In 1984, as poet Sugathakumari was releasing fellow poet Kureepuzha Sreekumar’s first book called ‘Habeebinte Dina Kurippugal’, she wished him haunting days and sleepless nights. This may sound like an unusual wish, but Kureepuzha, as the poet is popularly known as, understood the essence of the wish.
That wish stemmed from her sensibility that only those who spend sleepless nights will understand the sleeplessness in others and poems are born out of it,” Kureepuzha said as he recalled Sugathakumari who passed away on Wednesday morning, owing to complications from COVID-19.
“Her poems are based on human love and love for nature. Womanhood and green rights were her beloved themes,”Kureepuzha says.
As fans of her poems would admit, Kureepuzha also says that the romance in Sugathakumari’s poems were based on the tale of Radha- Krishna (Lord Krishna). The image of Radha was within her and always reflecting in her poems. “The love of Radha and Krishna, when a woman loves someone younger to her, is the most noble imagination in romance in Indian mythology,” he says.
While those who believe in God, he says, view atheists like him as enemies Sugathakumari was very loving towards all- atheists and rationalists too. A few years ago, there was a discussion on the poems of Kureepuzha- an evening gathering named ‘Charvaka Sandhya’. Charvaka is a philosophical Indian school of materialists who rejected the notion of an afterworld, karma, liberation (moksha), and authority of the sacred scriptures. Kureepuzha points out that Sugathakumari never hesitated to inaugurate the talk. “She didn’t have the kind of explicit religious gestures we see in others. She was instead someone with abundance of love,” the poet recalls.
Manoj Kuroor, another poet, says he loves Sugathakumari’s poems from her initial period of writing, much more than the ones in which she depicted Radha-Krishna love. “The pessimism, the melancholy, the vulnerability in those poems would imminently conquer us. In the first half of the 20th century, Malayalam literature had Balamani Amma as a great poetess. In the second half, we had Sugathakumari. But Sugathakumari is the greatest poetess in the history of Malayalam poetry,” Manoj says.
He observes her poems are organic without going for intentional experimentations. “Intentional experimentations would look projected in poems. Her poems instead had the internal harmony, the spontaneous emotions and a rhythm within. She didn’t think of right or wrong, but she let the flow take its course impulsively. Malayalam writer NN Kakkad while doing an introspection of his works during his last days had said that among all his contemporaries only Sugathakumari’s works would survive generations,” Manoj reminisces.
Poet VM Girija too believes that the poet in Sugathakumari was someone of global stature, whose work would be praised by generations to come.
“The flow in her language charmingly captured the melancholy of nature and even the deepest emotions,” Girija says while humming a few lines by Sugathakumari. “While being in her solitude, she was quick to rejoice while seeing a greenery or hearing the chirping of a bird. It was natural, spontaneous for her, she didn’t try to be politically correct while putting those emotions into words. For example in Kaliyamardhanam, she didn’t bring in the usual goodness versus bad narrative that is there in all Indian myths. When we read her poems again and again, fresh layers would come up, fresh meanings. This makes her works, classics. The poems are like music with an incredible composition,” Girija assesses.