only the soul knows how to sing.....

when kamala surayya aka kamala das or madhavikutty passed away on May 31, for many it was the end of an era, an epic; it was also the death of one of the finest writers in Indian English, also one of the controversial; it meant the passing away of one of Malayalam's favourite writers; but for the sad majority it was merely the death of a writer who had written stories and poems laced with sex, courted a controversy too many, and who was "born a Hindu but died a Muslim".....
for me, it was the death of an inspiration....
true that the woman who screamed through her verses to break away from conventions and confinement, adorned the burqah in her later years, given that she relinquished her beloved Krishna to embrace Islam.... but it is not her change of religion or her writings on so-called sex that should have hit the headlines. it is just plainly wrong and so very unjust to the writer and the rich legacy she has bequeathed to lovers of literature all over..... all of us reported the story, but missed the real one, or rather was not even inclined to probe deeper, to find out if there was more.....when she died, all of us conveniently hid ourselves behind the burqah, and sought comfort when her corpse was covered with it....
and more than injustice, i think there was a certain hypocrisy when national dailies reduced the story to single columns or carried it in the inside pages as if to show "we haven't missed the story"..... she deserved more, at least now...not that she really would have bothered, but still....
for me, she cannot die..... she will continue to live.... she lived her entire life through her words, and so death has not really conquered her....
i still remember how i read her "controversial" book My Story.... i was down with heavy fever, my eyes were burning, throat dry and whenever i opened my eyes it was to read from that book..... and reading, i would grow tired and go to sleep still clutching the book..... and by the time i finished the book, and also recovered, i had my mind made up.... i realised i needed to write ...and write without reservations and freely and from the heart.... and through her works, she taught how writing liberates one, how writing is a refuge, an escape, an utopia that urges you to move forward, and sometimes, as for me, writing is the only pleasure and pain in an otherwise dull life.....
.....i can only remember her with respect, gratitude, and more than all this, with irrational, unreasonable love.... with respect, for her not mincing words, her guts to write every word she wrote and for her conviction in every word of it, how she survived every controversy, how she faced every speck of mud that was slung in her face......for gratitude, for inspiring me to write, to introducing me to Malayalam literature.... the first books I read in Malayalam and which still remain my favourites are hers......and with a love that is beyond reason for every word she has written, for her, for the writer and the woman.....
.....On the night of May 30, I was dejected, depressed, that sunken feeling that drives me to the brink of insanity, and in the bouts of which i am pulled into time and again, sinking in melancholy that is too painful.....i was indecisive, had my whole damn life - the past, present, and future - staring at me mockingly.....and like is my temperament of late, i was sleepless....and i opened my diary and wrote..... to actually stare at my feelings, to get an idea of its shape, its contours, its craziness.....and i wrote..."i don't know what to do. i dont know of any job i can do. all i know is i can write...." the next morning the first thing my roommate told me when i opened my eyes was "madhavikutty is dead".....and i suddenly knew, i asked her when....but she didn't know....later i found out it was at 1.55 in the night.....almost to the minute i had written, "all i know is i can write".....well, it is a vague co-incidence..... but i know there is a connection, i had felt that connection when i read her first poem, her first story.... there was a numbness as i came in to office, and was asked to do that copy, a numbness when i read reports of her death on news websites, but the connection remained.....
.....and which is why i feel so enraged at the kind of reports that went following her death...i wouldn't say all, but yeah, the majority..... she was a true artist, a lover, there is so much of love in her works and ironically, she received so much of hate.... her krishna, was not someone she traded off when she converted to Islam, it is the archetype of the lover who loves and hurts, and radha is the woman in love, torn between her husband and lover, between stability and irrationality.....and in love, i have always identified with radha.....i have known and felt krishna, and love that hurts and the hurt that is fulfilling as much as love.....
she wrote, she screamed, she lived, loved, she sang....hers is the only soul that knows to sing.....she is the real story.....