reflectazi
abiding concern for the poor and vulnerable sections of society. It can be said,
åat Kadammanittademocratized modern Malayalam poetry. He can alsobé
said to have been the major force that acted as instrumentalin folklorizi
Malayalammodernism.The public recitals of poetry that he organizedi
the form of cholkazhchasdrew large audiences in the 1970s and 1980s.H'
poems like 'Kurathi', 'Kaattaalan','Kadinjool Pottan', and 'Shanta' havegain
wide popularity even among non-literate Malayalis. He has always been in the
forefront of avant-garde cultural movements and has translated Octavio Pazx
Sun Stone and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot into Malayalam.His
collectionsof poems are Kavita (1976), KadammanittayudeKavitakal(19
and Mazha PeyyunnuMaddalam Kottunnu (1992). Kadammanitta is a recipi
of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award and the Asan Prize.
'Shanta', originally published in 1976 and later included in Kadammanitta
 Poetry, Short Fiction and
Drama 27

983 collection,was a poem that he wrote under the backdropof the

kilodlan Emergencyof 1975. The poem makes an attempt to documentthe
dili«notional history of a turbulent period by placing on record the details of
disappearanceof softer sentiments and dreams from the lives of ordinary

Shanta
Shanta,
ÄCOmeafter your bath,
tChangeyour wet dripping clothes,
Combyour dark tre*a,
*Gently moving your bangle-laden arms.
XVIÅneyour eyes
*Andthe arching eyebrows •
*With a studied abandon,
•tiMark the anjanam on your forehead;
...Come, light up the air with your smile,
•CAnd sit down here beside me with all your grace,
Like a hymn sung in praise of the evening goddess,
up • emp • ess
With a few ce wo ds.

Let your eyes shine r c n

¯
Let your words be k}åt x of lovely mu%tcn
Caressmy chest
With your soft, n%Éfe fingers
And awaken mædgep_insi.de. mo
No evenings for us, I know,
Only
And se e magical moments,
res une ected.
1mus therfo fill wi meaning.
I see your eyeh after a hard days work at the hearth,
Huffing and puffing on your haunches in the kitchen,
Smoke-dulledeyes brim with Hfng tears,
Unkempt hair sä8tåxith ash,
The smudge of Got on your ace
Thethree-inch-longscar on our sweatin%k
The tear on your blaöEblouse below the sp o y armpit:
I see it all.
 28 IN THE SHADEop SA11YADRj

But Shanta, let us forget all that,ourselves.

And snatch a few moments for
courtyard,
Let us sit down in this little
of this vast sky.
And enjoy as one the beauties flowers bloom ng
thousand kantari
The spectacle of a
On the high mountain ranges
Which no tpan beast scale,
Of the u Aiky,
Vc
And seeing alliiiiéflét's smg:
'A thousand kantaris bloom scales,
On the mountain ranges that no man climb%09ÄL-slv.tJ.eJ
On the mountain ranges that no beast
Here's a deer with a crescent on the antlers.
A deer with crescenfiiifthe
Leapt up fmm the sky, leapttÄiSTr6inthe sky.

Make a ring around my yard,'OAan'eAö

What?
No water for bath? No water even to •nk?
Couldnt bathe the children because of this?
Where are they?
Have they one to sleep without a bath—
Dirt and e and all—inthis summer?
Are they the ones who fret in their sleep?
Poor children!

Thecoun m o trees
Standing Y e road
Ask after leave:
Whither, O traveller?
Tothe heart of
fatigue.
VVhydo you go to this ill-fated village
With not even a crow's claw for shade?'

Like a spring in the desert

Waiting for me at that ill-fated village.
'I Can't you hear her scold her stubborn children
As she waits impatiently for my return:
 bdL oetry, Short Fiction and Drama 29

Yourfather come home, you mischie mongers,

make sure that you get a good beÄGFÉTFöiiihiif!"
children who have gone to bed without even a good beating

our well too gone dry?

wells have dried up.
*Tonds, streams, rivers all are dry.
the twisted head of the ferryboat
ashore on the ford erg.cc
the ferryman, idle,
18head between his knees. e '1
le stares unblinkingly at the dry sand
the river bank.
eis in no mood for p easantries.
seen all that on my way home.
to creep and spread themselves,
cucumber vines that you've been watering

of their tenderness.
whatever happened to all those frogs
rang in the rains with their
they are dead in their holes in the fieldways.

É-atiese too 've seen on my way home:

c et f men and women
$3With pots and buckets
Crowding around the dry spring at Kanjirappara,
%€ilurling abuses at each other,
Each blaming the other for the dearth 6f water,

ChokiPK0Acoughs and abuses

-y To s%fiwn on the ground,
With their hands on their heads.

Look—
The wind sources too have gone dry,
The trees are still.
Their roots gone deep in search of water
Must have lost their winding way underground and perished.

salty tears!
Look at the moths that have come out of their hills.
30 IN TESHADE OF THE SAHYADRI

Look at their underbelly.

Are there no signs of rainclouds there? -Am-lea

Come, Shanta,
Let me put my ear to your heart.
Let me breathe in yo
Let me tasteyour unn in
Let my woman, mel together,
IA us divide our sorrows and e up from them
A lotus flower on whose petals to dance,
Dance to glory, sweat to glory,
Untn we melt and rise again
As a rainbow dream, 4-.0-12.—00
As a cloudburst, as a rain,

Into the pores of this, our earth.

