Remembering S K Pottekkat and His Memorable Work - Subramanian A

8/8/2019 Remembering S K Pottekkat and His Memorable Work - Subramanian A

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Some people are born great, some become great by their own efforts and some become great

after their death. Of these three, it can be rightly said of S K Pottekkat that he belongs to the

second category.

His epic work Oru Desathinte katha (The story of a hamlet) is an account of the author himself-

of his childhood and adolescent period. S K speaks of himself by letting his times, people andplaces speak. People and times speak volumes and the total effect rises to an epic of a village, her

growth and decline of people and above all, a vintage tour most of us would experience when

going back to our old playgrounds after decades of perchment in other lands.

What does the book speak unto her readers? It speaks of an atmosphere of S Ks childhood and

youth. He draws it by drawing the village life as it were half century ago. He speaks straight

from his heart with enough honesty and simplicity. There is a Wordsworth within him as can beseen from the following lines which he quotes in a scene when he takes leave of his house after

his fathers death, with his mother to her native village:-

Long have I loved what I beholdThe night that calms, the day that cheers

The common growth of mother earthSufices me her tears, her mirth

Her humblest mirth and tears.

The idea of writing such an autobiographical work is mentioned on the Preface. The author isseeing a big water tank in a place where stood a little hut once upon a time. In that hut lived a

girl who was in her teens. He had met her in a dramatic situation. Once he was returning from

the local library and while crossing a Maidan, it began raining. He saw this girl being caught inthat rain and in the howling wind, her umbrella became a bundle of broken skeleton. He naturally

offered his umbrella out of youthful enthusiasm and in turn had her broken umbrella and assuredher that he would give it back after repair. He did it in a couple of days and thereafter had notpractically met her even though he had secretly wished to meet her. Two or three years eclipse

and one day her brother approaches him and hands over a note-book. The young poet opens the

book. It contained poems written by that village girl. He had almost forgotten Ammukutty bythat time. He asks her brother about her welfare to which the reply was a stream of tears.

My sister died some days ago. And she had asked me to hand over this note-book to the

young poet of Athiranipadam.

He ends the Preface with the following notes:-

in that village called Athiranipadam where I was born and brought up, not only my first

love Ammukutty lived and died but many other characters also lived and passed away. They

were the forefathers of my hamlet. They were influential in my life. They became my very

living voice. Some people were mere subjects of interest to me while some others were the real

life lines of a bygone era..

The author remembers those people, that village lying beside the railway tracks on the banks of


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Kallai river, his childhood and care-free days which all make him feel being dutiful towards

recording these faces and events for posterity. He sets down to the task of writing about them and

the result became this epic work.

He starts the book with an account of his father and ends up with the fathers death which

ultimately leads to the partition of the house. The reason was his elder step-brother BasraKunhappu and he finds the situation to be painful. He describes the partition in detail. The entire

description carries the tone of philosophy and the transient nature of human life is revealed. He

observes in pain that while valuation of property is being done, the human endeavor behind thebrick and mortar, the feel for every room, the emotional attachment to plants and trees, the value

of books, the sentiments for things that may seem so trivial, etc are not properly taken care of.

He finally takes leave of the place to his maternal village of Ilangipoyil. The description is verytouching:-

.with Hashim Munshis feather pen in my pocket, with that old poetry notebook of my first

love Ammukutty wherein a golden past silently wept, holding in one hand those notebooksthat contained my whole writings till that period, holding my mother with the other, with those

spectacles of my father which saw and taught only truth, which saw human beings only in the

truest form and truest perception, silently weeping in my pocket and comforting us at the same

time and becoming a source of inspiration, I walked along the dusty, singular path, while a

bird from a thorny bush sang a sorrowful note of loss and pain. A wind carried nostalgia. I

went first to Ilangipoyil.then to Bombay in search of a livelyhood and then.then.to this

vast and unknown world all alone with a sigh of uncertainty.

If it wasnt S K Pottekkat, one would have closed the book with these impressions. After this, hehas added some twelve chapters all captioned under the title Marmarangal (Reverberations).

These chapters add beauty , strength and vintage flavour to the hitherto story. As a grownup man

and immemsely popular author, he visits his old hamlet after a long gap of thirty five years. Hedescribes the present state of affairs of the once sleeping thorp, her forefathers, through the eyes

of Velu Mooppan, an old man, the only livingcharacter of that vintage times, the epochal period.

By now, most of them were dead and gone, some were leading a rustic and ruined life elsewhere.All are portrayed in great depth and reality. At one point he observes the following:-

. This world is a big graveyard where umpteen generations have lived and gone, built their

kingdoms on the old ruins, new generations demolishing them and building their own worlds butto last only till the time of next generation. This is an ever ongoing process like the flow of

Ganges and would continue till the dusk of mankind and if anyone tried to identify himself in

such a state of affairs, he would shrug his shoulders..

..I took leave of that old man and began walking by a place where stood the Bharathmatha

Hotel once upon a time. I saw a youth wearing Jeans, sipping a bottle of Cococola in front of ashop and I sighed unto myself. I framed an answer in my mind if he asked me about my

whereabouts, if he cast a suspecious look on me, if his glances told me that I was a stranger in

the present surroundings. The answer was this:-


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Hi, the representative of the new generation of Athiranipadam, I am an old fellow who has come

to my old hamlet in search of antiques and living icons.and in search of the missing roots.

