( 1930-2006)
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If some body claims to know Ayyappa Paniker, then he is
certainly mistaken as knowing Ayyappa Paniker is impossible,
such a complex personality that he was. I had always felt that
he was five feet above the earth and 10 feet below, still I say
that I know him for more than 12 years. Those days when I was
working with Kerala Hindi Prachar sabha, I happened to meet
Muneendra ji of kalpna (Hyderabad) in a meeting. He told me,
“Rati ji you must bring Malayalam literature into Hindi through
translation, otherwise how can you return the debt you owe this
land where you are living for long?” Thus the idea of
translation dawned in my mind. ....Ayyappa Paniker is not dead;
he is not past tense, he is here in this world, in those poems,
in those memories, in those sweet words that he gave us.
Rati Saxena
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*
Four gallant horses
galloped forth.
One was white, one was black,
one was red, one was brown.
One had four legs,
one had three,
one had two,
and the fourth had one leg.
The one-legged horse
said to the others :
the time for dance has come,
sweet friends,
let's dance on a single hoof !
All of them liked the idea,
and the dance began.
The four-legged horse fainted outright,
the three-legged horse slipped and fell,
the two-legged horse limped to a fall :
only the one-legged one
danced on and on.
**
Where is truth?
The Pandit sought it
on her brow, lips, breasts,
navel, thighs.
Truth cannot be in One,
while in two it breaks
Truth, to tell the truth,
dwells Where Two's meet!
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*
....Whatever claims a poet may make, no poet can do beyond the
limits of his genius. Even trying to do the best within one's
ability is no child's play. It is also wrong to assume that
poetry for a poet is circumscribed or defined by a single poem.
It goes on bubbling, surging and overflowing into the next poem.
There is an often invisible relationship between one poem and
another. Only the poet will be anxious about the poems not yet
written, the reader is ignorant of it. Can we say that each poem
is but one incarnation of poetic creativity? If so how many
incarnations does poetry have!
Ayyappa Paniker
*****
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**
Blind, my battle lost ,I sit
On the top of the train of poetry
Emptied of your black laughter,
Waiting for the familiar scent
Of panikkoorkka* growing near the well
To show me my ruined house.
You reach my inside,
A pebble in my rice
Sweet like candy,
My vagabond’s teeth
Playing on it
A hundred t tunes.
I know the world will
Turn into a thousand shreds
In the broken glass
This Onam season
And you will be there in each
In a different costume.
We will choke :
I in my darkness
And you beyond the glass,
Like a silent abyss. Satchidanandan
And dear sir, as you have often pointed out, what is it that
cannot be achieved with the right mindset and the wholehearted
willingness to strive!
Dr.Jayasree Ramakrishnan Nair
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#
This is not the time to attempt an
evaluation of Ayyappa Paniker’s contribution to
literature. As a poet Paniker was the very embodiment of the
spirit of Modernism in Malayalam.
K.Satchidanandan
India is considered by many as the cradle of the art of
narration which developed into an important and independent
genre of literature in ancient times. It is a well known fact
that the fables of Panchtantra which have now become more or
less a world heritage, were translated as far back as 5th or 6th
century A.D. in Pehlavi language and from that into Syrian,
Arabic, Latin, and later in the medieval Europeans languages.
They have influenced the culture and moral values of many
countries and have enriched their literature.
G.C. Tripathi
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