The climax of this movement in his creativity could be seen in a book like Sabdangal, far surpassing anything in our authentic fiction. Perhaps we might call this descriptive reporting, but all tagging becomes irrelevant as we read on, and we are left alone with existential terror. Basheer the artist is not around to interpret the position, he does not even claim the author's prerogative of a few lines of preaching.
Basheer was a problem to our backlogged scholars and critics—where does he stand, is he an Islamic disruptionist, what is he satirising? Basheer himself was of little help, he couldn't afford to bale these critics out, as he himself was sunk deep in the agony of enquiry.
He enquired through little situations and small people. One of the early Basheer cameos comes to my mind, out of Sabdangal. The scene is a roadside strip of land, fit for garbage, and offering a brief sanctuary for human beings closest to the wastes of men. This is the locus of a love triangle, archetypal, a field of misery illuminated by the seductive guile of a prostitute, the trustworthiness of a sleeping beggar and a townsman come to whore beneath the starlit sky. Recording such situations there is the danger of slipping into pornography, and only great craftsmen drive the message home. It is an act of ascetic sacrifice, similar to benediction and grace.
The communists, an active presence in the Malayalam writers' workshops, greeted this work with bourgeois prudery. Comrade K. Damodaran, who was to denounce totalitarianism decades later to Tariq Ali, then said,"Sabdangal marks Basheer's cultural pauperisation." Basheer himself was intimidated. He withdrew from that path of sovereign nakedness, and returned respectably though scantily clad in petit-bourgeois attire. The missed assault on societal horror turned to crisp and crackling satire.
Basheer is seen as the street magician of this comedy, he was treated in this fashion by a repressive society with moral pretensions. He was considered, alternatively, a Muslim critic of Muslim backwardness. A little higher up, he was considered an accurate diarist of self-scorching encounters with vagrancy and sin, the liberals found him Joycean. He had to be accommodated, however uncertain the slot. Universities awarded citations and a doctorate, but I am sure he was still one of the rarest few who preferred the starlit sky and the springs of compassion in the extremities of living.
Translating Basheer calls for great dedication, but even such tedium has its joy. Vanajam Ravindran has not only worked on Basheer at her study table, but visited the Basheer home and gathered priceless vignettes of the man. Basheer was in physical decline, but his mind was as incandescent as ever. The feeling persists that Kerala ought to have done much more for Basheer, and much earlier. He is gone; and this extremely elegant volume is a welcome tribute.
