Amour Vincit Omnia....

-
      Of all the love letters I have ever seen, the most poignant and enchanting ones are from two  literary works.You may call it novellas. The first one is  Letter from Peking by Pearl S. Buck and the other one is Premalekhanam by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer.I strongly recommend both of them.Especially for those who cant stand a thick volumes of prose fictions.

 

My dear wife,
First Before I say what must be said, let me tell you that I love only you....( The novel begins with this letter which is something we cant forget for life)


 Here is the original work in Malayalam from Premalekanam.

    "My dearest Saraamma, When life is at its most intense state of youth, and one's heart has reached its most beautiful state of love, how does my dearest friend while away her time during this rare and short-lived beautiful period of life? As for me, I am living each moment of my life with my mind stirring hopelessly in love with my Saaraama. What about Saaraamaa? I request you to think deeply and kindly bless me with a sweetly generous reply,
Saaraama's own,
Keshavan Nair...." (Translation is drawn from Wikipedia entry)
     The work "Premalekhanam" has been translated into English by an Australian writer Asher  and published by UNESCO.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Earth in Her Hands

-
Image
  The Earth in Her Hands is a book by Jennifer Jewell that covers 75 extraordinary women in the world of plants . It tells us stories of womenfolk who put their life into plants, or the plants chose them to live their life with. Like most exciting things happening in my life, I stumbled upon this title recently while researching a related project online. It was love at first sight, and I got addicted to it while listening to the book on Audible, waiting outside our university dental clinic for my wife to have an appointment. Thanks, Dr. Abdul Qadar, for a three-hour long session on an emergency basis before he leaves for his home for the annual vacation. Each woman has a unique plant journey to relate to, which will take us for a ride through the ever-exciting botanical world. They are cherry-picked from various fields like botany, garden nursery, floral design, garden, photography landscape architecture, farming, seed banks, herbalism, and food justice. The common thread all these
Read more

A Breakfast with Elements at the Heights of Habla

-
Image
        There was a time when I lived in a sleepy, cold town all alone, having the luxury of a lovely friend, a small car, and a camera. We roamed around the places, exploring things no mortals we knew ever dared to. Once, he came up with a plan to watch the sunrise and had breakfast sitting on the top of a huge boulder, crowning the edge of a mountainous height and cutting steep slope that people feared to peep down. The mountain peak known as Habla is one of the peaks on the Aseer Mountain range, which is part of the Sarawat Mountains, running parallel to the Red Sea’s eastern coastline, extending the Hijaz Mountain range to the Southern borders of Saudi Arabia.                                               Part of the plan was to start way earlier so that we could watch the sunrise, and December was never kind to the people of this part of the world. Being so precarious and knowing much more about what was happening around me, I said no without sounding blunt. Still, I had to follow
Read more

Mandi: From Pen to Plate in 11 Frames

-
Image
Mandi (مندي) is a special steak and rice dish, a staple at special occasions such as Eid, parties, and wedding feasts among Arabs. Originating in Hadhramouth, Yemen, it soon made inroads into the entire Arabian peninsula, Sub-Saharan Africa, and recently the Southeast Asian countries too, mostly on account of its oil-free and exotic style of cooking. In short, the fat from suspended meat drips onto the rice being cooked underneath. The meat gets exquisitely tender, which is probably why the name "mandi" (from nada ندى meaning 'dew' or 'snowflakes') was chosen. Mutton (preferably lamb), chicken, and camel are the usual meats prepared this way.  Let us start with a three-month-old lamb raised nibbling on tender blades of subtropical desert grass and shrubs, often roaming free on vast stretches of the mountainous landscape. At the peak of summer, these lambs even dig up the land and eat the roots of plants underneath. A pit is dug about four feet d
Read more