Book
Review: Aan Mazhayormakal
Planting a
book entails the right time and soil. Here comes the apt occasion to plant
gendered renditions on rain for the harvest. Primarily the ground which is
fertile for the rain to burgeon a forest is either the landscape of memories or
the mindscape of dreams. What if one opt memories of men to drench in the rain of love, sadness, happiness, poverty,
disease, prosperity or calamity before a set of audience whom she thinks as the
companions of rain: let the answer hang on the air. ‘’Have you ever been to
rain’’, a poet friend asked me a couple of months ago when I appreciated a poem
about rain that he wrote. I replied “always”, as rain was a metaphor of “happiness”
to me. When it rains outside a pluviophile couldn’t resist the urge to be the in
rain and torrential rains of affection (to the rain), be it literal or
allusive, would pluck us from the fever stricken world of indolence to dream fearless
journeys to skies.
Published
in 2015, the non fictional work, edited by T.K. Haris, Aan Mazhayormakal, serves
a rainy feast to the mind where lies only winter sans sympathies and deserts of
paucity of imagination. The book features the nostalgia of selected known men
of letters and a few yet to be known men of experience and thoughts. Ranging
from K.P. Ramanunni to Mohanlal, C. Radhakrishnan to Manilal, Dr. M.K. Muneer
to A.P. Thajudheen, the list made the reader sodden in the rain of memories of
V.R. Sudheesh, U.A.Khadar, Kamal, Babu Bharadvaj, Ambikasuthan Mangad, Kalpatta
Narayanan, U.K. Kumaran, V. Musafir Ahamed, P.N. Gopikrishnan, Asees Tharuvana,
V.G. Thambi, S. Joseph, Veerankutty and a few more. None of them expressed
rainy feelings of Hemingway heroine of Farewell to Arms as they didn’t say: "It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense.
I'm not afraid of the rain. I am not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I
wasn't." Instead, some of them spoke bluntly that they had sheer
hatred as rain foreshadowed bereavement. A few lovers of rainy days smelt a
seductress female in the fragrance of rain. Some philosophize, several people paint
simple biographies, some appreciate rain’s sensuous appeal, a few people felt
home and convey the home and some returned to childhood while creativity rains
on black and white.
They
created amazing equations such as rain is a discipline called mathematics, rain signifies
river, rain is equal to life, poetry is nothing but rain, when rain is morning to you, rain is night to me, rain
is inevitable as marrying death, rain
drops are irresistible tears, rain colours, rain has colour of depression, rain
reminds that one is a man, rain in the mind could not forget a died hearth,
rain climbs the mountains and finally goes to the extent of falling upward
against Nobokovian suggestion that ‘one shouldn’t be angry with rain as it didn’t
know how to fall upward’.
Rain sang as
Kishori Amonkar to S .Joseph; it
frightened G. Prajesh Sen with the fragrance of Cycle Brand Three in one
agarbatti with the silent smell of death. Sheriff Sagar tasted the sweetness
and sourness of rain in his write up, when V.H. Noushad was conducting the
naming ceremony of rain: he names rain as Victor George, the Malayala Manorama photographer
who once aspired to release his collection of rain images as Ït’s raining”, disappeared
in one of the frames of rainy landslide . Babu Bharadwaj titled rain as an
impotent’s soliloquy and Mohanlal reminiscences in Padmarajan’s rain in
Thoovanthumbikal. Most of the men of the book joined Akbar Kakattil who embraced
rain with an amorous heart. Ambikasuthan Mangad was different and he writes about
an unexplored satanic face of rain incarnated as Tsunami. In him, rain took up
the role of the wailing loser, lamented the loss of his own brother.(page 67)
When a
woman reads what men wrote about rain, she hopes that it will fertilise the
rainy rhymes of all men and women who sense the rain in each because rain
erases all boundaries and differences, Kalpatta Narayanan remarked . (Page 70)
Thus ends the reflections on rain..
Be in rain..be rain.. and..rain..
Aswathi.M.P.
