FACE TO FACE
Sounds of silence
THACHOM POYIL RAJEEVAN
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Though he has tried his hands at every genre, the short story is M.T. Vasudevan Nair's forte.
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THE INDIVIDUAL IS THE PRIMARY CONCERN: M.T. Vasudevan Nair. Photo: BIJU UTHUP
IN 1953, on the annual day of a High School at Kumaranallur, a remote idyllic village in Palakkad district, Kerala, on the river Nila, an announcement came through the loudspeaker. It said a former student of the school had won the first prize for his story "Valarthumregangal" (Tamed Animals), in the world short story contest organised by the Mathrubhumi weekly, then and now a leading literary magazine in Malayalam.
The chief guest who heard the announcement asked the winner to come onto the stage, if he was around. An unassuming teenager hesitantly went up. The chief guest, who was none other than G. Shankara Kurup, the illustrious Malayalam poet and the first Jnanpith laureate, garlanded the budding writer with the one the organisers had welcomed him with.
A celebrated presence
It's more than half a century since this happened. The shy teenager is 72 now. And, he grew into a celebrated presence in Kerala's literary and cultural life. In the five decades that followed, he authored nine novels, 18 short story collections, seven collections of essays, three travelogues, two books for children, two translations and a play; directed seven films, and wrote screenplays for more than 30. He got all the Indian awards a writer can aspire for, including the Jnanpith. His literary works have been translated into various Indian and foreign languages. His films earned him both national and international acclaim. But, to him, "the greatest award I ever got was that garland G gave me at that school function." This is M.T. Vasudevan Nair (just MT to 35 million Malayalees), who says: "Nila, my river, is dearer to me than the unknown great oceans."
MT began writing at a time when literature was regarded by a crop of progressive writers as an instrument of social change. But MT's "primary concern was the individual, not the society in abstraction." "It is through the individuals' inner self that I experience the vicissitudes of social life. Also, the familial circumstances I grew up in might have played their role in shaping the writer in me. For, by the time I was born, my family, very affluent once, had lost its glory. So, in the formative period, there had always been a feeling of deprivation, which, deepened by my sick childhood, turned me into a loner. And all reflected in my writings." He is obsessed with inner shocks.
MT's characters, born out of certain real life situations he passed through, are outgoing individuals who celebrate the freedom of the body. In the Mahabharata, the characters that caught his imagination were not Dharmaputra or Arjuna, but Bhima. The novel Randamuzham (The Second Turn) was the result. And he admits that he is an admirer of physical prowess and adventure. "It's quite likely that an individual who lives through life's distasteful situations will have a resolve to reclaim what he or she has lost, and to avenge the past with the present. Ultimately, there are no winners and losers. And, though I have a fascination for adventure, I haven't ventured into any myself."
Be it the short stories, novels or the films, the author and his characters are inseparably intertwined. Except Manju (Mist), Randamuzham (The Second Turn) and a few short stories like "Sherleck", all are based on his life in his village, Koodallor. And the characters cast their living shadows at some remote corners of memory, and on the timeworn, dilapidated walls of the Nalukettu, the traditional Nair house. "As some of them are still alive", the author refuses to elaborate further.
M.T. Vasudevan Nair has tried his hands at every genre; but the short story is his forte. "Though there are certain formal constraints, the short story gives enough space to express oneself. And, there's a certain amount of spontaneity in the birth of a short story." Perhaps, MT's most significant contribution to Malayalam literature is his language, which is more akin to poetry in its felicity for reflecting the inner contours of the human mind in the minimum possible words, and making sometimes audible even the silence.
Thachom Poyil Rajeevan can be reached at rthachompoyil@yahoo.com
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