Pottekkat: A Kerala Novelist

The rise of Pottekkat’s literary fame corresponds to the socialistic tendencies in Kerala.

Vallathol rose on the crest of the wave of nationalism and Gandhism. Nationalism sought its artistic inspirations, medium and mode of expression within the Nation. And as the present afforded but poor material, a looking , escapistically, to the country’s past resulted. The present was only fit to lament (The Beggar) and the past deserved only lundation (Karma bhumiyute Pinchu Kal). Thus Vallathol wrote about a golden age of Hindu-Muslim concord (Bharata Strigal than Bhava Suddhi) in an Akbarian episode, and of the puranic days of valour and chivalry (Aniruddhan) and epitomised the perfection of all traditional virtues in “My Master” (Ente-Gurunathan).

Those were days when emotions needed to be roused in and for our national life. Poetically, Vallathol did that for Kerala. After the first phase of nationalism came an intellectual ferment. Socialist and Communist propaganda began to flourish and new values were stressed involving socio-economic factors.

Kerala, acutely in distress from precisely the same two causes, was readiest to imbibe what poured forth from the apostles of the new evangel.

From 1930 to now, the new gospel has penetrated deep. The economic distress and the exasperations in the tenant-land-lord relations urged the people farther on the same road. The illusory solace of the past no longer sufficed. People were impelled to reckon with the present for immediate relief. Literature became functional and purposeful–tending to confine itself to the problems of the day. New themes were taken up and the large populace whom the new literature was designed to reach, brought prose into more conscious and more abundant use. Periodicals received a fillip and the short story came into vogue.

Kerala waited for a genius to give literary expression to its thoughts and feelings and create characters and situations that had to do with their daily life and with the upsurge of the new emotions. Pottekkat provide both.

Pottekkat started as a poet twelve years ago, when the emotional ardour of the Malayalam revival was rapidly cooling and crystallising. His early productions, often short lyrics, served as a space-filler in between regular features in the weeklies. This is quite what may be expected of one who in his formative period, came under the twin influences of Asan and Vallathol. The average literary aspirant felt in those days that his normal literary expression lay, or ought to lie, in poetry. The influence on our generation of those two great men was profound. And we have some among us still who write vapoury free-verse styling themselves Tagorean. But circumstances changed, these influences waned and Pottekkat tended towards prose–a homely prose, capable of range and depth, and able to combine strength with finesse. He left poetry to take care of itself, and wrote his short stories. Poetry fell into the warm, if rugged, embraces of Ullur or waited, sometimes in vain, to catch the eye of Pallath. Changanpuza,–sometimes so totally lost in a self-abstracted gloom–occasionally attains to “the large poetic utterance”; but with what effort and through what “titanic glooms of chasmed fears”!*

Moving from poetry to prose Pottekkat came nearer to the heart of the people and to the spirit of the iron-times. This happened during a general movement of Malayalam literature from Romanticism towards Realism. The tinted cloud, at last, yielded drops of water.

Though he has some good novels to his credit, his masterpieces are his short stories. They deal with the common man in ordinary situations. He has a partiality for the poor and the social out-castes. Man is dearer to him for his weakness. How effortlessly does he make a hero of a loafing drunkard in Natan Premam (Rural Love)! In Vesyayute Kathu (The Prostitute’s letter) a prostitute finds a place in that glowing sisterhood of Mary Magdalenes. The tramp, the waif and the stray, the tiller and the faded street walker are dear to his heart and in their portrayal he reveals a sympathetic understanding reminiscent of Dickens or Hugo, without the sentimentality of the one and without the bombast and extravagance of the other.

There are romantic relapses and a noticeable dilution when he attempts the novel. His genius is for the succinct. The sustained effort and large grasp necessary for the full-length novel appear to strain his genius. Natan Premam and Prema Siksha have an occasional thinness at would have proved fatal, but for his splendid narrative power which comes to the rescue. It is now known that he wrote them at first as short stories and later stretched them to full-length. The enlargement has some-what blurred the edges of what would have been sharp features in a short story.

Stree, Vesyayute Kathu, Kshayarogi and Smarakam are the author’s own choice of his best short stories in the order mentioned. That is also what the Kerala public have ‘Gallupped’–a remarkable coincidence of views between an author and his public. The social effectiveness of Pottekkat’s writings is bound to be immense with such perfect correspondence between the artist and the people. His popularity among the Jivat Sahitya (Pragati) group is great, though Pottekkat does not subscribe to the waywardness and the pose which characterise most of the Pragati writing in Kerala.

Pragati realism, as exhibited in the lesser known and still less read novelists in our regional literature, makes the elementary mistake of confusing the “objective” with “objects”. Have we not had half-page descriptions of my lady’s boudoir listing various items of furniture and cosmetics, so crowding out my lady herself that she is often lost to the novel! Old-fashioned Kalidasa never made such mistakes. His heroine needed not to be searched for amidst cosmetics and interior decoration. Sakuntala stood full-formed and deep-bosomed in the glade, richly beautiful and vigorous. Pottekkat needs no elaborate setting and the story springs for ward at the pistol-shot, as it were. A leisurely exposition would have wrecked the short-story. He never pauses for moral side-says and he excludes, with admirable economy, everything unessential and non-functioning. Pottekkat is free from class-bias and refuses to spit venom at any group. He openly laughs at the notion that virtue can be found only among the enrolled members of the trade unions and vice only in the company’s share holders. There are ‘mighty fine fellows’ in all groups and we deserve well of society to the extent to which we have tried to reconcile these groups constantly, and often needlessly, at war with one another. Rich hum a values with which, as an artist, he is concerned, do not follow the lines of sharp class divisions described in text-books of Left Economics. That is why Pottekkat’s books appeal to all. He is not for ‘war-whoops’. With him it is “the still sad music of humanity,” but one fully realised and vital.

Mr. Pottekkat is a pleasant conversationalist. He is frank, humorou at times bitterly ironical, and unassuming to meekness. I salute his genius.

* The characteristics of this strange school of Romantic poetry started by Edapally and Changanpuza are: -

1.      Escapist to self-extinction (O, Death where is Thy sting attitude).
2.      Pose of the hunted and the haunted.
3.      Lament right through almost to whining.
4.      General atmosphere of unrelieved gloom; if relieved at all, only by glaring eyes.
5.      Purely personal complaints against Society.
6.      Hypertrophy of the EGO.