The contrast between Kamal’s ‘Gaddama’ and Iqbal’s ‘Gaddama’ is striking.

# Premchand

KU’s interaction of marketing equations of cinema. Iqbal, the screenwriter’s prospects were also affected.

Author, journalist and columnist KU Iqbal’s book ‘Kannum Katum’ was written by Premchand. His articles were a diary of his life in exile. After his death, his sister KU Shalini collected the articles and turned them into a book. The publisher is Print House Publications.

‘TodayYou should go and see the friend or relative you want to see today. He may die tomorrow. You may die. Forgetting in the rush is the biggest lie in this world that is easy to tell ‘- K.U. Iqbal (Account No.)

K.U. Iqbal is a painful memory. I never saw him dead. His return to earth was never seen. It came as a shocking news that Iqbal had left us during the height of the epidemic. K.U. Iqbal’s friend’s name was also written.

Who was Iqbal? Iqbal is well-known to Malayali readers for the past four decades, he has passionately carved out the flakes of exile life one by one. Almost anything sent to Mathrubhumi will be followed by a phone call from him. If it is too late to print it, another call will come. Should I leave it alone or give it to someone else?

His method was to write constantly. He has written so much in the last four decades. As the eighties and nineties passed and the new century dawned, he turned to online. There his ‘eyes and ears’ were relatively safe. No space limitations or editing. Iqbal’s Gulf Diary became the eyes and ears of Malayali’s life in exile.

Iqbal came to Kozhikode friendships in the early eighties. Iqbal also traveled with the revival of Malayalam literature after the Emergency. It was a time when the popular cultural scene set the streets of Kerala on fire. Even after the demise of the stage, the energy it created continued to burn through the community in many ways. The Mathrubhumi Weekly and the Weekly entered the most controversial period in its history. It was because of the new assumptions. VR Govindanunni and K.C. Narayanan was also at the helm of this media renaissance. Iqbal also took part in it.

On the way to Mathrubhumi, next to the second gate, a godown owned by Joy Mathew’s father, Mathewchayan, evolved into the Bodhi Books and Lending Library. The Bodhi Lending Library was a joint venture. The book collection of many friends including Comrade Mandakini Narayanan, who is affectionately called ‘Ma’ by Ajith’s mother, became a part of it that day. Bodhi Books, which opened the books of left-wing publishers like New Left Review and Monthly Review to the readers of Kozhikode for the first time, has disappeared into time as a public platform that gave direction to Kozhikode reading and thinking in the first half of the eighties.

In 1982, under the banner of Aksharam Publications, poet Satchidanand’s first large volume of poetry (Poems of Satchidanand 1965-82) was released at Townhall under the auspices of Bodhi Books, Kozhikode. KU Iqbal came to Kozhikode to this cultural community. At that time, Iqbal was looking for the best writers in Malayalam and giving interviews and giving a new direction to literary and media work.

In my memory Comrade TN from Kodungallur Suryakanti. Iqbal’s arrival was with the ‘passport’ given by Joy. So he easily became one of us. Suryakanthi Library framed his readings as ‘T.N. Iqbal notes in his memoir ‘Joy and Books in Suryakanti’ as a credit.

Exile transformed Iqbal into someone else. From literary and media work seeking writers, he turned into a writer who gives eyes and ears to the pain of the diaspora. It was human writing. Each type of composition becomes the basis of each story or film.

Iqbal’s exile writings had reached Malayalam even before Benjamin’s ‘Aadujeewetam’ (2008). These are the writings that follow the journey of Malayali’s Gulf exile which started in Azad’s ‘Vilkanund Swapnaman’ (1980). Iqbal can be clearly seen in the memory of ‘Dreams for Sale’, feeling the caress of the wet finger of the first expatriate who swam to the coast of Khorfukan. It has half a century of Malayali.

