A. J. PHILIP
Poet/activist Sugathakumari PHOTO/Wikipedia
On August 2, 2013, when poetess Sugathakumari stood up to receive the Saraswati Samman, India’s most prestigious literary award that carries a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh, from Union HRD Minister Pallam Raju at the National Museum auditorium in the Capital, I felt a deep sense of pride. In fact, anybody who knew her would have felt the same way.
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A master in philosophy, she could not complete her Ph.D on the “concept of moksha”. For a time she worked as Principal of Jawahar Balabhavan and editor of the magazine “Thaliru”. It was her poems, emotional as well as sensual, that helped her attain popularity in the Malayalam literary world.
The brochure distributed at the Saraswati Samman function has her poem translated into Hindi by Umesh Chouhan. Titled “Ab Is Man Mein Kavita Nahin” (Now, There Is No Poetry In This Mind). In this touching poem, she says nothing is now left in the poet’s mind. Neither the dawn, nor the dusk! Flowers, dreams, rains have all vacated this space. No, it was not a vacuous poem. As I struggled with my pidgin Hindi, I remembered a passage in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, that opened the world’s eyes to the impact chemical pesticides can have on Nature and human health:
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