If Madath Thekkepaattu Vasudevan Nair had to be described in one word, it would be iconoclast. The illustrious Malayalam writer, who influenced the state’s people in innumerable ways, breathed his last on 25 December at 91.
Known popularly as MT, Nair, though, was so much more than a celebrated author – he was a popular scenarist, ace film director, and nurtured generations of writers as an editor. He was awarded the Jnanpith in 1995 and the Padma Bhushan in 2005.
MT was a prodigy, and at the age of 20, while still an undergraduate student at Palakkad’s Victoria College, won a short story competition jointly conducted by the New York Herald Tribune, Hindustan Times, and Mathrubhumi.
MT went on to join the Mathrubhumi Illustrated Weekly in 1956/1957, and took over as its editor from the legendary NV Krishna Warrier in 1968. He retired in 1997. Except for a break from 1981-89, MT was a full-time literary editor who also pursued other fruitful interests.
Shaped by circumstances
The iconoclast in MT might have been shaped by his immediate circumstances. Born at the cusp of the unravelling of Kerala’s matrilineal system in 1933, MT’s protagonists seemed to perpetually carry a chip on their shoulders. His early writings gave voice to the angst of a generation who felt cheated by the ‘system’ that discriminated against them.
But MT’s writings did not romanticise his childhood deprivation and poverty like Nandanar – another celebrated Malayalam author who died by suicide at the peak of his fame in 1974. MT’s early protagonists in novels, such as Appunni in Naalukettu (1958), Govindan Kutty in Asuravithu (1962) and Sethu Madhavan in Kaalam (1969) were survivors who made their way through hardships, depicting autobiographical shades.
It helped that his stories resonated with a generation of Kerala youth in the rapidly changing post-Independence period. They lived vicariously through MT’s characters and related to his protagonists in several ways.
Triumph of the human spirit
MT’s stories placed human beings, and their conflicts with their inner selves and immediate surroundings, at the heart of their narrative. The triumph of the human spirit was a common thread across his writings. MT’s protagonists seldom gave up. They may have gone on to hate the world – and themselves – after achieving success, but they remained grounded and sentimental.
If placed in the context of the Hindu Purusharthas, MT’s central characters perpetually grappled with the three concepts of Dharma (righteousness), Artha (wealth) and Kama (Love) as the deprivation and struggle of their youth returned to haunt them. Many of these protagonists came back to exact vengeance on their tormentors but managed to grow past the fixation under changed circumstances.
Take one scene in Bandhanam (bondage),1978, written and directed by MT. Here, the protagonist played by Sukumaran is admonished by his school teacher Sankara Menon for being too sentimental and even hypocritical. Menon characterises the revenge exacted by Count Monte Cristo in Alexandre Dumas’ famous work The Count of Monte Cristo as “childish” – something Sukumaran deeply relates to as he also wants payback from people who wronged him. Peak MT, as the protagonist who comes back successful after struggling through childhood and youth is a motif across his early work.
A dialogue in another scene – “for the sin of your birth, you are condemned to live till you die” – will stay with you for life.
Defying convention
The non-conformist in MT manifested itself in his directorial debut Nirmalyam (1973), an adaptation of his own short story Pallivalum Kaalchilambum. Here, the central character, a temple velichappadu (oracle) played by PJ Antony in a national award-winning performance, spits blood onto an idol in the climax. He is shocked after realising that his wife resorted to prostitution to feed her famished children – a plot progression that, in true MT style, seemed very natural.
The novel Randamoozham (1984) is widely considered MT’s masterpiece. It’s a reimagination of the Mahabharata, a retelling from the perspective of Bhima. MT reshaped Bhima’s perception in the public imagination. He contended that he did not divert from Vyasa’s core narrative, and simply read between the lines. No wonder the pregnant pauses in MT’s prose allow readers and critics to reach their own varied conclusions.
MT followed up on his iconoclasm in the 1989 film, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha. Adapted from the northern Malabar ballads, it went on to capture Kerala’s popular imagination. Through his screenplay for this film, MT reimagined the much-vilified anti-hero in the Malayalam folk tale Chanthu as the hero.
Redefining short stories
Randamoozham, first serialised in the Kalakaumudi weekly –which managed to double its circulation as a result – stood out for its use of Sanskritised literary Malayalam in contrast to the rest of MT’s writings. He used words precisely, sometimes lending two different meanings to the same word and telling two different things with the same sentence.
The lyrical Malayalam in the novel Manju (1964), his first major work set outside the Valluvanadu region, also stood out for its language. Manju also probably marked the beginning of his fascination with themes of death and longing, which he went on to explore further in numerous short stories and novels such as Vilapayatra (1978) and Varanasi (2002).
Although novels like Naalukettu (1958) catapulted MT to fame in the initial days, it was the short story genre that came to define him. From 1952-1998, MT published 19 short story compilations. He considered it possible to achieve near-perfection in the genre. Of course, MT wrote in poetic prose and used alliterations to great effect.
Despite not dabbling in poetry, he has paid rich tributes to the poets Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon and Edasseri Govindan Nair for influencing his writing with their work.
It was the literary editor in MT who discovered many celebrated Malayalam writers, a fact acknowledged by the likes of Punathil Kunjabdulla, Paul Zacharia, and Sethu, among others. In a way, his chiselling of their works and other interventions shaped Kerala’s reading habits and the modern Malayalam language itself.
MT devoted a lot of time to reading international writers and enriched himself as an editor in the process. He expressed admiration for the likes of Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald, and, alongside contemporaries such as T Padmanabhan, ushered in a new wave in the Malayalam short story genre in the 1950s.
The editor in MT was a votary of brevity and minimalism. He was not harsh in judging fellow writers, and never responded in kind to critics who judged him brutally. MT’s mastery over writing was evident as far back as the early 1960s’, when he wrote books – such as Kathikante Panippurayil (1963) – that focused on the craft itself.
MT’s worldview
MT never wrote a memoir, but a lot of his writings and screenplays contained personal reflections. All my stories will add up to my autobiography, MT had said once.
When Asuravithu was released, the famous critic Puthezhath Raman Menon, according to author E Santhosh Kumar, described it as deserving of the bin. The scene was later enacted in Aksharangal (1984), for which MT wrote the screenplay. Here, the central character of writer Jayadevan, essayed by Mammootty, drew from MT’s life.
The author was broadly a liberal and never catered fully to an ideology or ‘ism’. He was acceptable to both the Left and the Congress in Kerala and, to some critics, there was a conservative streak beneath his progressive exterior. MT was a staunch believer in God, and, even the Right wing fancied courting him in his later days despite his criticism of the Sangh Parivar.
MT’s last public speech earlier this year, strongly but covertly attacking the personality cult of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, had Kerala’s ruling Marxists scampering for cover. The timing of his death on a public holiday reminded me of his character Sardarji’s words in Manju: “Maranam rangabodhamillatha oru komaliyanu (Death is a clown without a sense of timing).”
Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)