The poet fell in love with a woman from Delhi. She didn't speak a word of Malayalam. To impress her, he began writing in Hindi. Then English. He contorted his soul into foreign grammar. His poetry became flat, derivative. The mercury dropped and shattered. He married the woman. He stopped writing. Last the old man heard, he was selling insurance policies in Gurgaon, his Malayalam reduced to a mumbled "Sugamalle?" (All good?) in weekly phone calls to his ammachi (grandmother).
The words were not a call. They were a sigh. A lament.
The body of the email was a single line in Malayalam script, but the words were clearly typed with a clumsy, untrained finger: "Ogo Malayalam… ithu njan padikkan pattumo?" (Ogo Malayalam… will I be able to learn you?)
The poet fell in love with a woman from Delhi. She didn't speak a word of Malayalam. To impress her, he began writing in Hindi. Then English. He contorted his soul into foreign grammar. His poetry became flat, derivative. The mercury dropped and shattered. He married the woman. He stopped writing. Last the old man heard, he was selling insurance policies in Gurgaon, his Malayalam reduced to a mumbled "Sugamalle?" (All good?) in weekly phone calls to his ammachi (grandmother).
The words were not a call. They were a sigh. A lament. ogo malayalam
The body of the email was a single line in Malayalam script, but the words were clearly typed with a clumsy, untrained finger: "Ogo Malayalam… ithu njan padikkan pattumo?" (Ogo Malayalam… will I be able to learn you?) The poet fell in love with a woman from Delhi
