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 through 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 through 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 could disagree with the tactics and the strategies he adopted in pursuing his goals, but 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 po