iratta

iratta

സചേതനമായ ഓര്‍മ്മകളിലൂടെയും കാഴ്ചകളിലൂടെയും

തോമസ് മത്തായി കരിക്കംപള്ളില്‍

അനുപമവും ഹൃദയഹാരിയുമായ ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് കവിതാസമാഹാരവുമായി കെ.എന്‍.പിള്ള. 'കോഡ്‌സ് ആന്‍ഡ് നോഡ്‌സ്' (നിയമാവലികളും കോശസമൂഹങ്ങളും) എന്നു പേരിട്ടിരിക്കുന്ന സമാഹാരം ജീവിതത്തിന്റെയും പ്രകൃതിയുടേയും സചേതനമായ ഓര്‍മ്മകളിലൂടെയും കാഴ്ചകളിലൂടെയും കടന്നു പോകുന്നു. അതില്‍ അതിഭീകരമായ യുദ്ധം മുതല്‍ നിസാരമെന്നു കരുതുന്ന ചിലന്തി വരെയുണ്ട്. മൃഗങ്ങളോടുള്ള കനിവ്, മായുന്ന ദേശഭക്തി, പ്രാദേശിക ചരിത്രം, പുരാവൃത്തജ്ഞാനം... അങ്ങനെ ജീവിതഗന്ധിയായ വിഷയങ്ങള്‍ ഏറെ. ചരിത്ര-ശാസ്ത്രപരമായ എല്ലാ കവിതകള്‍ക്കും പ്രസക്തമായ പത്രവാര്‍ത്തകളുടേയും മറ്റും റഫറന്‍സ് നല്കിയിരിക്കുന്നത് വിഷയത്തിന്റെ സത്യസന്ധതയ്ക്കു കൂടി തെളിവാണ്. കുറേയധികം വര്‍ഷങ്ങളുടം പ്രയത്‌നം ഇതിനു പിന്നിലുണ്ട്.

സമാഹാരത്തില്‍ നിന്നൊരു കവിത:

THE FISHMONGER AND THE FELINE
I
The bicycle-fishmonger pedals
every morn to the teashop
just close to our house-gate-east
on his enroute to Thakazhi
(who knows to which other places?).
Stoked by a frisson of hunger
every dawn, his bicycle is escorted
by a fourlegged denizen 8
right from our west front-culvert
to the teashop where the fishmonger halts
his two wheeler, ramshackle and rickety. 11
II
The tomcat stray, coalblack, scraggy
and famished but broadeared and
gimlet eyed (but soulful), every dawn hopefully
lies in wait among the hedges and thickets
of grass, mushrooming on our frontroad’s 16
outer periphery. Hungering and yearning
for the sight and sound of some fishmonger’s
speeding bicycle and its screeching to a halt
at the teashop’s front. 20
III
The fishmonger wizened in his sunset years,
lanky, barrel chested,waspwaisted, gaunt and haggard,
a scarecrow in tattered, grimy and matted ‘dhothi’,
bedraggled and grubby and gingy shirt, goaty beard
(looking wispy and straggly), mutton-chop whiskers
tinged with grey, courting on to his chapped cheeks,
capacious forehead, bugeyed but puffed up,
grizzled eyebrows dangling above the eyes, 28
buck teeth protruded, face pock-marked and
wrinkled, dour and grumpy, a mop of sandy
and flaxen hair, frizzy and tousled but
spiky and silver leonine, secured by a reddish band
and wrapped with an yellow towel. A megawatt
but saturnine and insouciant smile, spindly legs,
limping in his bone’s frame. He opens his large box
fixed to the rear seat of his bicycle, unfolds 36
his towel, hangs it loose upon his one shoulder.
Then starts his trade, haggling of his fish.
His face then wreaths in a puff
of some of his favourite beedi’s smoke. 40
IV
The cat widly thumps its pencil-thin tail,
circles feverishly around the fishmonger’s legs.
In a tissy, it pathetically looks upon him,
frenetically mews and mews and whines and
whines and yowls and yowls at the fishmonger
who on occasions throws down one or two whits
of fishes from his box (which it ravenously
gorges and gobbles down in a trice). But 48
sometimes, livid, in his husky voice, he yells
and screams at the poor creature and in fury
kicks it away. When it writhes and groans
and moans and in a jiffy,flees from there for its life. 52
V
Who knows, by next day’s morn
or a few days hence, both the fishmonger
and the cat won’t end up mangled under the sod,
rolled over by some speeding vehicles (a common
occurence nowadays). When a few kith and kin
of the fishmonger somewhere might lament for him.
But who will mourn for a dead stray feline.
What’s there to script and scrawl about it? 60
When human beings themselves get forgotten toto even by
their own siblings and offsprings soon after their
obsequies end or for a few years more remembered during
their annual rituals when their names and birthday-stars
are chanted amidst hymns and bells in the temples or
in their homes or at the beaches of rivers during holy festivals.
Or in the churches during consecrations and supplications and
genuflexions or ablations.Nevertheless, a few forebears are 68
exceptions (lucky?). They continue to outlive their contemporaries
dead by appearing themselves inside many an obituary column
of print-media in their old pose even a quarter or half a century*
or more after their deaths. How long these great grand progenitors
now deluged in their prelapsarian equipoise, will continue
to be remembered through these ‘in-memoriam’-columns of newspapers,
inserted by their descendants still endeared to them and now alive
in this earth. Just to treasure, cherish and nourish and to perpetuate 76
the reminiscences of their ancestors and to celebrate
the ephemeral and the eternal and the immanent and
the intranscendent bond and bondage and its mystique.
I have waffled only bits of ordure and bilge! 80
(ugust 12 – December 15, 2008)

ആലപ്പുഴ അമ്പലപ്പുഴയില്‍ പാലത്തിങ്കല്‍ വീട്ടിലാണ് എഴുപതു കഴിഞ്ഞ കെ.എന്‍.പിള്ള താമസിക്കുന്നത്. ഭാര്യ ഉഷ.

തിരുവനന്തപുരം ഓതന്റിക് ബുക്‌സാണ് പ്രസാധകര്‍. 2011 ജൂണില്‍ പുറത്തിറക്കി. അച്ചടി ആലപ്പുഴ വിദ്യാരംഭം പ്രസ് ആന്‍ഡ് ബുക്ക് ഡിപ്പോ പ്രൈവറ്റ് ലിമിറ്റഡ്. വില 150 രൂപ.