The Wailing Wall

Its corner chaikadas tea shops serve tea that8217;s really tea, while the most exquisite biscuits entice you in artistic arrangements from old-fashioned glass cookie jars: walnut creams, raisin rusks and vanilla-cashew curls. Piled alongside are spongy sweet disks of vatta appam superior steamed rice cakes, sprinkled with plump golden raisins.

All this abundance is proudly pointed out by local artist KK Suresh, the 41-year old art tutor at the Sri Sankara Sanskrit University. Suresh8217;s home is nearby, which is also the 8216;Chamber of Puranic Arts8217;. Traditional Keral mural arts, oil and acrylic paintings on scriptural themes and a deep devotional streak are the big buzz for this shy painter, you think. Until he takes you to an approximately 1,200-foot long, five-foot thick wall on the outskirts of the Sanskrit University.

All along the cement surface are panels from the epics and Sanskrit dramas in half-inch relief. Using just an awl and a knife, Suresh has created an unusual modern rendering of the old stories: the life of Sri Shankara Bhagvadpada, with some dramatic scenes having occurred right there at Kaladi, like the one at Crocodile Ghat still there, re-identified around 1907 by the then Shankarayacharya of the Sringeri Mutt, with the help of the Travancore Raja!. In this episode, Shankara stands in the Poorna, his leg in the jaws of a crocodile. His widowed mother is on the banks, distraught. Shankara asks her permission, which, as her only child, he would never have obtained otherwise, to take aapat sanyas emergency renunciation. The poor lady agrees and the crocodile promptly lets go, so that Shankara can fulfil his destiny.

Other thrilling themes patiently worked on the wall by Suresh are the Birth of the Natya Shastra Lord Brahma instructs Sage Bharata to compile it from the essence of the four Vedas, scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana and, most unusual, from Mahakavi Kalidas8217; major Sanskrit plays, like Raghuvamsam, Meghadootam and Abhijnana-Shakuntalam.

There is a sense of extraordinary love and faith about Suresh8217;s work that syncs with the elegant Kerala-style main buildings of the Sanskrit University, their gabled tiled roofs visible over Suresh8217;s wall. Suresh charged only his material costs Rs 35,000. He did not ask his artist8217;s fee, he says, since the work was his personal offering.

However, the wall does not seem in the pink. Local children pee on it, rubbish is dumped alongside and not cleared. Area development, fibre-coating the wall and a shade 8216;roof8217; for it would run up a huge bill of Rs 78,000, resources better deployed in enhancing students8217; facilities like the Internet and plenty of terminals. Perhaps the town authorities could simply teach its citizens to value their unique wall? For, just this summer, a Swiss national, who couldn8217;t believe the amount of work involved executed in only 66 days, has taken detailed photographs and submitted them to the Guinness Book of World Records. The process of verification is underway. As with many things Indian, it seems we need others to appreciate our good efforts first before we ourselves can be bothered with them.