Ente Sree Padmanabha !!

A great sense of wealth, ownership and pride floods my being these days. The cause of it is not to be found anywhere near the immediate surroundings of the said being but in the far away capital of God’s Own Country to which it has an umbilical cord connection. God’s Own Country is many times more that now than ever before and I am understandably elated , in the seventh heaven if there is such a place. Ever since the treasure has been tumbling out of the sacred , secret vaults of the Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple I am transformed beyond words. A terrible beauty is born. I can see a golden ring around my head , whether my fellow Mumbaikars see it or not. The excitement gives me momentary relief from the acute mental and emotional trauma which I have been passing through in the last two and a half months .

My actual acquaintance with the temple is minimal. A passing , by the way visit decades ago. A brief glimpse of the Ananthashayanam. Ditto for the capital city of GOC. A Palghatti goes more often to Chennai than to Thiruananthapuram. But the glory of Travancore , the nobility of its royalty and the loving reverence Their Highnesses still command were brought home to me mainly by my professor at Victoria, Dr.Padmini Nair from TVM whose rented house in Pgt I used to frequent to talk literature and also to bask in her love and affection .

Strangely, Thiruananthapuram became even more real to me when I read C. V.’s classic novel Marthanda Varma. Yes, I did manage it i.e. wading through the heavy prose and following the intricate plot and enjoying the beauties and lighter moments along the way. It turned out to be a fruitful exercise as well ,as much later, I could present a paper on it at a Seminar on ‘The Colonial Impact on Indian Literature’ organized by the English Dept. of the University of Mumbai. Marthanda Varma was inspired by and closely modelled on the great Scottish historical novelist Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe

The challenge for me was to make the novel appealing to an audience of mostly non- Malayalees with nil knowledge of Kerala history or the great names in it. It was the name , ‘Padmanabhan’ my husband’s name coincidently and thus my surname , that helped me make the bridge. I told them of the glory of the name in Kerala, especially in Trivandrum because of the ruling deity, Sree Padmanabha Swami. Marthanda Varma is the story of Padmanabhan versus Padmanabhan – Anantha Padmanabhan on behalf of / for Marthanda Varma against Padmanabhan Thampi alias Pappu for himself . Pappu as in Pappu Kalani, the politician with a criminal background from Ulhasnagar is well known name here. A reference to the Malayalam film ‘Kulam’ was another hook . But the real bomb at which some of the men in the audience woke up and took note was when I dropped the name of Bhanupriya who played the role of Subhadra , the iconic heroine of the novel.

From shoka came the sloka , says Valmiki. Great poetry is born out of pain and suffering or witnessing a scene of pain and suffering. Meppathur Narayana Bhattahiri’s Narayaneeyam is an instance of the first. If I were as divinely gifted as Valmiki or Meppathur I would have written a long ode to You, Sree Padmanabha , a poetic appeal to restore the joy of wellness & cheerful living to all those who, like my husband right now, are suffering from various debilitating ailments and disorientations. But , Lord, as You have not blessed me with the gift of poesy , hearken to my prayer in my poor prose laced a little with borrowed verse and bestow Aayurarogysoukhyam to all of Your creation.

Published in City Journal on 9th July, 2011