Red - Kannur breathes and radiates red. From the
laterite hills to the communist party flags and from its blood killing fields to its iconic
Theyyams, red is the go-to color of this west coast city at the northern tip of the southern Indian state, Kerala.
With
my personal connection to the place, it would have taken some significant amount of restraint to stay away from the red-jacketed book titled
Kannur : Inside India's Bloodiest Revenge Politics by
Ullekh N.P. The author is a native of Kannur and a journalist with
Open Magazine.
The book tracks the history of violence and blood-letting that has become synonymous with the Kannur as the political killing capital of Kerala. Many faces and names of people appearing in these pages reminded me of people we might have ran into at an afternoon political discussion, at a panchayath function or at the neighborhood AKG
vayanshala, all those years ago in the eighties.
My impression of the eighties Kannur, where
Congress party and
CPI(M) as the de-facto rivals contradicts the murders painted by numbers in this book. It is true that post-1990s, after
the Babri Masjid demolition, religious fundamentalist organizations like
RSS made considerable inroads into Kerala, one of the last bastions of the liberal left in India and thus replacing Congress as the main enemy for CPI(M) in Kannur. The passing of the mantle of the main CPI(M) enemy from Congress to RSS (BJP) is not evident from the narrative. At present almost all (if not all) the political killing victims are either Marxists or Hindu nationalists, Congress party members are nowhere in the picture.
The book also explores the question, why? Why did Kannur become the hot-bed, by exploring some unusual theories about the social, historical, genetic and geographic composition of the district and its inhabitants. From
Chekavars to
Assyrians to Portuguese it is fascinating to see various interpretations of history in an investigation to make sense of the mess.
...........
Eeda (
translated as Here)is an excellent fictional companion piece for Ullekh N.P's book. It is a contemporary look at the political rivalries of Kannur through a Romeo-Juliet angle. Communists and Hindu nationalists stand in for Montagues and Capulets, while a young couple tries to escape the tentacles of their inherited political legacies.
Shane Nigam (Kismath) and Nimisha Sajayan (
Thondimuthalum Drikthasakshiyum), the protagonists come from similar families in Kannur except their political affiliations - one with strong Marxist connections and other with Hindu nationalist leaning, which is the other side of the tracks as far as the other is concerned.
It is a smooth, natural flowing movie, the directorial debut of editor turned director B. Ajithkumar and
Collective Phase One. Although other than the lead couple's accent, most of the other characters do not sound like locals, it is not because they didn't try. There is an impressive lineup of supporting characters essayed by Alencier Ley Lopez, Surabhi Lakshmi, Manikandan Achari, Sudhi Koppa and others.
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