Kerala’s political skyline which has been turned tumultuous due to the Sabarimala controversy and has been vitiating by the hour is waiting for the counsel from the State’s Bheeshmapitamah. The solution to the issue arising out of the Supreme Court verdict of September 28 allowing women of all age into the holy shrine in Western Ghats lies with 93-year-old Akkitham Achuthan Nampoothiri, (Akkitham for short) the States’s last word in all spiritual cultural and literary issues.
But the celebrated nonagenarian poet (the one and only Mahakavi or the great poet in the State) is silent on this controversial issue and refuses to speak out his mind. “Of only Akkitham opens up his mind, people belonging to all sections will fall in line,” said S Rameshan Nair, the Tamil Nadu-born Malayalam poet who was honoured with this year’s Sahitya Akademy Award for poetry.
Akkitham refused to divulge what was in his mind about the Sabarimala stand off which has affected millions of Lord Ayyappa devotees all over south India. “It is a matter of belief, custom and tradition. But I don’t want to speak anything about it. The sentiments and feelings of devotees should be respected,” the poet told The Pioneer. This scholar, internationally accepted as the father of modernism in Malayalam poetry for his work Epic of the Twentieth Century, has also fought for eradication of untouchability and was engaged in teaching Vedas to the members of the depressed and oppressed classes in the society.
“I am against segregation or discrimination of devotees based on their gender or caste or religion. But customs and traditions considered as sacred by the society should not be violated. Let’s welcome the true devotees,” said Akkitham while speaking to this newspaper on Wednesday.
There is not a single Malayalee anywhere in the globe who has not heard his lyric “Light is sorrow, dear child; Darkness is happiness”, pointed out Nair, who has been a close associate of the poet for more than five decades. “These are the lines from Epic of the Twentieth Century which has no parallel in contemporary literature. That’s why people in Kerala have accorded him the status of an iconic figure irrespective of their caste, creed and political ideologies.
Literary critics like late Prof M Krishnan Nair had described Akkitham as a poet who integrated spirituality, philosophy and humanity in his works. His latest poetic work is the Malayalam translation of Shrimat Bhagawatam, comprising 14,613 verses spread across 2400 printed pages. The respect commanded by Akkitham could be understood from the fact that his is the only poems from Malayalam which has been translated into French and published in “Europa”, the quarterly literary journal in France.
“Poetic images built out of drops after drops of tear and laughter after laughter that will not burn down to ashes in the efflux of time, that will not dissolveand not washed away in the torrential flow of time and that will not be thrown away and shattered to pieces in the swirling typhonic drift of time are the essential basic characters of Akkitham’s poetry,” says Prof M Leelavathi, the legendary literary critic who is also a nonagenarian like Akkitham.
It is time Kerala society listened to his words of wisdom, at least in the Sabarimala issue.