03/06/2026
https://tinyurl.com/mpaen7hx - Mahakavi G. Sankara Kurup - by M. Leelavathy
On the day India's greatest literary honour was first awarded, it went to a schoolteacher from Kerala who had written his first poem at age four.
Today, G. Sankara Kurup — Mahakavi G, as Malayalam literature came to know him — turns 124. He was born in 1901 in Nayathode, in what was then the Kingdom of Cochin. He died in 1978. In between, he quietly reshaped what Malayalam poetry could be and do.
The Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honour, was instituted in 1965. The first name called was his — for Odakkuzhal (The Bamboo Flute), a collection of 60 symbolist lyrics published fifteen years earlier. He used part of the prize money to create a literary award of the same name. A poet who won a prize and immediately turned it into a prize for others.
But the Jnanpith is only one door into this life. Kurup translated the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Kalidasa's Meghaduta, and Tagore's Gitanjali into Malayalam — three entirely different literary worlds, three different centuries, brought home into one language. He was also present, almost incidentally, at another birth: he wrote the lyrics for Nirmala (1948), the first Malayalam film to incorporate music and songs.
The 'G' he carried as his initial was borrowed from his uncle — the man who taught him Sanskrit instead of sending him to school, and whose influence was so decisive that Kurup wore his initial like a dedication for the rest of his life.
He later served in the Rajya Sabha. He was, in other words, a teacher, a poet, a translator, a lyricist, a parliamentarian — and somehow, in the noise of all those identities, one of the quietest and most enduring voices in Indian literature.
On his 124th birth anniversary, NDLI's Cultural Archives carries Mahakavi G. Sankara Kurup by M. Leelavathy — one of Malayalam's foremost literary scholars writing on one of its greatest poets. A fitting place to begin, or return.
