Sunday, January 20, 2008

V SADASIVAN- A GREEN REMINISCENCE
K P RAMESH

Our friendship has many phases-some are very close to us, others are behaving like a song incomplete. I can’t assume how far Shri.V Sadasivan to me.About twenty five years ago, I had read a beautiful travelogue on forests in a Malayalam Weekly. I don’t keep in mind, as I was an upper primary schoolboy then, its title or author who has travelled all the way through forests with an inextinguishable pursuit. But I remember a conversation in it. The raconteur asks the two foreigners who travelled along with him: “ Is it French in which you are conversing?” They replied: “No, it is German”. And the narrator said: “Oh, but I thought it was French!” Though nothing unusual in this conversation it fascinated me. It obsessed me for a long period. Finally I obtained the address of the narrator, Shri. V Sadasivan. At that time he was retired as the Principal from the Kerala Forest Training College , Arippa.
I sent him a letter in recollection of his lingering travel through trees. It became an overpass of love between us. As a good reader he had his own outlook about literature. His letters showed a man who is spaced out from the modern Malayalam fiction. But in his writings, brilliantly written in an undemanding language, his literary attention can be seen. He was always tried to empower his arguments.
It is usual that one who is working under the Forest Department would have some love with trees. But the position of a man like V Sadasivan is above than it. The Keralite psych on environmental activities has been esteemed all over the world . But it is disappointment that nobody knew the voice of Sadasivan who was an avant-garde before these revolting activities. Sure, he is one the missionaries who put the concept of “ conservation”. He became transformed from the stage of a conventional forester to the height of a conservator.
Most of his insightful essays on Ecology, written in a simple language, were comprehensible even to children. Now we can take up the world of flora and fauna through some TV channels like Discovery, Animal Planet..etc. But we have to remember that Sadasivan had not only studied those subjects well but also expressed them earlier before the initiation of the same channels. It is obvious to say that he has searched these subjects with a never-ending quest for knowledge. He was anguish about the dying rivers and vanishing forests. That is why all of his works envisage the environmental awareness.
His works include KATTILUM KOOTTILUM [Both in Forest & Nest], KATTILE KATHAKAL[Stories of the Forests],PERIYARINTE THEERATHU [By the Bank of Periyar] and KERALATHILE SASTHANIKAL [Mammals in Kerala]. He has also directed a variety of documentaries featuring the reciprocal relation between human being and nature. The documentary on Thekkadi, taken in 16 m.m, had been exhibited in most parts of the country and won a great deal attention. The language with a flavour of literature, elegant insights and the perception on the subjects narrated are some of his significances.
If we think about him, the life sketches of Dr.Salim Ali and Anham Madhavan Namboothiri rise in our mind. As Salim Ali realized the sense of life due to the fall of a sparrow and Anham Namboothiri came to the peak of devout world out of the nihilistic thoughts, there were many polarities in the life of Sadasivan. It is heard that he was in tune with himself alone. obviously, it made some foes around him. But, in a dialectical sense, it became a grace to Malayalam language! It paved a different path to him to quench his longing across the trees. His transfer to the Forest School, Walayar was also manifesting the history of the change of his attitude. But he held in reserve his love and compassion to those who tried to know him.
In the middle of 1970’s, when he came to the Parambikkulam Wildlife Sanctuary, his transition was completed. With the backing of some colleagues who belongs to the same wavelength he designed a federation called SCENE [Society for Culture, Environment and Nature Education]. It is not ignorable from our environmental studies. So, say thanks to the Forest Department!
After some letters, I visited his home at Vellayambalam, Trivandrum. I didn’t know it was our first and last encounter on earth. He asked me why didn’t I write fiction. I said nothing. He described that K Surendran and Vilasini,noted Malayalam writers, could write their excellent novels due to the experience of writing essays. He added that Joseph Mundassery, the godfather of criticism in Malayalam, couldn’t get attention when he came into fiction.
Some more letters flew between us. Gradually, its wings broken at somewhere else. At last, I noticed, in a newspaper, a photo pasted above the obituary column. I felt nothing, but a tree which I nurtured fell down in my mind.