In the year 1963, Punalur Rajan began his career as an artist-cum-photographer with the Government Medical College in Kozhikode after completing a three-year-course in cinematography from USSR Institute of Cinematography affiliated to Moscow University. There was a political reason behind his joining the course in the erstwhile USSR — the then Kerala unit of the undivided Communist Party wanted to produce feature films carrying messages of class struggle and dialectical materialism.
Born into a family inheriting the legacy of martyrs of the historic Sooranad revolt, his affinity to Communist ideology and the party was integral. But by the time he returned from Moscow, ideological differences which caused the 1964 split in the party were at its peak. Leadership had dropped the plan to make feature films with revolutionary themes.
Though the Communist poet-turned-lyricist and filmmaker P Bhaskaran offered him film projects in Chennai, Rajan chose to reject them. He had already changed his mind and decided to explore still-photography, then in black and white.
While he joined the medical college as a full time artist-cum-photographer, he wanted to do something different during his spare time. The idea was quite eccentric. He wanted to record the socio-political and cultural evolution of Kerala using his battered Rolleicord camera. There began a flirtation with his new love.
Till his passing away at the age of 81 early Saturday morning at his Thiruvannur residence in Kozhikode, Rajan had largely succeeded in capturing the great political events which shaped the history of Kerala post 1960s. But he wasn’t just a political photographer. His lens had also peeped into the lives of some of the leading Malayalam literary figures of yesteryear.
Rajan, who was born into a wealthy family at Sooranad in Kollam district in 1939, was later brought up at Punalur and was a close relative of legendary Communist, journalist and theatre personality Kambissery Karunakaran, who was instrumental in setting up the Kerala Peoples’ Arts Club (KPAC) and CPI mouthpiece Janayugam daily.
Whenever he interacted with this correspondent, Rajan became nostalgic about his first meeting with legendary Malayalam writer Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer. That meeting at Basheer’s Vylalil residence in Beypore in 1963 opened up new vistas in his life.
Punalur's photo of Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer / Courtesy - forbesindia.com
He never imagined that the meeting would be the beginning of a lasting relationship. Basheer later introduced him to many of his contemporaries, including Joseph Mundassery, Thakazhy S Sivasankara Pillai, Kesava Devu, ONV Kurup, Thikkodiyan, Ponkunnom Varkey, S K Pottekkatt and M T Vasudevan Nair, resulting in the creation of some of the finest black-and-white photographs that represented one of the brightest ages in Malayalam language and literature.
About a decade ago, Rajan brought out Basheer: Chayayum Ormayum, a portfolio of photographs depicting the life and times of the gifted writer as a fitting tribute to his close friend.
As a strong sympathiser and fellow traveller of CPI, he had taken numerous images depicting rare moments from Communist doyens of the country, including EMS Namboodiripad, C Achutha Menon, C Rajeswara Rao, S A Dange and P K Vasudevan Nair. Former Kerala chief minister Achutha Menon was a great source of inspiration to him and was instrumental in prompting the party to send him, then a diploma holder in painting from Ravi Varma School of Fine Arts in Mavelikkara, to USSR to study cinematography.
During his stay in the USSR, he travelled extensively, taking photos of historic places and important personalities. He also found time to capture many parts of Europe, including France, Finland, Denmark, Poland, German, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Till his last breath, Rajan treasured his photographs with extreme care. He dreamt of turning them into books, a task that remains unaccomplished.
Actor KPAC Lalitha, clicked by Punalur Rajan / Courtesy - forbes.com
Rajan devoted his life, even after retirement, to taking photographs to document contemporary Kerala history. While chronicling the evolution of the state, he maintained his distance from a world where fame and money ruled. His dreams of publishing portfolios with photographs of Thakazhy, Pottekkat and Achutha Menon were also unfulfilled.
The chronicler is no more, and his Rolleicord camera will now sit unused. As MT Vasudevan Nair rightly observed some years ago, “He was the spy that god sent to earth with a black-and-white camera.”
(K A Shaji is a south Indian journalist who regularly reports from the backward parts of the region and works in the areas of environmental protection, social advocacy and grassroots level development.)