No Karunakaran shouldn’t be spared. Another scoundrel who was involved- Jayaram Padikkal, rose to be the DGP of Kerala. He is dead now, hopefully in hell (if their is one). Another one Pullikodan Narayanan also rose to senior position thanks to godfather Karunakaran. No this scoundrel is not forgiven. He has played with "democracy" too much-thanks to incompetent judiciary (tell me how many people were arrested for atrocities of Emergency??). Time to kick him out, ideally he and his perpetrators should be in jail…but that is ideally….there are many who were/are in senior positions, involved in atrocities of Emergency. Nothing is forgotten. The pliable judiciary, politicians involved, the police, all will say- nothing has happened. That is what they say when people are massacred whether in Gujarat or Delhi. Yes “Nothing happened”. Precisely what they said when they eliminated the plantation workers en masse in that banana republic in Amelio Brendia’s Mocando of magic realism (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez)
Kakkayam Camp Kadhaparayannu (by Appukuttan Vallikunnu) is a description on the Rajan case. Another book is Memories of a Father by Prof. T.V. Eachira Varier, who is the father of Rajan. If you seen this brilliant debut malayalam movie Piravi (The birth-1988) of Shaji.N.Karun, there is this unforgettable role played by Premji (who won a National Award for that) which is based on Mr. Varier.
Kakkayam Camp Kadhaparayannu (by Appukuttan Vallikunnu) is a description on the Rajan case. Another book is Memories of a Father by Prof. T.V. Eachira Varier, who is the father of Rajan. If you seen this brilliant debut malayalam movie Piravi (The birth-1988) of Shaji.N.Karun, there is this unforgettable role played by Premji (who won a National Award for that) which is based on Mr. Varier.
These excerpts from the book Memories of a Father…..
I came to know that Rajan yielded himself silently to the torture. I have read about people being called to their deaths in Nazi camps. As an officer called out names, others were queuing up, waiting for their turn. They even took care not to call a husband and wife together into death; Hitler knew that the pain of separation and getting lost was more intense than death.
Mr. Paul, the proprietor of the famous spare parts dealer, M/S Popular Automobiles, was an inmate at Kakkayam. His father contacted Mr. Karunakaran, and got him released because he came to know of it very early. Mr. Paul had Rs. 500 on him, and when leaving the camp he gave it to the other boys. After influencing someone, they bought food; up till then they were all starving. Rajan was not able to stand hunger; such a boy would have been burned in its forest fire. His mother could not even feed him a handful of rice before his death. Nor could I offer one to him in funeral rites after his death. That still weighs on me. When I hear him calling “father” in the heavy rain some nights it is the cry of hunger. Thinking that my child is hungry, I too never escape hunger, however much I eat.
“We must be able to face everything; must be able to face all that happened with a balanced mind. Only if you are able to do that will we be able to do our social duties,” Mr. Appukuttan Vallikkunnu consoled me. I understood that. The struggle against such brutalities had to begin with Kakkayam camp after the Emergency. I should not leave the new generation to that wooden bench and the rolling.
I fell silent. There were no signs of the police camp left in the building. The wounds that the thirteen-day-long camp inflicted on the bodies of those youths had not been posted on its walls. But those walls knew Rajan’s sighs and cries. They stood silent and detached, watching the young men writhing with pain. There were cobwebs on those walls. There were termites in those closed windows. I opened one of them, and light entered the room. In which mysterious wilderness is my son’s soul still wandering? I pressed my face against the iron bars. Oh, my son, here is your father…
My path is ending. The rain that lashed all over will thin out soon. I feel blessed that so many were drenched in that rain for me, and along with me. Let me hold this feeling close to my heart as an offering.
Rajan used to sing well. When I wrote that he sang only when his mother asked him, my daughters got angry. They said that Rajan used to sing for them too. He never sang for me. I had no time for his songs. So he might have decided that his father should hear his poorly recorded songs only after his death. Oh Rajan, how sad those songs were that you sang while alive, and which I never heard then. I see in them something that meditates for death. Did you hate life so much, my son?
