The much-awaited autobiography of K.R. Gouri, the most known woman face and voice in Kerala's politics for over seven decades, is all set for release on November 15.
Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan will release the first volume of the work, titled ‘Athmakatha,' by handing over a copy to Congress leader V.M. Sudheeran at the T.V. Thomas Memorial Town Hall here on November 15, while the author herself will introduce the book. Brought out by Mathrubhumi Books, the book's release function will be presided over by M.P. Veerendrakumar, chairman and managing director, Mathrubhumi , while lyricist Vayalar Sharat Chandra Varma will offer felicitations.
The second volume of the book, Ms. Gouri promises, will not be too far away. “Ninety years is too long to be condensed into one book,” is how she explains the two volumes. Ms. Gouri, who in 1978-79 had narrated her memoirs through a series in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) mouthpiece, Desabhimani , had literally stopped writing in the early 80s with politics and public life taking most of her time.
But in 2009, the author in her woke up again after she settled down as chairperson of the Janathipathya Samrakshana Samithi, which she founded after being expelled from the CPI(M) in 1994. The first volume, which narrates her childhood, family and surroundings, interspersed with the history of Cherthala taluk and Pattanakad village where she was born in 1919, ends with her first time in jail.
The second volume, she had told The Hindu in a March 2009 interview, would border more on her political life, her life as the State's first
Revenue Minister in 1957, her relationship with the late CPI stalwart T.V. Thomas, her ‘encounters' with police brutality, her campus life
in Maharaja's College, where poet Changampuzha was her classmate and G. Sankara Kurup her Malayalam lecturer, and her days as an
advocate in the Cherthala court as well.
But what promises to make the second volume more awaited is her hint that her revelations in the book could trigger several political controversies, particularly with Ms. Gouri, now 91, intending to go deep into her final days with the CPI(M).
