For An Informed Ambedkar Age
A folk song from Kerala translated by Sreekala Sivasankaran What kind of untouchability is this? The untouchability of the lords! Go away, go away The stumbling block, go away Go away, go away Even Pakkanar* has to go away! If the salt is sown, Would it sprout? And creep onto the fence? Then, what is …
Samkutty Pattomkary Translated from Malayalam by Sreekala Sivasankaran 1. Sea Horses in the Memories When the blue doors open Mother cries in the tender coconut shell Like a pecked out navel Novel rhythm oozes The dalit pastor screams To the bud-rotten cross Let the leaves sprout Would become the …
G. Sasi With Love, Soumini, You said that black is beautiful Poets have sung it Then, How did the black people get humiliated? We are not the ones who suck blood and sweat We are melting… The blazing sun and the burning earth are not tending us Mother, There is no space for the black …
Umar Nizar “Where do coconut trees go When their roots are declared illegal”. -Ajmal Khan, `Mappila Verses’ Poetry as a tool of resistance has been wielded by personas ranging from the Hebraic to the Hellenic, from Moses to Kabir. Poet, sociologist and educator, Ajmal Khan in his debut collection of verse, creates a poetic/proto history …
Umar Nizar The most political of India’s literary awards, the Jnanpith has went to a chip off the old feudal coconut block, Akkitham Achuthan Nambudiri. This was long predicted, even before CAB was a twinkle in the right wing eye. Akkitham is one of those rarities in the right wing intelligentsia that he has …
Anilkumar PV It is not without profound sorrow that one admits to oneself that in their highest flights the artists of all ages have raised to heavenly transfigurations precisely those conceptions which we now recognize as false: they are the glorifiers of the religious and philosophical errors of mankind, and they could not …
Dwija Aami and Sreerag Poickadan Malayalam actor Vinayakan has received the Kerala State government’s Best Actor Award 2016 for the Malayalee film Kammatpadam, recently. His interview by Jimmy James in Asianet News television channel for the programme ‘Point Blank’ on March 13, 2017, became viral on social media owing to his bold answers, straightforwardness and …
Umar Nizar The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in his customary impish fashion rephrases Heidegger’s oft-quoted dictum that ‘language is the house of being’ as ‘language is the torture-house of being.’ For him there is no genocide without poetry. Sugathakumari, a major Malayalam poet, and winner of Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award, Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, …
K K Baburaj When a great personality dies, people feel helpless and the country ceases to function. But, after one week, if this great personality returns, he won’t find the job of a city porter. The famous German poet Bertolt Brecht wrote such a poem. Kalabhavan Mani, a Dalit film star and popular singer …