In Njaan (2014?) by Ranjith, there is a song titled “Ozhividangalil”. I think Rafeeq Ahammed came up with the lines. Kottakkal Madhu rendered it. There is a line in the song that goes: ariyukillente yaathanaa bhoopatam, arivathonnee niyogavum dukhavum. In English, this line would mean: [I] do not know the map of my suffering, the only thing I know is my fate and sorrow. Or, if you read the line a little differently—that is, arivu athonnee instead of arivath onn ee—the last line changes quite a lot. If the latter, it would mean what I have already translated. That is, the only thing I know is my fate and sorrow. But if you were to hear/split the phrase in the former way—arivu athonnee—then the meaning shifts considerably into: Knowledge—that is the fate and sorrow.

So you can read the line either as: the only thing I know is my fate and sorrow, or knowledge—that is the fate and sorrow.

A few years ago I read (did not finish) OV Vijayan’s thalamurakal (generations) which I think has been eclipsed by Khasak quite unfairly. This is a generation-story. Like the house of blue mangoes or manushyanu oru aamukham. In the family that Vijayan is tracing, there is a point where a (ezhava) character from the family runs out when he sees a torso-less head floating in the air. This head, it turns out, is an ancestor. From what I remember, this ‘head’ of family has arrived to let the descendants know that their lineage is in trouble. That things are going down.

I do not remember whether it is the ‘head’ or the character or the narrator who says this, but there is a line there: vidya ahanthayum vitham papavum aayi marunnu. That is, knowledge becomes pride and money becomes sin.

Fairly straightforward.

But if you let it slip a little, where pride and sin can float around and attach to knowledge and money as they wish, then there is a chance that knowledge becomes sin. Which, if I may stretch my lines a bit, can be rendered as knowledge becomes guilt, and then, knowledge becomes sorrow.

We all know when knowledge becomes sin. The usual apple-eve business. There are also instances from other epics: “Oh, how can I live knowing this?” Or in armed forces, “Don’t ask don’t tell.” Or corporatese: “need to know basis.” There is also knowledge as violence, which is a sin, in the older sort of anthropology. The Other and so on. Now we have shifted to knowledge becoming guilt, so we have self reflexivity and standpoint theory as a necessary part of our dissertations where you confess your guilt of taking humans as objects of study and saying things about them which might be way off the mark.

I am not interested in all that. I am interested in the next stage, which is knowledge as sorrow. Where, as the song (might) suggest that Knowledge is my sorrow and my fate. There are places where you don’t want to know something. Say, who turned off the switch that led to hundreds of people plummeting to their death. You can shelve the entire thing saying “We will never know.” But then there are also places where you want to know, or you get to know, and that leads to sorrow. Or worse, to the belief that your fate ties you to knowledge. Off the top of my head, here is an example. In Proust, there is a scene where a woman leaves her dress on a chair and a person who happens to have some interest in her (lover? husband?) notices this letter poking out of the dress. He knows that if he reads the letter, he will come to know the secrets of this woman. On the other hand, he also knows that if he reads the letter, he will know the secrets of this woman. In the first case, it is slightly harmless. Maybe knowledge as sin. But the second one is the real trouble: that is where knowledge can lead to sorrow. In matters of amore, this is a not infrequent. I can think of a few more instances. Knowing that you were an accidental child. Or that your father raped you. Or that things are not gonna straighten out ever. Etc.

It is perhaps similar to a person who is dying of cancer and knows that he is gonna die. Death is a possibility and not a surety for most of us. But for a person with terminal cancer, death becomes as real as his existence. So in that moment, are they sorrowful? Because at that moment they know that they are going to die for sure?

Another parallel is the problem with knowledge itself. Anthropologists often talk about how knowing the other involves a violent act. Honestly, if that is true, then every kind of knowledge involves violence. There is no non-violent knowledge.

I wonder whether Rafeeq Ahammed thought of all this when he penned the lyrics. There is also a consequence—once you know, you know that there is no ground. Once you know there is no ground, you’re done for.