Thus, S K finishes the book.

The nation honoured him with Jnanpeeth Award in 1980. Calicut University conferred upon himthe D.Litt degree in respect of his yeomen work done for the progress of Malayalam literature.

What are my impressions of S K Pottekkat? Let me share my thoughts with you.

More than a travelogue writer, more than a story teller, he impresses me as a humanitarian

person in every aspect. Around the globe he had done extensive travel and his short stories and

travelogues Nile Diary, Simha Bhoomi, Kappirikalude Nattil, London Notebook, Bali

Dweep, Indonesian diary, Malaya Nadukalil, Innathe Eurpoe, Paathira Suryante Nattil.. to

name a few clearly reveal this aspect. For him, people of any land were like his bosom friends.

His writings carried the tone of universal brotherhood beyond all differences. One telling

example is the concluding scene of the story A timpiecente Katha or The story of a timepiece.The honesty of his heart is reflected in his every work.

How did I get acquainted with his works? There was a lesson for me to study in my tenth

standard. This was a chapter taken from his Bali Dweep. That was Ulnattile Oru Utsavam ( A

festival of a hamlet). The festival and the Chokorday family all enlivened my imagination and I

began reading his travelogues from the local library. The more I read, the more he impressed menot only as a writer who wrote straight from his heart but for the simplicities of life he liked and

for his sense of humour. He had enough of sense of humour and we can see the reflection of this

element in his many stories. Even while describing a grave situation he made it light and coolwith his sense of humour. One telling example is the opening para of the story entitled

Inspection.

I had met him once way back in 1976 from the NBS Book Stall, Kozhikkode. The meeting was

short and brief and I had no stuff to ask him. This is the sad part of it. He asked me about my

whereabouts and his dialogues impressed me like that of a perfect gentleman. I asked himwhether he had written any poetry and he presented me his collection of poems Prema Silpi

signing his autograph in his beautiful handwriting.

Born in Kozhikode as the son of Kunchiraman Pottekkatt, an English school teacher, he had hisearly education at the Hindu School and Zamorins High School. He graduated from Zamorins

College, Kozhikode in 1934. He did not find an employment for three years following his

graduation and devoted his time to the study of Indian and Western classics. From 1937 to 1939,

he worked as a teacher at Calicut Gujarati School. He quit the job to attend the Tripura Congressin 1939. He then went to Mumbai and took up several jobs only to develop an aversion for any

white-collored jobs. He returned to Kerala in 1945. In 1952, he married Ms. Jayavalli and settled

down at Chandrakantham, Puthiyara in Calicut. They had four children- two sons and twodaughters. Pottekatts wife died in 1980 after which his comdition too deteriorated. He was

hospitalized in July 1982 following a paralytic stroke. He died on August 6, 1982. Among his


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personal circle he was affectionately known as 'Prem Pottas'. It could be that Vaikom

Muhammed Basheer was the man behind this nick name.

What were the seeds that led him to be a popular writer and author? Elsewhere, he reveals two

episodes. Both are related to his childhood and boyhood days. When he was a child he used totravel on the shoulders of Cheriyakkan to his uncles house covering the fields and the landscape

of Chevayur hills (now, the place of Kozhikode Medical College). Those were his sojourns fromhis hamlet to the town of Kozhikode. Cherikkan would be telling so many fairy tales on the way.

These tales had gone deep into his imagination as a child. It had opened the window for the

future writer. He thankfully recollects Cheriakkan who had sown the seeds in him, who had sethis imagination going.

The second episode relates to the rudimentary of story writing. During his boyhood days an old

woman used to approach him to write letters to her son. This son was not taking care of his

mother and seldom turned up after his marriage. He was under the influence of his wife. The oldwoman would narrate her tales and troubles in a colloquial manner which he translated into his

language like a story and sent to this guy. This served him the initial stage of story writing. S Ksays that his letters had their effect and the son finally understood his folly. S K also observes

that this guy had met him in later years and repeneted over his wreckless life but never knew that

it was he who was the man responsible behind this mental transformation.

Pottekkatt was a writer of strong social commitmment and ideals, possessing an indvidualistic

vision. He was adept in weaving plots of chilling suspense akin to the writings of Alexandre

Dumas, pre, O. Henry etc. His stories are characterized by a plot that carries an element of

surprise, a few suggestive incidences that heighten its dramatic quality and a style that easilymediates between realism and lyricism. The plot is characterized by an OHenry twist. Love is

also a dominant motif in several of his stories. At times it is the tragedy wrought by fate itself.

Pottekkatt has been translated into English, Italian, Russian, German and Czech, besides all

major Indian languages. An Italian anthology of The best short stories of the World published

from Milan in 1971 included his Braanthan Naaya (Mad Dog). A collection of eleven of his shortstories in Russian had a sensational sales of one hundred thousand copies in two weeks.

I have read many writers and authors. Among them, S K Pottekkat has a special place in my

heart, thoughts and reflections.

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Remembering S K Pottekkat and His Memorable Work - Subramanian A