I sit in the midst of paintings and poems that are engaged in a dialogue. These works are also a dialogue between a student and a teacher as much a dialogue between two artists working with different forms of media. How does one write about a dialogue that touches history, nature, artists, thinkers, leaders, emotions, passions, stories, and memories? This list is by no means exhaustive. How does one respond to a growing correspondence of minds? I recall familiar works being widely recognized as belonging to one or the other category of ekphrasis. There is also a newfound interest in ekphrastic poetry and there are studies coming up in the other half of the world. Rather than listing other poets and their works, I feel it as enriching to contemplate on the compositional wavelength that makes possible such a sustained creative tempo across media and mind. The most striking aspect that merits attention here is the kind of compact that emerges between the paintings of Ajayakumar and the poems of Jameela Begum.

I start thinking of that moment of origins, of beginnings. When the first painting was shared in Facebook there was an artistic response in a few days. This was not a one-time response, for those who responded to the subsequent paintings by then had now started looking forward to the corresponding poems. I also suspect that the poems in turn inspired Ajayakumar to come up with his next painting. But the beginnings cannot be read and understood in the Facebook time alone. Was it the charcoal of an idea that made the beginning? Beginnings know no individual.

In mediis rebus

Try again:

The hallmark of this collection of creative work is the discovery of a wavelength that harmonizes the language of perception of both painter and poet. It does not iron out differences; they are perceived when the representation of the different subjects is parsed. The means and media employed to represent the subject is different. Yet, they come together to reach the same point of comprehension.

There are four portraits by Ajaykumar and each one becomes distinct not because of the personality. It is a telling use of the pencil to lay bare something of what the artist discovers of the personality during that moment of creation. A case in point is the portrait of Ayyappa Paniker. This is the cue that the poem also takes up to elaborate:

Similarly, the depth captured in the eyes of Basheer is matched in verse capturing the Sultan of Beypore in an interesting frame:

This eye for detail characteristic of any visual artist is evident in that rich luxuriance of bell fruits with the odd green fruit providing a pictorial moment of recognizing differences which the poem uses effectively to draw a picture of the vicissitudes of life. These portraits of still life are pleasant as they trigger memories, tales, and even a whole history from Eve to Steve Jobs as in the poem “Rainbow Apples.”

The power of evocation of the paintings comes out best for me in that contemplation of a “Stony Scene.” I was reminded of a lesson I had studied in my primary class in the Malayalam text book titled “Even a stone has a story to tell.” That is precisely what “Stones Speak” tells me. The image of the stone

is a contemplation and filling in of details reminding of the precarious existence of life and the environmental destruction that has ravaged the ecosystem.

I also discover the presence of traditions, styles, and languages that work in various ways in text after text. Perhaps because of the differences, they perform a concert, more precisely, a jugalbandi. The compositional harmony of this book reveals of itself of the way one keeps moving from painting to poem to painting endlessly. I do not intend to read all the paintings and poems here; I share here something of what I have tasted and relished.

The way the paintings and poems are placed alongside each other serves to discover the fluidity of the narrative subject rather than a fixed object. The perceiving mind roves around colours, shades, tones, and hues available in the immediate reading experience and even ventures to imagine an archive of memory that effects such represented subjects and subjectivities. In our trying times when we are overwhelmed by a virus and its mutant formations, one is free to wonder about the relevance of such artistic expressions. The world is not expressive of a single purpose. We wake up to new realizations about the world every moment of our life. These brush and pen strokes capture something of the myriad moods of the human mind to give a pause and offer some insight on to the fictions we use to represent our thoughts and reflections.

I can only offer this tentative note and pause to take another look at Mary’s basket.

B. Hariharan

Professor and Head

Institute of English, University of Kerala