Tears and tears

Each memory in this collection is full of Iqbal’s ‘tears and tears’. It will also include ‘Gaddama’ which symbolizes the pain of female exile. K.C. When Narayanan was in charge of Bhashaposhini, Iqbal went to the Gulf to do domestic work and found Gaddama suffering hell in Saudi. Iqbal has gone to great lengths to make it a film. Finally, when the film was made, it was reduced to only the heir of its story. He had shared that pain many times, saying, ‘Isn’t it a movie, what voice do we all have?’ It was an extreme suffering. Kamal’s ‘Gaddama’ has diverged a lot from Iqbal’s ‘Gaddama’. Its additions reminded it of Benjamin’s ‘goat life’. It wasn’t meant to be. KU’s interaction of marketing equations of cinema. Iqbal, the screenwriter’s prospects were also affected. No matter how much I wanted to, I could not get back to the cinema. It haunted him forever as a painful sense of tragedy. The movies that were dreamed of were then buried in that mind forever. Iqbal remembers a screenplay that was ruined by time and never made it.

Ecosystem of exile

A heart-wrenching experience in this book is the chapter ‘Useless Men’. It is a face-to-face encounter with fate that those who have worked for a lifetime and run away. The warnings of Iqbal’s last journey can be read in it.

Most of the notes are nostalgic memories of Kodungallur. Iqbal once again reaches the back roads of his own writing career. It’s hard to make a living as a writer. There are tears of that plight in the failure certificate given to Iqbal by Madamp Kunjikuttan. Here we see the failure of a writer who is destined to continue his life in exile in search of employment. The writing is filled with the pain of those whose dreams turn into water lines.

In February 1982, K.C. Iqbal’s first feature came when Narayanan was in charge of Mathrubhumi Varanthapam. Written history is not inclusive. It reflects the choice of those who write it. That is why Iqbal is most fond of traveling in search of those who have not been recorded in history. It is also a journey to make invisible, invisible people visible. ‘Eyes and Ears’ leave such a grand spectacle. Iqbal’s habitat is not a jungle of only lions, but of grass and worms. It is the eyes and ears of the unseen.

‘Textbook of an Ideal Life’ is such a beautiful memory. A journey documenting those who are left behind in mass oblivion as they walk behind the stars. Musa Haji, a freedom fighter who did social work till his death at the age of 93, is one such man.

‘Tightnesses in the chest’ are of poignant memories brought into language. At the age of fifty, Iqbal knew that he was affected by the disease, which increases and decreases the amount of hemoglobin in the blood. Only close relatives and friends knew that information. Memories are more intense in that life journey with illness. Chest compressions add depth to words.

Ashraf Patian, who entered the history of modern cinema with a single film ‘Thrasam’, Moitu Padiyath, who wrote novels in a Muslim context and the story writer of the ever-popular film Kuttikuppayam, and others like Kodungallur people, can feel that it becomes a close reading that exposes many silences and rejections. The journey in search of the forgotten actress Jamila Malik is also heart touching. ‘After death, he is a loan’ is an extraordinary expat life experience that beats any movie story.

Nostalgia is not the only subject of Iqbal. Many warnings are given about the upcoming new competitions and the crises that will arise in the workplaces that are going to be exiled due to Covid-19. A history of exodus is added to this. Iqbal recognizes that the unstable unorganized labor sector and living on the brink of exodus is a problem for the survival of all societies. Relatives of the editors V. R. Govindanunni, painter K. Prabhakaran and story writer E. Harikumar are remembered with pain.

Death is a recurring theme in this book. His adhi is not anxiety over his own death, but the deaths of his loved ones. ‘The dead do not complain. No frills. There is no question of when he will be buried.’He reveals his philosophical position on death. He paints vivid portraits of many people he remembers from the distances he has traveled. To think that he was celebrating with the tenderness of memories the life that death had made vain. These are the only words left to dedicate to a dear friend who passed away prematurely. K. Let’s read more about what U. Iqbal, the writer, storyteller and screenwriter left unfulfilled. It will be strong for expatriates. Those who love it will be together. It will be a crutch in the way of escapes. May he live in words and shine as an immortal star.