The Hindu Business Line : The timeless `Chemmeen'

In the long short story, The Grass Harp, Truman Capote writes: "So little, once it has changed, changes back." That line kept humming while reading a piece on Thakazhi Shivashankara Pillai in the Sunday edition of Mathrubhumi and a collection of photographs and writings by the expert naturalist M. Krishnan, styled "Eye in the Jungle."

It is 50 years since the novel Chemmeen was first published on March 7, 1956, by the New India Press, writes Joy Varghese in a full-page essay on the novel and the film, which was made after 10 years in 1966. Being weak in Malayalam this writer could never complete the novel but for most men and women from God's Own Country it is something to go back to often. Before Thakazhi got set to write Chemmeen, he was just a routine novelist, writes Joy Varghese in his timely essay. He practiced law in Ambalapuzzha and filled up odd hours with ink on paper. "Annathe Thakazhi gramam innathe Thakzhi alla (Yesterday's Thakazhi village is not today's Thakazhi)," Joy mentions in Malayalam.

There was no Thiruvalla-Ambalapuzzha road then. Settling down for a time at the Boat House Café owned by a Mathai Potti in Kottayam, Thakazhi got Chemmeen out of his system. "Ette ettu divasam. Orra adiki Thakazhi "Chemmeen" ezhuti theerthu (In eight days Thakazhi finished Chemmeen)," says Joy and the best fiction in Malayalam was born. There is a belief in the fishing community that if a married woman has an affair, her husband will surely die at sea and Chemmeen fictionalises the belief. One could ask what happens to the wife if the husband has the odd relationship. Probably, that did not bother Thakazhi.

The novelist has confessed to Chemmeen being just "a painkili novel (a mushy novel)." It may be so, but not for the readers and the viewers when the film was made, to rank as the best Malayalam film (with apologies to Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Oscar award winners). One has seen the film many times and even today cannot get rid of the sea, the songs and Sheila. Sheila (Karuthamma), Madhu (Parikutti), Kottarakara Sreedharan Nair (Chembankunju), S.V. Pillai (Achankunju), Sathyan as Palani, the husband of Karuthamma, who dies at sea caught in a whirlpool — the best of Kerala film world put on display their talents at the bidding of Ramu Kariat.

The commercial film in colour ran long and still gets crowds. It may not be on par with Charulata of Satyaji Ray but as a cinematic piece of human passion it is fine craft. We discussed the film at home and for Rama, who has completed 30 years in Mumbai starting on May 6, 1976, from Alleppey, Chemmeen is common man's poetry. No Malayalam film has been quite Chemmeen for its story flow, she thought.

For this writer, the transition on a Sunday afternoon from Chemmeen to the wildlife output of Madhaviah Krishnan was easy as today most of the animals he writes and photographs are in short supply, like Chemmeen. The best part of the book, sent to me by my friend Ramki from Chennai, is the visual clarity of the black and white photographs of elephants, painted storks, rhinos, sambars and the rest taken by Krishnan where one can count the hairs on the bodies of the animals.

Elaborating E.P. Gee mentions: "He is an artist also, and an expert wildlife photographer. `Every Hair' must be his motto, for his pictures show the finest detail of the coats of gaur, sambar, chital and the like, and every wrinkle on the skin of a wild elephant... " One read the short sketches going with the pix again and again.

In Monkeying in the Deep, Krishnan talks of the efforts to capture on film monkeys swimming in water. "They stayed on behind cover, ignoring the bait. It occurred to me that these monkeys were less intelligent than their position high up the Tree of Evolution, in books on zoology, would seem to indicate.

"Then the little boy who had attached himself to me pointed out that they couldn't be tempted to get into the water with bananas, because the fruit sank instantly to the deep bottom - apparently even creatures right on the summit of that diagrammatic tree are capable of sad lapses from habitual intelligence."

Finally, he managed to click a bonnet macaque female swimming with its young by baiting them with groundnut. Then there is the time when Krishnan runs for dear life from a leopard in the essay, "Leopards in the dark."

It may be best to quote the author having a spare and bare style: "One overcast afternoon I was walking along a sandy nullah, with a schoolboy at my heels, when rounding a sharp bend we came face to face with a leopard. We were only two metres away from it when we saw it, and stopped dead in our tracks. The leopard was the first to recover from the surprise: in one swift, fluid movement, it turned round and raced away uphill and was soon lost in the bush cover.

"I remember we stood rooted to the spot for seconds after the great cat had disappeared, and then turned and ran as hard as we could the way we had come, in stupid fright."

After that one missed out on the Sunday afternoon nap.

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The timeless `Chemmeen'