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| About KALAKSHEPAM |
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Kalakshepam is a Malayalam word which can mean a lot more than it sounds. It is tempting to take it for livelihood. On a different plane, it may denote anything fixated in time or, if you like, launched over time. Time is of the essence in every case. For the limited purpose of this title, Kalakshepam may be taken to mean: Time Pass. The subtitle, Varthayute Vazhiye Oru Savari, narrows down its scope. It is no more than A Stroll down News Track. |
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Kalakshepam is largely in the nature of what may be called half-memoirs, gleaned from the author ’s life as a reporter and editor over thirty years and more. But it is no witness-to-an-era kind of recording or re-recording or commenting on what happened when one was around watching it from the ring-side seat. There is indeed a bit of chronicling, which is unavoidable, but the emphasis is not on the nature or content of news contexts; the emphasis is on how they came about, and who broke them. The sources, the people who helped the news-break, always remain the uncelebrated, ever unknown, heroes of journalism. Kalakshepam is a tribute to them, a celebration of their role. |
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It is not so much a recollection of news events as a reverie, a meditation on the moods of the times and the little or big men and women who took part in the news break for conceivably varied reasons. Their shadows—now clear and large, now crooked and dark—and the events and non-events which unfolded as the author strolled down the news track are the stuff of which Kalakshepam is made. By its nature, it lays no claim to completeness; it is, shall we say, ridiculously personal. It is one man's response to what one man witnessed, and worked on. It is a re-presentation of certain waves of news memories, waves which were, when they rose,strong enough to keep pounding on the mind of the man who goes for a stroll along an unmarked track. |
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Between those death chapters are less philosophical issues of politics and administration, money and health, religion and fraud and fatherhood. That last subject, fatherhood, covers the story of a young man who set out in search of his father, who, when found, refused to own up the seeker. It is a familiar story, from Karna’s two thousand years ago to Sally Hemmings’ children two hundred and fifty years ago. It is, after all, all old news, nothing new. |
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In some other chapters KALAKSHEPAM
discusses how: |
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A conscientious psychiatrist ended up in a mental hospital before turning a wandering lunatic |
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| A prime minister took time to deny the story of a one-crore suitcase a scamster gifted him |
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| A marxist patriarch merrily leaked polit bureau secrets |
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A cec's exertions ended in eventual dismay |
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| Two young men convicted of murder, and condemned to jail for life, won an impossible reprieve |
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Spices clad in lamas' robes were caught, playing shady politics in sub-himalayan regions, in the course of a continuing farce of manipulated incarnation of bodhisatvas |
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A bank defended non-existent and defaulting creditors |
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A university prescribed textbooks written by unborn professors |
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A medical college refused to help a family whose head it turned into vegetable. |
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An oily potion made arid pates bushy--from the hills to the seas. |
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Author: K Govindan Kutty
Publisher: GoodTimes New Media |
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| Kalakshepam brings alive forgotten, often dismissed as forgettable, faces which were seen along the highways of news. It recaptures their background, not so much as replaying the news itself. Kalakshepam is no census, certainly no high-minded commentary. Kalakshepam is a stroll down news track, no more. |
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