Visappu Pranayam Unmadam: A Scarcity of Abundance

Who can tell what wonders are concealed in the jelly candies inside our heads, and when does suddenly its sweet taste turn bitter and bitter to sweet? (Self-translation from Malayalam) 

A Malayalam version of the post can be found here.

Poverty sucks the vitality out of human souls and spits them out as sludge. When we choose to define it by the deficiency of wealth alone, we are effectively oversimplifying this phenomenon. The final and actual cost of poverty, when we evaluate it considering the social, mental, and political degradation that it affects the individuals and the society at large, will be far more humongous than we imagine. 

Even while traversing every torturous route of poverty, Muhammad Abbas was able to retain his empathetic nature and did all he could to nurture it. That's his biggest quality as a reader. Even as a man who stands far below every index set by society, he was able to place himself far above his compatriots. A person who studied only till the eighth standard, that too in Tamil, who couldn't read Malayalam, who had to struggle every living moment for the sustenance of himself and his family, made himself capable of reading extensively and found a space to converse with the larger society. To prove that it's possible to do it is his biggest contribution to humanity. 

Recently I had a chance to read the collection of memoirs written by Abbas, titled "Visappu Pranayam Unmadam" (Hunger, Love, and Insanity). These are a bunch of memories that were etched on his mind in different periods of his life, through his challenging experiences. All the thirty-eight notes included in it were shared on social media previously. The prominent topic of these notes is the rampant poverty and deficiency that plague the self and society. It portrays vivid pictures showing how we tend to forget humanity and responsiveness when faced with abject penury and how, to retrieve them, we need to go through ardent struggles. This, I believe, is the best way we can define this book. 

In the jottings that deliberate on himself and his life, we find the author in deep introspection, and in the ones about society and fellow beings who inhabit the same society, we find empathy and kindness. These qualities make one take the book seriously. Another prominent theme that the author puts forward in the book is the interplay between the three elements of the title, hunger, love, and insanity. The book made me think of how each of these becomes the cause and effect of the other two at the same time. 

The writer, in his first note, tells in advance not to look for literary qualities in the following ones as his language is not of literature but that of life. Even when the content of the book is of significant importance, the cliched writing style and overtly emotional approach of the writer play spoilsport. Maybe when the emotional lava that's burning inside him breaks the dam and flows into paper, he may be getting therapeutic relief. Many readers, themselves far away from the perilous journey the author took, may get voyeuristic satisfaction from this approach. But the highly rhetorical nature of the book is the main ingredient that leaks all the profundity that it could have had from it.