In the death of MT Vasudevan Nair, we have lost a colossus of Malayalam literature and cinema. He was an exceptional cultural icon of Kerala who reinvented the idiom of Malayalam fiction and cinema. His creativity knew no lull periods. He worked relentlessly as a literary editor of the premiere Malayalam periodical, Mathrubhumi Weekly. He crossed many boundaries producing the best screenplays, great novels and short stories which have become classics.
We often forget that he maintained the highest integrity as a writer. One of the reasons for his popularity is that his commitment to art and literature and language was total. He never aligned with any political or sectarian ideology. This is something unusual in Malayalam, where you will find writers often getting trapped in the politics of power. He never went after power. He stood alone, with the courage of his convictions. It is the reason Kerala listened whenever he spoke. When he came out onto the street, protested, the common people joined him. He took up their issues. He spoke openly against the state violence against the Adivasis in Wayanad. He has spoken against the communal divide in our society.
Coming back to his career in writing, we can say that he turned into gold whatever he touched. He was a versatile story-teller. He began publishing short stories as a student in Victoria College, Palakkad. In his twenties he came out with some of the most memorable Malayalam stories which have become classics. I would like to mention 'Iruttiunte aathmavu' (The soul of darkness), written in 1957 and was made into an award winning film in 1966 by P Bhaskaran. Here he captures the turbulent inner world of a mentally challenged young man, who is gradually sliding into mental imbalance due the ill-treatment he receives in his family and from outside. Many of his short stories have marginalised characters coming from broken feudal families. They were marginalised because of the colour of skin, or poverty or their position of inferiority.
He was essentially a writer of the rural heartland of Kerala. He found in them the raw material for his fictional explorations of human nature and social conflicts. He caught the transition of Kerala society from the feudal to the modern capitalistic period, depicted the collapse from the feudal system through his vivid narratives. Many of his characters come from broken and uprooted families who feel alienated from the larger social streams. His very first novel, Nalukettu, which is a landmark in the history of Malayalam novels, describes the journey of Appunny from childhood to youth. He succeeds in rebuilding his broken life, but the complex undercurrents of the social world take their toll in his life’s journeys.
MT excels in portraying the interiority of his complex characters, This is what sets apart from the earlier generation of social realists such as Thakazhi and Kesavadev. MT is a transitional figure who brought about a radical re-orientation of Malayalam fiction. It is his craftsmanship that makes him one of the great story-tellers of all times. His narratives invoke the interiority of his characters, the landscape seems to participate in the very evolution of the story. His empathy with the outer world of nature makes his stories lyrical and poetic. He can capture the nuances of the emotional turmoil the characters are going through, whether it is the Govindan Kutty of Asura Vithu or Sethumadhavan of Kalam, Vimala of Manju or Bhima of Randamoozham. They all have shades of grey, which comes from the depths of their inner anguish. Most of his films portray the world of distraught men and women, caught in the struggles of a world they cannot easily escape from.
MT was highly critical of the emergent Kerala society. And time and again, he has portrayed the sense of violence which modernity has occasioned. Many of his characters are haunted by a sense of waste and despair, even after achieving all that they wanted. The will to succeed breeds violence in Sethu, but in the end, he realises that the sense of triumph he experiences is hollow. Those who believe in their masculine strength realise that there is much to be gained from surrendering to others. Love is what everyone is seeking but their egos do not allow them to reach out to others. In the short story called “Sherlock” he demonstrates the affluent society of globalised Americans has built-in violence which destroys the human beings.
MT was a great reader. He always kept pace with the recent developments in world literature. This is what made him a great literary editor. He could recognise talent, and spot potential writers from the heaps of submissions he got every day in his office. He has commented that literary journalism has taken a heavy toll of his time, but the reward was discovering some of the most talented writers Kerala has ever seen.
His empathy with marginalised people, and with nature, make him a writer with a vision. His writings convey strongly the great ecological derangement we are passing through. He wrote about the Nila river with great feeling and nostalgia. He found the water resources in the Kerala villages turning dry and filthy. He spoke about the need to revise our priorities in life if we are to rejuvenate our eco-system. There is a visionary edge to his speeches and articles. One reason why his fiction appeals to every Malayali, every reader, maybe even outside Kerala, is that he wrote about a region which had organic bonds. He traced their tangled pasts and murky presents with the eye of a creative thinker. Regional writers have universal appeal across the world, because men and women face the same kind of hardships, sorrows and tragedies.
In summing up, I would say there may not be another writer of his stature for many decades to come in Kerala. His legacy extends to other fields as well. He was a great institution-builder. He turned Mathrubhumi Weekly into a creative writer’s paradise. Paul Zacharia, one of the writers discovered by him, recently told me in a conversation that it was the freedom writers like him enjoyed that enabled them to experiment and explore new vistas of experience in fiction. This is a comment, I am sure, writers like M Mukundan, Sethu, and many others would approve instantly. He published Punathil Kunjabdulla’s novel when Kunjabdulla was not well-known. He revised his novel and also gave it the title, Smarakasilakal. There are many unrecorded acts of generosity in MT’s life, as his creativity recognised no borders or boundaries. The Thunchan Parambu, which was imagined as a cultural centre for debates and meeting place of writers, was another of his initiatives.
He lived many lives in his life of 91 years. He has left his imprint in the arts and letters of Kerala in ways we may not yet know. Kerala is heart-broken today as the people of Kerala know that his absence leaves a void that cannot be easily filled.
EV Ramakrishnan is a bilingual writer, poet and literary critic from Kerala.