Achuthanandan's politics was not poetry, but provocative prose

ELIKKAKATHU Sankaran Achuthanandan, alias V S Achuthanandan, or better VS, was a communist who did not belong to the self-serving culture. Instead, he chose to look at the eyes, faces and needs of those around him.

- ELIKKAKATHU Sankaran

ELIKKAKATHU Sankaran Achuthanandan, alias V S Achuthanandan, or better VS, was a communist who did not belong to the self-serving culture. Instead, he chose to look at the eyes, faces and needs of those around him. He was a communist at a time when many of his colleagues were becoming consumerists. One couldn't disagree with the tactics and the strategies he adopted in pursuing his goals; nobody could challenge his clean political image and sincerity towards the issues and causes he had espoused. Achuthanandan was a leader who carried with him his own notion of communism, a notion based on his own personal experiences. He never imagined things, but saw through them; never talked merely about things, but their meaning; never spoke in the language of the market, but that of life; never spoke like a book, but with conviction. Like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, when he used a word, he meant what he chose to mean, neither less nor more. This was clear from the way in which he practiced the art of politics, int