Deep pentration, quick conception and easy delivery

By O J George

Kottayam: Kamala Surayya just created ripples in the society. I believe she could do so only because she was a woman of substance.

Just any woman cannot speak about eternal love, carnal love and the mind’s peccadilloes in a manner Kamala Surayya did.

She did all these things with poise because she was a woman of high calibre, a position she climbed up with incessant reading, assimilation and creation.

“A woman of deep penetration, quick conception and easy delivery”. That was a comment made about Annie Besant. This comment aptly applies to Kamala Surayya.

She was Madhavikkutty to readers of her Malayalam works, short stories and novelettes. She was Kamala Das to readers of her English works, including her autobiography, “My Story”.

An ordinary mortal would think she rebelled against captive wifedom, later she lived life as she liked, transcending orthodox family traditions, and that too coming from a known tharavad, she changed religion from Hinduism to Islam, which some alleged was for selfishness, etc.

Actually, her life was one of creativity, intellectualism and all-pervasive exposition of love. Maybe, she should have been possessed of the characteristics of Brahman, the way she loved all kinds of people.

When she switched her faith from Hinduism to Islam, many ordinary mortals who earlier adored her were on the vanguard of troubling her, humiliating her.

There was a hate campaign against her, about which she was worried.

The climactic exercise of malevolence by these elements forced her to shift residence from Kochi to Pune, where she breathed her last at the age of 75.

Justifiably, she is being given a State funeral. Her children have decided she should have a burial in accordance with the belief system she last clung on. So she would be buried at the Juma Masjid at Palayam, Thiruvananthapuram.

Before that, befittingly, there would be funeral procession from Kochi to Thrissur, back to Ernakulam and from there to Thiruvananthapuram via Alappuzha and Kollam.

People would be able to pay their last respects to her en route to her final resting place.

I respect all people who are endowed with awareness, reading, creativity and indepth intellectual transactions without looking into their creed, faith and political views.

She deserves the highest order of respect simply on account of her accomplishments.