Aarambham is an Indian word (It has got Sanskrit origin and every Indian language in which I have some level of proficiency, does have that word) which means to start something, Commencement and begin…
More or less, first blog of mine got written by itself, on Sundaysambar.blogspot.com (that Blog is still there in Web.), on 25 September 2007 Tuesday. The title of the blog was Aarambham. I was not much of a writer then. Not that I am one now, after almost 17 more years at it. In fact, I am not much of anything else per se, leave alone writing. Though I am fully contented, on what Life has painted on my canvas so far and not worried at all about the possible future fine line additions to that, I would be the first one to realize, acknowledge and even be serene about the fact, that I have not excelled in any one area so far. Whether it is as a student (Should moderate it as I did very well when I was quite young and then post high school there was great dip midway during my graduation and now may be on the upswing again as a learner and as a kind of making amends), in career, in sports or arts.
And it would be very apt to say that I am born as a parent and did have a quite tough time growing up as a parent of Manu and Rishi. The same I can say about all other spheres of life.
May be that is why Jiddu Krishnamurthy, Fr. Ama Samy and Zen away appealed to my heart mind. All of them kind of preach and practice … “Be Nothing “.
I got my first asthma attack when I was around 5 years old. That kind of impaired my lungs and limited my ability to take part in games and sports. Not that I was endowed with any good hand-eye coordination. Am someone with two left legs and two left arms. So, I really did not mind being I confined to indoors in a way. That was a safer place compared to the challenges and ridicule at the playgrounds. The world of letters and spirits of imagination were my trapdoor to escape into vast empty sky of freedom. And I read. read… read and read… To label it as voracious reading would be rather an understatement. My father used to get Poombatta (a monthly magazine for children named Butterflies) and Balarama for us. But I more relished Mathrubhoomi Weekly, which did have almost all the best literature from world class writers. Not only Malayalam, but translated works from other languages such as Kannada, Bengali etc. The best layout artist from the shores of Kerala Artist Namboothiri used to sketch those pictures in those pages. If I close my eyes, still I can recall those pages of Madhavi Kutty’s Balyakalasmaranakal (Childhood memories), Srikirsha Alana Halli’s Bhujangayantte Dsavatharanghal , Ashapoorna Devi’s Satyabhati, Satajit Ray’s Feluda stories …. The lists goes on…And O.V. Vijayan ( the GREATEST of Malayalam writers) had a political column too. That was an icing on the cake. In our small home, my father, who was a lifelong member of CPI and ISCUS had a very good collection of books printed in Malayalam by Mir and Progress Publishers of. Moscow. Dostoevsky to Tolstoy to Yakov Perlman (Wonders of Physics). Also, from the all the co petitions and quizzes (Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad’s Eureka etc.), I had collected a good number of books. Translation of Oliver Twist, Les Misérables, David Copperfield, Uncle Toms’ Cabin, Huckleberry Fin, The Call of the Wild…. Prabhat book house, the book publishing arm of CPI, used to tour all Kerala towns selling their books. Once when they were in Mannarkkad, I just sit in a corner of that hall, and managed to read Malayalam translation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Hound of Baskerville over a weekend. The man at the sales counter, did like it and complimented me saying, if it was Summer, Onam or Xmas vacation, I would have finished a few more books too.
My father would have thought, that is not good enough and enrolled Sasi, my elder brother as a member of Sahrudaya K J Thomas memorial library in Mannarkkad, the moment he moved to high school at KTMHS. K J Thomas belonged to the Karippaaparambil family. And it was a well-stocked library. We could take two books at one time. Only my brother had access to the huge room with bookshelves. I had to wait at the reception / front office. Most of the time we used to big arguments on the choice of books. When I reached 10th, I started going alone to the library and choose books and that was the first major achievement of freedom in my life. . K J Thomas Jr was the Captain at our Cricket club Anupama Cricket club and he kind of build shopping complex around that place and sold it. With that went Sahrudaya (Goodheart) got buried under the rubbles of the Gulf Money driven consumerism which was swallowing Kerala during those times.
While I did scream my lungs (though impaired ones) out for a Maradona or Zico on the blurry TV screen, my heroes were writers. O Vijayan, Madhavikutty, VKN etc. I was so enamored by their felicity with language, and their ability to carve wonderful prose, like Micheal Angelo. During my early childhood days, there was a great environmental movement in our place (Thenkara was on the way to Silent Valley) against a hydroelectric project at Silent Valley. Once my father, who too was with that movement, told me about, how O V Vijayan with a small group of people visited Silent Valley and they all sat next to that Kunthipuzha river, quite near the river’s origin. He had opened a bottle of liquor, half consumed. It so seems they did not have glasses or water for all. He filled that bottle with the water from the river and poured into the palms of all, one by one, as sacred water prasad from a temple.
