Chidambara Smarana : A review of Balachandran Chullikkad's memoir

Balachandran Chullikkad's memoir Chidambara Smarana (pub. 01/2001) reads like a struggling young man's journal entries from 1980-90's India. Characters played by Mohanlal, Sreenivasan, Mukesh and co. in the late eighties and nineties' Malayalam movies would be Chullikkad if they were devoid of their trademark humor and had overdosed on pathos. The glass seems to be half empty or almost completely empty through Chullikkad's lens/pen whereas Dasan and Vijayan saw it half full, almost abrim with the invisible possibility of more water that may fill and cause an overflow of good fortune at any moment. None of that optimism can be seen in Chidambara Smarana (literal transl~Memory of Chidambaram.)

Balachandran Chullikkad was a fire brand young poet in the eighties and nineties Kerala. Although I was a reader of Malayalam poetry during those days, somehow I seem to have missed most of his poetry. I had read some of his contemporaries like V. Madhusoodanan Nair, Sugatha Kumari and Kureeppuzha Sreekumar but the only poem I remember of Chullikkad is Ghazal. Over the years Ghazal had become a personal meme of sort which we would bring up any time there is a Hindustani singer in the frame, in front of a predominantly Malayali audience, "there goes Ghulam Ali, singing his wail of a ghazal."

A disturbing undercurrent I noticed in Chullikkad's writing is his sterile, almost impaired depiction of women. He might be afflicted with what could be the opposite of Oedipus complex -  utter hate towards mother and motherly figures. According to my armchair psycho analysis conducted a couple of minutes ago with the aid of YouTube, this was probably as a result of his strained relationship with his mother and grand mother during his formative years. He never recovered, and not only that, there is a lack of remorse or wisdom that comes with age, quite unlike what you would naturally expect from a sensitive poetic soul like him. Not all poets are made equal, some are made like James Dean, Balachandran Chullikkad is Malayalam literature's OG rebel without a cause.