My father Aboobacker, Mother Suhara and Me 1990's
രണ്ട് തീരങ്ങൾ.../Two shores (Incomplete)
My maternal grandfather.
Erezhuth Muhammed Kunji was a marriage broker, he belonged traditional fisher family, and one of my uncles, his second son was also a fisherman.
When I and my mother go to her family house he chases and catches a duck he breeds, he gives the last drops of water from the pond in the courtyard. And make a delicious halal duck curry. Both in Malayalam and Arabic festivals he comes with banana bunch and kilograms of dried dates. In the last couple of years whenever he reached the bazaar near my house on the way to see me I used to recognize him by his long loud cough.
The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), a voluntary organization engaged in people’s science education in the state, had attempted ‘total literacy’ as one of its main objectives as early as 1977; in that year it appointed a committee to prepare a Programme of total literacy in the state to be achieved within five years. In 1978, KSSP conducted literacy centers as part of Non-formal Adult Education Programme (NAEP), arranged training classes for instructors, and published teaching and learning materials. In 1988, the National Literacy Mission (NLM) persuaded KSSP to take up a total literacy project for Kerala. KSSP decided to experiment with a system mainly of volunteer instructors serving purely on an honorary basis. This decision proved retrospect to have been the most imaginative and revolutionary and the success of the campaign owed not a little to this decision.
-S. Mohana Kumar. “Literacy Movement in Kerala: One Step Forward, Two Step Backwards.” Economic and Political Weekly 28, no. 41 (1993)
E.M.Suhara, my mother earned basic literacy through this Programme. M.K.Abubacker, my father was one of the organizers/tutors. My mother now in 2023 sixty-two years old and could fluently talk Malayalam read slowly by word by word, and write one or two words or less than a sentence; even with missing syllables from the words.
My parents both of them in their younger ages worked in a Coir Society, where they acquainted and later got married. After a decade more waiting, Thasil was fortunate enough to become their one and only child.
My father retired as a government peon, he was a socialist, active in the NGO union, Kerala Karshaka Sangham, and worked with other left allies. After retirement he started a small unit of Jasmin flower farm, we had a couple of hundred plants but it was never a success, we couldn't market the flowers. At last, he gives away plants to neighbors and other villagers.
In 23/09/2015 a day before Bakridhe he passed away.
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My father was always been passionate about Diaries. Ah, I never realized the value of it until very recently time. The small pocket diary I found on his shelf had two out, it was a picture of Comrade P. Krishna Pillai, Kerala’s first communist, and founding leader of the Communist Party of India in Kerala. The second on the back cover was Kerala Lion Muhammed Abdur Rahman Sahib, freedom fighter and the founder of Al Ameen Newspaper.
Al Ameen was the earliest Malayalam newspaper, Abdur Rahman Sahib started Al-Ameen in October 1924 after his two-year jail term in the wake of the Malabar Mappila Rebellion, as he found that a newspaper was one of the strongest instruments to fight the tyranny of the British Raj.
My father like other villagers was very proud of the fact Sahib was born in our village, it is in our neighboring house. Every villager feels him one among their family.
In the south, we don't address people with 'Sahib'. But sometimes I used to hear very close friends of my father call him ‘Backer Sahib’. As a child, I have always cherished those subtle moments with him.
The 44cm x 56cm size print was a special publication for circulating in a bicycle rally which intended to raise awareness about the problems of drug abuse. Organized by some young-minded enthusiasts on the day of Gandhi Jayanti (October 2nd, 2010) under the banner of Navdhara Art and Sports Cultural Club. The word 'Navdhara' is a combination of two Sanskrit words - nav meaning new and dhara meaning flow or stream. As an initiator of the collective, I took the work of a founding editor. The idea of a protest/awareness rally came from my experiences in actively participating in the Water Protection March organized in solidarity with the Chalakudy river protection forum when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. We are around twenty students from K.M.Seethi Sahib Memorial High School who traveled across five Grama Panchayat in the coastal area which depends on the clean water from the Chalakudy River. The publication includes essays, poems, prose, and cartoons created by different self-taught, semi-literate individuals from the Azhicode village.
In 2019 October 2nd, nine years later on another Gandhi Jayanti Day, I initiated a project called World Aesthetic Forum(WAF). It is meant to be a vernacular online journal, where I like to introduce, write, and archive my collaborating fellow practitioners and the people, art, and culture in general. Unfortunately, I couldn't launch it the way I initially conceived, remains an unrealized project till date.
