Bibliophile to the core

Reading is like breathing for P. Govinda Pillai; while the reader in him savours every new book like a burst of fresh air, the writer in him is able to exude the same passionate intensity and freshness to the reader. What makes the reader’s journey with PG exciting is his ability to stride various worlds, and to make scintillating connections between apparently disparate disciplines, distinct eras, different personalities and distant incidents. Although reviews on works of literature and arts are rare in this anthology, the ones that make their appearance are filled with rare insights and illuminating summaries: like the one on the Complete Works of Moinkutty Vaidyar, the doyen of mapilla songs, the Koran translation by Sheikh Sainudeen Maqdum, the autobiography of Nitya Chaitanya Yati, and the critical writings on Shakespeare, Ritwik Ghatak, and film theorist Gaston Roberge. In this review, even while admiring Durant’s encyclopaedic knowledge and his all consuming commitment to the task at hand, PG doesn’t hesitate to question its euro-centric approach despite the book’s declared efforts to overcome it. The architecture of Marxist materialist philosophy that structures PG’s thought gives the reader a solid framework that connects lines of thought followed by different writers and books into a complex yet cogent web of ideas.