Sukumar azhikode interview with karassery pin

An introduction to the ‘The Mappila Ramayana of Malabar’

Many years back, when my second son was still a child, I used to translate and playfully sing ‘Mary had a little lamb’ in Malayalam for him often as he was always amused by it.

One day, some months later, we met his class teacher, a petite Aussie lassie who remarked that she quite enjoyed the Mary version in our native palindromic tongue.

Sukumar azhikode interview with karassery pin

I was a bit taken aback, trying to figure out what she was talking about, when realization dawned.

Well, that is how it is, you hear something, you like it, you then assimilate it and then pass it on to somebody else in the natural course…and this was pretty much what Piranthan Hassankutty (The Mad Hussein) did a hundred years ago in North Malabar.

This wandering mendicant would go from place to place, with a stick supporting him, and a cloth bag on his back to sing an ‘off the norm’ ballad. Audiences were similarly amused by the playfully sarc