The Buddha I And Leopard / Asokakumar Edasseri

The life and works of Edasseri Govindan Nair have assumed greater socio-literary significance after his death. Readers of Malayalam poetry now go back to him with renewed interest; critics recognize him as one of the most important poets of Malayalam. The originality of his thought is awesome, many of them clearly non-conformist, but rooted astonishingly in the Indian tradition and mythology. Steeped at once in the local mythological tradition as well as the pressures of modernisation, his poems represent the ambivalent reaction of a Third World poet. He saw the futility of permanent loyalty to any isms as he thought any idea which ceases to spread light should be discarded. Such a stern but deeply human assessment is possible only by a person who considers humanism as the touchstone.