THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The poet who had wished eternal peace for his dying Mother Earth has left, despondent and worried. Those close to the great poet remember a fleeting moment of silence at the recent public function to felicitate ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali.
O N V Kurup, looking heart-achingly frail though the sharp glint in his eyes was still intact, was on the dais. In that moment of silence, the crushing sound of a heavy vehicle passing along the road faraway caused the poet to convulse slightly, like a leaf caught in a sudden breeze. Taking a deep painful breath, he whispered: “These things destroy the rhythm and metre of life.”
O N V Kurup was hyper sensitive to the world around him. “Reading him one gets the feeling that no one could have expressed the screams of the roots, the wails of the leaves and the sobs of the drying streams better,” poet Madhusoodanan said.
He was obsessively worried about the environment, not just its trees and rivers but also its women and its poor. It was this humanism that made him one of the greatest bards to have emerged out of the communist movement.
Along with Thirunalloor Karunakaran, P Bhaskaran and Puthussery Ramachandran, O N V Kurup had sacrificed his youth for the growth of the communist movement.
No song had electrified the toiling masses the way ‘Ponnarival Ambiliyil Kanneriyunnole...’ had. Thoppil Bhasi had once conceded that he would die with envy thinking how an ordinary mortal could come up with such a cosmic connection.
There was a time when the song was generally considered to be written by Vayalar. When he was asked this, ONV, known for his short fuse, had famously said: “If the name Vayalar can add more gloss to my words, then so be it.”
The man who was God-fearing as an adolescent soon transformed into a sworn atheist. “But I would say O N V Kurup is perhaps the most spiritual of our poets,” said Sreekumaran Thampi. “Delve deep into his poems and at its core you will discover the most resplendent spirituality,” Thampi said.
O N V was too incandescent a talent to be confined to a movement, even though he remained a communist till the very end. After the revolution, in the early 60s, he kept aside his romantic lyrical poems to experiment with larger themes and intricate forms.
The ‘mahakavi’ tradition, which seemed to have died after the era of Asan, Vallathol and Ulloor, was revived by ONV. He wrote two epic poems: ‘Ujjayini’ and ‘Swayamvaram’.
His versatility is legendary. Two years ago, the poet was approached to pen a prayer for the inauguration of Madhava Kavi Smaraka Government Arts and Science College in the capital.
“He asked us to return in two days,” said Radhika, literary critic. The prayer he wrote, to the infinite wonder of the organisers, was in the indescribably intricate metre used by Madhava Kavi, a poet who lived in the 14th century, centuries before Ezhuthachan.
When she had approached him for the prayer, Radhika had also asked for a little poem for the children’s magazine ‘Thalir’. “Along with the prayer, he handed me the children’s poem,” Radhika said. “This was as clear and pure as a child’s face,” she added.
How Lenin found an ONV gem
It was serendipity that led Lenin Rajendran to those words that had captured nostalgia in Malayalam cinema like no other.
Mr Rajendran was writing the script of his second film ‘Chillu’ at the house of his producer in Karunagapally. “I wrote through the night and slept in the morning,” Mr Rajendran said. One morning he could not get himself to sleep and so, out of sheer irritation, he pulled out stacks of old magazines and newspapers that were dumped in a corner. He pulled out a little magazine casually and found a poem written by ONV, his teacher during his college days.
The poem he had just discovered, and which began ‘Oru Vattom Koodiyen Ormakal Meyunna Thirumuttethethuvan Moham...’, had a strange effect on him.
The very next day, the filmmaker visited ONV at his house in Vazhuthacaud in the capital. “He was surprised on seeing the poem,” Rajendran said.
The poet did not have a copy of the poem with him. “He thought he had lost the poem forever,” Rajendran said. ONV took the poem, looked at it for a while and said: “We need to make some slight changes.”
Some minor changes were made and the poem was taken straight to M B Sreenivasan who was then in Madras. The composer took him to Marina Beach. They found an isolated corner under a street light. “With the sound of the sea in the background, MBS composed the tune.
MBS is generally a very expressive man, even then I have not seen MBS happier,” the filmmaker said.
