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Poet A. Ayyappan passes away

A. Ayyappan

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: He refused to live and write by the rules set by society and the grand masters of poetry. He did both as he pleased, and died the way he lived.

Poet A. Ayyappan was found unconscious by the wayside close to the Central railway station in the capital city late Thursday evening and died at the General Hospital here without anybody recognising who he was. He was identified only after his body was shifted to the mortuary. For the record, he would have turned 61 on Wednesday.

Ayyappan, winner of this year's Kumaran Asan Puraskaram and the 1999 Kerala Sahithya Akademi Award, was one of those poets who never needed the props of public recognition to keep him going. He was to have received the Asan Puraskaram, instituted by the Asan Memorial Association, at Chennai on Saturday and had booked the ticket for the journey.

Some months ago, he was found unconscious under circumstances similar to that on Thursday and lodged in the General Hospital's ward for the destitute. Once his identity became known, he was put on a rehabilitation programme, only to launch himself upon several other journeys through the inebriating terrains of poetry.

Though a bohemian in the tradition of P. Kunhiraman Nair, Malayalam's celebrated poet of yesteryear, Ayyappan was amazingly rigorous in his poetic expression. Often, the street was his home, for homes seldom welcomed the poet in. But few writers in these times can claim to have had so vast a circle of loving and adoring friends, a large majority of them young men and women.

Born on October 27, 1949 as the son of Arumukham and Muthammal at Balaramapuram near here, Ayyappan lost both his parents at a very young age and, till his death, he considered his lone sister's home, at Nemom in the city suburbs, as his last refuge.

After working as proof reader and copy editor at Prabhath Book House, run by the State unit of the CPI, Ayyappan launched his own publication Aksharam in the '70s which was noted for its modernist orientation. Once Aksharam was wound up, Ayyappan began his long journey through life and writing and emerged as one of the most noted poets of the last few decades.

Ayyappan's was his own school in Malayalam poetry where he spoke about a cursed life, lost innocence, forsaken love, death and sacrifice, all through dark images which he dextrously weaved into his poems. His collections include Balikkurippukal, Chitharogaasupathriyile Dinangal, Pravaasiyude Geetham, Buddhanum Aattinkuttiyum, Malamillaatha Paamb, Karupp, Veyil Thinnunna Pakshi, Jail Muttathe Pookkal, Mukthachhandass, Murivetta Vaakk and Yuddhathinte Chinham.

He died a rich man by his own personal standards, both as a poet and a human being. He has some 2,000 poems collected in about 20 volumes to his credit. And, when he was found unconscious by the wayside, he had in his pocket a poem replete with his hallmark acidic imagery written on a scrap of paper, plus Rs.375—in every sense of the term, God's Pauper.

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