It is a mystery that Kozhikode, not Kolkata, has become the first UNESCO City of Literature in India. The credit should go to Mayor Beena Philip, who systematically and perseveringly staked the city’s claim and followed it up with all the necessary documentation, such as details of the libraries the city had, the number of books published, and the number of literature festivals held. Such figures are not figments of the imagination of the creative minds that flourished in the city and enriched literature in the state. Where else in the world is there an SM Street, where SM stands for Sweet-Meat? At the end of the street is the statue of the writer SK Pottekkatt, who traveled the whole world on a shoestring budget to present to the readers of Malayalam vignettes from Africa to Alaska and Indiana to Indonesia. In between, he wrote novels titled “The Story of a Street” and “The Story of a Land”.
It was in Kozhikode that a settler from Malappuram found his karmabhoomi and gave lovers of literature books titled My Grandfather Had an Elephant; and created a character who bravely taught a teacher that one plus one is a Big One, citing the instance of two rivers merging to become a bigger river. Vaikom Muhammad Basheer showed the world that for a talented writer like him even language did not matter, as he made good use of colloquial language to produce great works. Kozhikode is also the place where a group of young men, led by KP Kesava Menon and inspired by nothing but the desire for the nation’s freedom, joined hands to start the newspaper Mathrubhumi a century ago. Kozhikode is also the home of Kerala’s pre-eminent writer and film director MT Vasudevan Nair. Small wonder that Kozhikode received the UNESCO honour!
