If Punalur Rajan’s cameras could speak, they would tell us several stories. Stories about some of our greatest storytellers.
The Kozhikode-based veteran photographer may be known more for the pictures he took of Vaikom Mohammed Basheer, but his camera has followed many other stalwarts of Malayalam literature as well. Like M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Thakazhi, S.K. Pottekkat, Madhavikutty, and Sukumar Azhikode.
The pictures he took of M.T. over five decades have been put together in the book M.T. yude Kalam . The book, published by Mathrubhumi Books (Kozhikode), contains some vintage pictures of one of Malayali’s most loved writers.
Those photographs, all in black and white, also offer fascinating glimpses from Kerala’s cultural history. You would come across several cultural icons of Kerala sharing the frame with the man who wrote classics such as Randamoozham , Asuravithu , Kalam, and Manju .
Authors like Basheer, Thakazhi, Azhikode, Vyloppilli, Pottekkat, and P. Bhaskaran are all there. As are films stars like Prem Nazir, Sharada, and Thikkurissi; directors Padmarajan, Aravindan, and Mani Kaul; music composer M.B. Sreenivasan; and producers Shobhana Parameswaran Nair and T.E. Vasudevan.
There is a lovely extreme close-up picture of M.T. and Padmarajan, who between them wrote many great scripts in Malayalam. “I took that photograph sometime in the 1980s, when Mrinal Sen was felicitated by a Kozhikode-based film society,” says Rajan. “I had taken pictures of Padmarajan before that too.”
He adds that M.T. has not been a difficult man to photograph contrary to what many people say. “He used to engage me as a photographer for his books,” he says. “I was also assigned to take pictures of special functions at his home, like the one in which composer K. Raghavan sang for M.T.’s guests from Russia.”
About Rajan, M.T. says: “He is the spy the god sent to earth with a black-and-white camera.”
P.K. Ajith Kumar
