on how we have known them via the media, books etc. So much that when we come across another drastically different look, we are just dumb-founded and unable to believe that this
is the same person. Happened to me recently, when my wife gifted me 3 Malayalam novels
as a birthday present. One of the books had this picture on the cover. Please excuse the bad picture quality - taken with my phone.
The book is by the famous Malayalam author Kamala Das who writes under the pen-name
of Madhavikutty. Born a Hindu, she converted to Islam many years ago and is now known
as Kamala Suraiyya. This book is actually her autobiography and titled "Ende Katha", which
in English would be "My Story". She wrote this in 1976 at age 42. The book's contents are
such (too radical for that time and age) that they deserve a post of their own. Hence we won't
get into that - will cover it in another post.
As I held the book in my hands and looked at the cover, my thoughts were, "Wow, what a beautiful woman. So Malayalee in looks too. Not that bad a figure too - atleast with the Indian benchmark for what good figure is."
But, it never struck me, even for a moment that this is the author herself. Ofcourse the snap
was taken when she was young. Not that I could be blamed for it because when I was born,
she was already in her late thirties. And by the time I grew old enough to know her as an
author and a public figure, she must have been in her fifties. And at that time, her photos
that came in newspapers were all resembling this one below.
So conditioned was I to this image of her when she was older, that I couldn't associate a young and pretty face to her. BTW, in the book she talks a lot about how she hated her looks when
she was a kid. After seeing this snap, I guess that is just normal human-female behaviour that always plays up their minor blemishes and keep worrying about them, than taking pride in
the other strong points (look-wise) that they have been blessed with.
No comments:
Post a Comment