“You didn’t care for him,” his mother said to me on her deathbed. Then, I had the face of a father who ran around the country like a horse, running through the days meaninglessly. But as time withered day after day in Kakkayam camp, her comment about the helpless father who couldn’t get his son might have been meaningful. I still have tears in my eyes to weep. This body still has weak throbs of life. So please, my dear ones, pardon this cursed father if I have pained you all.
I shall stop. The rain is still lashing out. I remember my son when this heavy rain drums my rooftop, as if someone is opening the locked gate and knocking at the front door. It is not right to write that a living soul has no communication with the soul of the dead.
I hear his songs from a cassette on this rainy night. I am trying to retrieve a lost wave with this tape recorder. The good earth is getting filled with songs till now unheard by me, this crude man. My son is standing outside, drenched in rain.
I still have no answer to the question of whether or not I feel vengeance. But I leave a question to the world: why are you making my innocent child stand in the rain even after his death?......
I came to know that Rajan yielded himself silently to the torture. I have read about people being called to their deaths in Nazi camps. As an officer called out names, others were queuing up, waiting for their turn. They even took care not to call a husband and wife together into death; Hitler knew that the pain of separation and getting lost was more intense than death.
Mr. Paul, the proprietor of the famous spare parts dealer, M/S Popular Automobiles, was an inmate at Kakkayam. His father contacted Mr. Karunakaran, and got him released because he came to know of it very early. Mr. Paul had Rs. 500 on him, and when leaving the camp he gave it to the other boys. After influencing someone, they bought food; up till then they were all starving. Rajan was not able to stand hunger; such a boy would have been burned in its forest fire. His mother could not even feed him a handful of rice before his death. Nor could I offer one to him in funeral rites after his death. That still weighs on me. When I hear him calling “father” in the heavy rain some nights it is the cry of hunger. Thinking that my child is hungry, I too never escape hunger, however much I eat.
“We must be able to face everything; must be able to face all that happened with a balanced mind. Only if you are able to do that will we be able to do our social duties,” Mr. Appukuttan Vallikkunnu consoled me. I understood that. The struggle against such brutalities had to begin with Kakkayam camp after the Emergency. I should not leave the new generation to that wooden bench and the rolling.
I fell silent. There were no signs of the police camp left in the building. The wounds that the thirteen-day-long camp inflicted on the bodies of those youths had not been posted on its walls. But those walls knew Rajan’s sighs and cries. They stood silent and detached, watching the young men writhing with pain. There were cobwebs on those walls. There were termites in those closed windows. I opened one of them, and light entered the room. In which mysterious wilderness is my son’s soul still wandering? I pressed my face against the iron bars. Oh, my son, here is your father…
My path is ending. The rain that lashed all over will thin out soon. I feel blessed that so many were drenched in that rain for me, and along with me. Let me hold this feeling close to my heart as an offering.
Rajan used to sing well. When I wrote that he sang only when his mother asked him, my daughters got angry. They said that Rajan used to sing for them too. He never sang for me. I had no time for his songs. So he might have decided that his father should hear his poorly recorded songs only after his death. Oh Rajan, how sad those songs were that you sang while alive, and which I never heard then. I see in them something that meditates for death. Did you hate life so much, my son?
“You didn’t care for him,” his mother said to me on her deathbed. Then, I had the face of a father who ran around the country like a horse, running through the days meaninglessly. But as time withered day after day in Kakkayam camp, her comment about the helpless father who couldn’t get his son might have been meaningful. I still have tears in my eyes to weep. This body still has weak throbs of life. So please, my dear ones, pardon this cursed father if I have pained you all.
I shall stop. The rain is still lashing out. I remember my son when this heavy rain drums my rooftop, as if someone is opening the locked gate and knocking at the front door. It is not right to write that a living soul has no communication with the soul of the dead.
I hear his songs from a cassette on this rainy night. I am trying to retrieve a lost wave with this tape recorder. The good earth is getting filled with songs till now unheard by me, this crude man. My son is standing outside, drenched in rain.
I still have no answer to the question of whether or not I feel vengeance. But I leave a question to the world: why are you making my innocent child stand in the rain even after his death?......