Much later, I joined the Govt Victoria College, Palakkad for 1st year B Sc Physics. I managed to join a Physics course at the insistence of my High school Head Master ( who thought I will be good at it) , after a lot of heated arguments with my father , who wanted me to take up a Technical course to ensure my livelihood.
From the small serene idyllic world of Mannarkkad, suddenly I was thrown into the whirlpool of happening world. CPM district office was nearby by. Very close to the College main gate. Indian Coffee House was a bit more far away, but very much within reach by walk. My best friends out there were into thick of Student politics, and I too found myself in it. I was almost got selected as a UUC (University Union Council candidate). (28 years later I stood for student body election at APU Blr and won against two of my very talented and bright co students, just to tick that checklist from my life after a fiery and live contest. One of them was from St. Stephens and other Vishwa Bharathi. ). At Govt Victoria College, I skipped all the classes except the Malayalam literature class of Prof. M. G. Shashi Bhushan. And did not write a single exam, whole of the first year. Next year, I had moved on to an Engg degree course and when I went to an Asst. Professor of Physics department to ger her signature for No objection for Transfer Certificate, she told she was waiting to see who this Viswanathan Sankara, who was never ever seen in classroom for the whole year is. I was the second person to get a seat for that course based on my 12th std marks. She gave me a lengthy lecture, on how I wasted the chance of another worthy and committed student. But it was not an year of waste for me by any means. She might not have read the college motto. “Labuntur et amputator”. It literally meant, “the moments slip away and are laid to your account.”
Vijayan came to inaugurate College literary day. He was so frail, thin with unkempt long beard. HE came with his sister O V Usha. He took almost an eon of time, to walk to the podium from his seat at the stage. He was diagnosed with Parkinson disease by then. Even then only his body was afflicted. Mind was crystal clear untouched by the vagaries of daily life. He spoke so slowly and at a very low voice. Audience was so quiet in rapt attention and pin drop silence. A few years back, someone shared a Rumi Quote which read, “Raise your words, not your sound. It is rain that grows flowers and not thunder.” I am 100 % certain, Rumi had written about O.V. Vijayan. Through my father’s narrative of the Silent valley event and after I read his books, he was already on a pedestal. And with that speech, it just got concretized. O.V. Vijayan had passed away in 2005. Ever since, to this date, I take 2 July off just to read. O V Vijayan.
Authors and writers were placed in high altars of my mind, I would not have dared to reach out in any way and be with them at par, at any cost. I was an excellent reader. That was it. IT changed a bit, when sent an appreciation email to Ranjan Acharya, after I read his article in an inhouse newsletter at Wipro. Long time back after reading one of his articles published in Wipro Corp website ( I think after Dileep left , he had taken that mantle), when I asked him from where can I learn to write , he had replied that we can learn writing only by writing and asked me to start writing a journal everyday.. The reply mail also came with an anecdote on Bernard Shaw, who seemed to have written for more than 10 years before his first work was published.. I did take that advice and wrote for a few years in my journal. But I kept them hidden away from critiques, like kids hide peacock feathers in their notebooks.. After I had rejoined Wipro, I had shared my first blog with him and I had reminded him about his advice and Bernard Shaw anecdote.. Pat came the reply, Bernard Shaw can’t get it wrong, rite ?.
After the first one, I did write a bit. In my blogs Sundaysambar.blogspot.com and. Thewayiseethat.blogspot.com. A few did like it. Many may not have. Those who like and appreciated were all my good friends. I took it as their kindness and compassion towards me rather to my writing. When I was laid from an NGO with whom I had worked after MA in Education, for lack of funds, during tough Covid times , my good friend Komal urged me to start writing. I did tell him, that even if someone had put a pistol on my head, I had to publish something , I would not be able to do to save my life.
I wasn’t ready for it. I stayed true to Rainer Maria Rilke , who write in his classic, “The letters to a young poet” :
““Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose…
…Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty – describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. – And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.”
After I read that book, I had pasted this passage in front of me for a very long time. And I would have read it quite a few times. It reached my sinews only when I could complete the 10 th Koan from Mumonkan ( The Gateless Gate) with AMA Samy. The title of the Koan is. “Seizei is utterly poor” and the answer was “I am Enough”.
I could sign up a very good Editor. At first, she was quite apprehensive. She said, she is quite busy and asked me to share a few blogs with her. She will read and let me know whether she will do it. When I did not see a reply after 2 days , I had given up on that. On a Sunday forenoon, I got a reply “ Jut to give you an update, I’m working the first piece. Will share when I am done.”
The first book, an anthology of what I had written over the last 17 years will be out, in Nov / December.
The title is “Fallen flowers, fragrant grass.”
Like the 4 minute mile, once the first one is started, it is not that difficult.
And Punararambham means. Resumption or renew…. Writing is indeed renewal.
Postscript : “ And If you have reached this last line of this blog post pls do let me know. 🙂 “