Come to me
ike an gyergreen fullnss,
Alake 10%"
Come to me
As grief, as force, as truth
As my spirit's music.
Come, Shanta,
As the music of this cosmic force.

The twilight hour

Like a broken torso creeping towards its severed head.
The of the earth with lips twisted in agony.
I cannot cast my eyes on anything. b
How distortQTéVéöifiiKkappears.
Noble ideas come
To ruin my peace of mind,
Or whatever is left of it.
miat is here to be seen and heard!
The wretched eyes roving over the sights,
The evil ears chasing after the sounds,
The tongue tied down to varieties in taste,
The nose savo g kinds of smell,
The skin that d sensations of touch,
The mind that takes in both what is needed
And what is not,
And above dl, hovering over the mind
 Poetry, Short Fiction and Drama
31

bird that makes us feel everything, everything!

The senses unkind!
Cast a look at this sky,
Its ugly, pockmarked face
With its blind, blinking eyes.
No laughter here, or happy
Onlythe barking of limping dogs.

Don't you reme er owwe sat, A fid(

Sharing tender s es, eyes locked,
•?Caressingwith gentle fingers
The new shoots of the sapling near,
Nursing off and on sweet wounds
From s,5üupx-
Stealingcaresses in idled han e
In the forest shade on the faraway hill?
The days when you full of ischief,
Drew and erased
In the sandbanks
Of the rippling stream of our dreams.
days when we both turned into a dream
Alongwith other dreams asleep in stone.
Thedaysr two u othe sound he-Y
Offestive h - ower
The days that came at the peak
Of a season o fun,
Frolic and frui

ixedwith the magic of Wilderhues,

Maldngus roud as merry peacocks, D-€
Spreading out feathers In 1 ep easure,
Dancing to glory, a riot of colours

of the forest.

And at the end, don't you remember

How we lay down, spent,
On the bank of the stream
Like a whiff of air
Waiting for the morning?
 SAWADRI
32 IN THE SHADE OF 111K

Arise, Shanta, dawn,

Enter my veins like a new forest,
the
Like the wild passion of
With miraculous eyes, flame of peace,
a
Arise, enter my sky like
of solace,
Flow unto me like a river stream of music!
Come to me, Shanta, like a you
Jcö
ave stolen myself to be with
In the hope of getting away
dullness,
From the prison-house of
and hostility,
From the corridors of hatred
From and looks,
From the illusions of mirrors,
From the ppp ion f the hourglass,
From the hierarchy
And from the rape of letters and figures.
Why do you remain so remote?
We must seek pleasure
Either in memory or in awakening.
But I see you do not even sweat.
No sweat
Even to moisten my lips.
Why don't you break this impassiveness
With a sigh, at least?

Yes, I've come to know everything:

That the son of the widow next door
Has gone mad and run away.
That the sprightly girl who frolicked around like a lambb
Has taken poison and is dead.
That the houses where no hearths were lit
Have gone up in flames.
I have also known how the woodcutter's axe
Swung around and felled its owner.

Known too are the chronicles of e royal hunt

Of the old kings
And the common tales of young boys
Silencedto death by unexpected arrows.
I see blind parents impatient to hear
The footsteps of their sons gone to fetch water.
Wi no one to makéfies%1 Ptffem, 7
 Poetry, Short Fiction and Drama 33

Dead bodies lie about rotting.

Impassiveness shrouds this
like a pall of gloom.
Why don't you break this impassiveness
With a sigh, at least?

Break this arid silence with your perspiration!

Things won't be the same all the time, my girl.
Something might happen some day.
Water might suddenly spout
From springs erupüngin the black rocks. 4---<
Let us therefore talk to each other.
Let us laugh or weep,
Or exchange a few meaningless words.
If not, we too will rot
like the heart of this
And the stench of rotång bodies
Till lay eggs in our own nosfrils.
VS
The larvae of ruination emerging from those ecs
Will breed in us,
And feed on our blood.
Let's therefore break this dark shell

Let's

All that we can see,

Are through these manacles.
Mywoman, it is through these manacles alone
That I can see you.
Let's break them
With a sigh at least.
Ah! The warmth of your sigh,
I can feel it on my face!
Here, I ran see
Perspiration on your forehead!
I can hear your heartbeat too!

Awake,beauty,
Full woman,
Youwho wergv€rought from ebony,
34 IN THE SHADEOF THE SAHYADRI

AE&to pollute the sacred grove

At Kadammanitta. b>umq
Awaken and come
Wearing lightning on your tresses,
Grains of corn in your beautiful eyes,
Leafy ornaments in your ears,
And a necklace of precious stones. 9tu%e-z
Awake,arise to pollute the sacred grove
At Kadammanitta.

Ascending the stairs o ell

Is this army of Paq
Singing and dancing %ildly.
Dancing in wild abandon
Is this army of Parayas.
Beauty, full woman,
Youwho blossomed forth
From the shoot of wild erukku,
Awake,arise, and po ute
The sacred grove at¯Gdammanitta.

Here in this valley

Of grief and hunger
Dancesthese ent fire,
Shedding its s o S../vn
Its hood spre40ut high.
The sound of
Echoing in the dry fields,
/V1.D---t
The full-throated shriek
Of the plantain tree
Eager for the sprout:
Awake, you full wo
Awake, you little roo
You who are shaken
By the palmyra frees,
Awake, arise to
The sacred grove at Kadammanittæ

Translated by P.P. Raveendr

[Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan, 'Shanta