“My friends remind me that many years have gone by since I started on my journey. …People ask, aren’t you going to have a celebration? Of course not. Is not ageing simply a law of nature just as the change of seasons is? What is there to celebrate?”

— From ‘A Moment of Truth’ in Bear With Me, Amma: Memoirs of MT Vasudevan Nair. Translated by Gita Krishnankutty.

In a memoir, MT Vasudevan Nair asks, reflecting on his birthday, what is there to celebrate. As readers of his vast body of literature, the simple, down-to-earth, yet nuanced novels, stories and screenplays, we have everything to celebrate. Not just his birthday, but his passing too.

Passing.

MT Vasudevan Nair or simply “MT” to Malayalees, has passed on. “MT is no more,” I say to myself repeatedly, to let the reality sink in.

A world of its own

Even as I grieve this tremendous loss, the chasm his absence has created, I realise there’s much to rejoice. For, through his writings, he gifted us a world in which Valluvanad in Kerala became a world in itself. Valluvanad, which includes parts of Malappuram, Palakkad and Thrissur districts in Kerala, is a name that creates immediate nostalgia in most Malayalee minds. This was a world where geographical, cultural and linguistic boundaries melted, where we met and lived with characters, who moved us with their dilemmas, struggles and triumphs. Whether it was Kaalam, The Demon Seed, Naalukettu or Randamoozham, his protagonists drew us into a whirl of ordinary longings, existential reflections and familial conflicts, sometimes within the courtyard, sometimes outside.

These themes were rendered through prose as fluid as the Nila, flowing gently through the paddy fields of Valluvanad. And the characters, who lived in this world spoke a dialect as alive as rain-drenched earth, rustic and loyal to the land they walked on.

MT appeared on the Malayalam literary scene when it was dominated by the social realists, whose work spewed fire and fury. Mohammed Basheer, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, and others had established themselves as pioneers. In the 1950s, Malayalam literature witnessed a shift to the inner school of thought, opening the doors to writers like OV Vijayan and MT into a landscape charged with socialist themes, MT brought in the sway of greenery from his native land, Kudallur and the cool blue of the river, Nila, as critics observed.

Discovering MT’s world

I could, of course, go on about his literary excellence, accolades and contributions. But whatever I write would fall short, because I owe much to him. MT – or “sir” – as I timidly called him, is entirely responsible for my discovery of Malayalam literature. His work initiated me – holding my unsure hands all the while – into the universe of human complexities and frailties, crumbling tharawads, oppols, ettans and folk tales. Into the idiom of the Valluvanad dialect that helped me discover the richness of language.

His writings inspired me to study his translated novels as an MPhil scholar, which led to my first meeting with him in 1998. That small flat in T Nagar where my late grandfather, playwright and broadcaster, K Padmanabhan Nair, introduced me to MT, comes to life in my mind. This is where he lived whenever he visited Madras back then. This is where he sat, opposite me, clad in his white mundu and shirt, responding patiently to my questions, as I interviewed him for my thesis. Indulgent, yet reserved, he allowed my naïve questions to explore his fiction. I was a 20-something girl back then. Perhaps, my youth and his friendship with my grandfather made it easier to forgive me. But I’ve always thought that he was a forgiving, gentle, man.

Years later, in 2008, I got a wonderful opportunity to moderate a discussion with him and his long-time translator, Gita Krishnankutty, at a conference, “Translating Bharat”, curated by Siyahi, in Jaipur. The three of us spent a lot of time together, over drinks and chats, in wintery Jaipur. I never stayed in touch with him after that, except for one desultory phone call some years later. However, even without me knowing it, his influence on me started to grow.

I began translating from the Malayalam into English. And it was a friend of his I started to work with. Yet another accomplished writer I’ve been fortunate to know – Paul Zacharia. Translating Zacharia and discovering his prose was a very different experience. The bursts of black humour, irony and social critique woven into his stories, came as a distinct change from MT’s world. But I now realise that it was discovering MT’s world that brought me closer to the language of my parents: Malayalam. And it was only through the richness of his prose, and the interiority of his characters that I absorbed the power of the novel.

In his much-loved novel, Randamoozham (a retelling of the Mahabharata from Bhima’s point of view, translated as both Second Turn and Bhima), MT says in the Epilogue, that what really spurred him to write this novel was the inner strength he garnered from having been born in and lived in a village in India, growing up, listening to epics and histories.

I believe the little I’ve been able to write and translate so far, is because of MT sir and the novels that moved me even without my knowing it. It is because of the inner strength I drew from them. I feel privileged that I knew this writer; this man, who brought the fragrance of Valluvanad and the luminance of the Nila into the many books and films he created for us.

Somehow, this knowledge makes the pain of his passing a tad easier to deal with.

Anupama Raju is a poet and a novelist.