An excerpt from “Gallery” by Shajil Anthru, Litterateur Malayalam Edition, August 2026
Nina Kossman: An Image from a Distant Land Illuminated by Onam
The cover painting of this issue of Litterateur was created by Nina Kosman, who was born in Russia and now lives in the United States. The painting contains no traditional Onam flower carpet, Mahabali, or other familiar symbols of the festival. Yet, it evokes a light and warmth that feels deeply familiar to Kerala.
The Russian poem accompanying the painting is titled “ЖАР” (Heat / Fever). This note attempts to read the poem and the painting—neither of which is directly connected to Onam—in the light of the Onam experience.
Through the poem “Onam Light,” it is an attempt to discover a familiar Kerala experience within an artwork created in a distant land.
The cover painting of this issue of Litterateur, however, was created by an artist from far away from Kerala—Nina Kossman, who was born in Russia and now lives in the United States. There is no traditional Onam flower carpet or Mahabali in the painting. Yet, when we look at it, we can see a light and warmth that feels very familiar to Kerala.
Not only in Kerala, but also in the hearts of Malayalis around the world, the colours, scents and memories of Onam are slowly beginning to fill the air. The green fields after the harvest, the coconut trees reaching towards the sky, the colourful flower carpets, and the smell of the earth after the rain—all these together create the familiar image of Onam in Kerala.
Nina Kossman is a Russian-American artist, poet, translator, memoirist, playwright and painter. She has created a rich world of art and literature by bringing together different cultures, languages and art forms through her unique creativity and artistic vision.
Born in Moscow in 1959, Nina Kossman now lives in New York.
She became widely known in the literary world as a translator of the poems of the great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva.
Her memoir Behind the Border: Memories of a Russian Childhood, along with her poems, short stories and plays written in Russian and English, are among her notable works. Some of her plays have been staged in New York and London.
Several of Nina Kossman’s notable works have also been published in Litterateur Redefining World, the international English magazine that began publication from Kerala in August 2020.
Another important work by Nina Kossman is the poetry anthology Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths, published by Oxford University Press.
Nina Kossman: A Multifaceted Artist Who Crossed the Boundaries of Languages
She has received several awards and grants, including the NEA Fellowship and the UNESCO/PEN Short Story Award.
In Nina Kossman’s artistic world, painting is not a secondary form of expression. It is another language for her. At times, when the tension between Russian and English may have felt like an inner struggle, she may have turned to another language without words—to colours and forms. Mythology, folklore, the subconscious and dreams often find their way into her paintings. Strong emotional expression and the intense use of colour give her paintings a distinctive power and depth.
She has exhibited her paintings in New York and Philadelphia. Often, along with a painting, she presents a poem born from the same feeling or inspiration. One such work is titled ЖАР, meaning Heat.
A Vision of Heat
The cover painting is a small tropical landscape. Yet the experience contained within it is much larger than its physical size.
A large red-orange sun hangs low in the sky. The sky is filled with yellow and orange, as if it is burning in the heat of the sun. Amid these colours, cool shades of blue and white appear.
At the centre of the painting stands a solitary palm tree. Its dark leaves stand out clearly against the bright sky. Behind it is a dark hill or mountain slope. Deep layers of blue, red and green make the scene feel less like a realistic landscape and more like a fragment of a dream.
The land in the foreground seems to move with shades of green, yellowish brown and red. The darkness around the edges creates the feeling of looking at the scene through a tunnel of night or memory.
That is why this painting is not simply a picture of nature.
Here, colours do not merely represent nature; they express emotions. It is a painting in which beauty and uneasiness exist together.
The heat of the sun seems to spread outward. Against it, the palm tree stands as a calm vertical form. Nature is beautiful. Yet within that beauty there is a subtle sense of uneasiness.
The Russian poem accompanying Nina Kossman’s painting is titled “ЖАР”. In English, it can mean “Heat” or “Fever”—a word that suggests both physical warmth and an intense inner state.
Heat by Nina Kossman
Distance promised a secret.
In the sea, in the bay, in the palm tree,
in the tropics of half-sleep,
the secret scattered.
Distance is measured through heat…
In a small picture—through sleep.
In an imagination with many reaching fingers,
thunder fits into a single hand—
the breath-filled eyes
of an unchanging contagion
grasp the distance at once,
until the final, rough breath.
The vision narrows.
A blanket, a false alarm clock.
What I have to read
is thrust before me.
Prescriptions and drops—
absurd!
With a tropical metastasis,
fate searches me out.
Through an eye with many fingers,
let an army steal me away—
an army of all the words
you left unsaid to the world.
Dissolving into the tropics,
flowing downward as a trail of sweat,
freezing face to face
into a farewell.
(Translation from Russian)
The Onam Glow by Shajil Anthru
Greenery,
paddy fields,
coconut trees,
a Western Ghats range in the distance,
the colours of the earth,
the colours of flowers,
sunlight filling the sky.
A solitary palm tree.
Shorelines touched by waves.
A sun
as the light of the tropics.
A dark hill—
a memory of the Western Ghats.
Earth filled with green, yellow and red.
As if the heat
of a long tropical day
is still preserved
within the soil.
A festival
standing between
reality and memory.
Here—
the shared dream
of a world filled
with equality and abundance.
Nina,
your painting
stands on the border
between reality and dream.
The light in it is real.
The colours, the earth,
the palm tree—
all are real.
But the experience
created by all of them together—
has the intensity of a dream.
The heat rising from the painting
is not merely the heat of the weather.
It is also the heat
that ripens the harvest,
the warmth of colours
that turns flowers
into a flower carpet.
You build
a delicate bridge
between two distant worlds.
There is no Onam here.
No Mahabali.
No flower carpet.
Instead, what speaks to us is…
a palm tree,
a sun,
coloured earth,
heat,
light.
And beyond them,
an old and familiar longing…
The longing
to return home—
to return to the light—
to return to abundance,
to love,
to togetherness.
From miles away,
the Onam light
whispers like this…
“Languages may be different.
Countries may be different.
Memories may be different.
But
the sun, the earth, the greenery,
the colours—
and the human longing
to return—
are the same everywhere.”
