Still life in Kerala: Portraits by Punaloor Rajan

Aug 29, 2015, 06:09 IST3 min

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b. 1933MT Vasudevan NairPadma Bhushan awardee MT Vasudevan Nair is one of India’s most versatile writers of modern Malayalam literature. The 82-year-old is also a screenplay writer and a film director. He would often visit Basheer in Kozhikode in his youth. Rajan, who lived in the same district, was a regular fixture in Basheer’s house. He took a picture of the veteran writer with a young MT engaging in a fist fight in the library

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An older MT on the sets of the film, Murappennu, (1965), which he directed

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b.1947KPAC Lalitha Her actual name is Maheshwari Amma, but the thespian and film actor came to be known as KPAC Lalitha because of her association with the Kerala People’s Arts Club (KPAC), a drama troupe that had strong Left leanings. This photograph taken by Rajan was part of her portfolio. To date, KPAC Lalitha has acted in more than 500 Malayalam films

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1934-2009Kamala Das Kamala Das is Kerala’s most famous poet, writer, feminist and iconoclast who converted to Islam later in life. She wrote about sex and gender boldly in Malayalam and English. In her poem, The Looking Glass, she writes: “Getting a man to love you is easy... Stand nude before the glass with him.” She wrote short stories in Malayalam under the pen name Madhavikutty. When she converted to Islam at the age of 65, she changed her name to Kamala Surayya. Rajan took this picture outside her home in Kerala in 1969. It was subsequently used for the cover of the CPI-owned magazine, Janayugom

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1912-1999Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai One of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s most famous novels is Chemmeen (1956), which examines the motif of chastity based on a myth among the fishing community that a fisherman’s safety at sea is linked to his wife’s fidelity. In 1976, Thakazhi, who also wrote about the atrocities committed in the name of caste, had visited Moscow while Rajan was a student there. The photographer’s Spanish roommate Adelso, who had read a translation of Chemmeen in his native language, was ecstatic when he heard that the Malayalam writer was in Moscow. Rajan took a picture of an overjoyed Adelso with Thakazhi

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Rajan often shot Thakazhi in Kerala, and, in the image above, we see the writer working with a farmhand in his fields at Kuttanad, Kerala. (He bought the land with the royalty that he got from Chemmeen.) Rajan took this picture keeping in mind Basheer’s description of Thakazhi as a “famer of words”.

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