Saajo Panayamkod on Clubhouse

Bio

Saajo Panayamkod is a multifaceted person who is a well known poet, screenwriter, theatre personlity, painter and illustrator.
His poems have appeared in all the leading literature magazines in Malayalam, and the book ‘Pimpukalude Nagarathil’ (In the City of Pimps) is a collection of his poems.
He has penned screenplays for a number of television serials, documentaries and films.
All these years, Saajo pursued his love for colours and depicted the darker side of life through canvas and paint (as he does in his poems and plays). He is also a freelance illustrator with published art works in major literary journals in Kerala.
Saajo has also written and directed a number of plays and street plays. In the ’90s, he lead a street play team which performed plays promoting the cause of fishermen in Kerala walking the whole coastal strech of the state..,
Translation of the article published in the Sunday Weekly of Desabhimani, the 3rd most circulated Malayalam Daily on 16.10.2022.

*Curious Case of Detective Sarah*

The book 'Detective Sarayude Rahasya Kavitha' (Detective Sarah's Secret Poetry) was released with a hundred different covers. Although a single edition of a book has had different cover pages before, this is the first time in an Indian language book that the author's own paintings have been on so many cover pages. Sajo Panayamkod's paintings published in various media are the cover pages of his latest poetry book.

Internationally, there is a practice of printing different covers to the American and British editions of the same book. This is because the tastes of the two markets are different. The American editions feature brighter and more colorful covers, while the British covers use darker colors. But even there, it is unheard that the author's paintings feature on so many cover pages.

Depending on the country where the book is published, there are cases where the calligraphy of the book title and the book name itself vary. For example, the first book in the Harry Potter series was released in England as 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' and in America as 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'. Similarly, the book published in the UK as 'Football in Sun and Shadow' was titled 'Soccer in Sun and Shadow' in the US. In Detective Sarah's Secret Poem, the calligraphy does not change as the paintings change. The title of the book is written by famous calligrapher Bhattathiri.

There are only five copies of Detective Sarah in one cover.