MT - Rock Star of Malayalam Literature

This short tribute to M.T, Vasudevan Nair was written on the occasion of Thunchan Festival this year 

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MT

       —A Gentle Malabar Breeze

“When he smokes beedis, so do some of his readers. Even superstar Mammootty smokes beedis, it is said, because MT does so.”

Sri Vasudevan Nair (MT) is widely considered as the one largely responsible for the resurgence of short fiction in Malayalam. MT entered the Malayalam literary scene when it was dominated by the progressive writers and social realism was the ‘in-thing’. The focus was chiefly on the objective world and class and caste oppressions were the dominating themes.

MT tilted the focus to ‘subjective’. Not that he was the first to do so – before him the legendary Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, with his extraordinary ability to dive deep into self and offer hitherto unknown insights had paved the way before MT. Few more, like Pottekkat and Uroob too had tread paths different from the one central to ‘renaissance fiction.’

But, as it were, MT was a gentle breeze from the coast of Malabar, out to soothe the scars of rage and fury of the era gone by. His ‘man’ was not an abstract, philosophical ‘being’, but rather something more objective one with the feelings, thoughts, filled with the angst of quest.

MT was an existentialist, but the truth would emanate only from the relationships. Communities and societies were not lost sight of, but were rather sublimated and viewed through the individual’s place in them. MT’s stories bring out his broad and deep sympathy for the marginalized and oppressed, but he has never identified himself with any particular political ideology or movement. The protagonists of his stories are men at war with themselves.

His landscape was rural. Into that setting were cast the middle and lower middle class, their loneliness, poverty, struggles and conflicts of a country side living and seemingly losing fight against the new forces of urban world. In this canvas, MT painted romance and many more themes.

In this poetic motion of story-telling, MT, much like La. Sa. Ra. from the neighbouring Tamil Nadu, developed a highly nuanced narrative idiom that set him apart forever. More than all these, his knowledge and understanding of fiction writing and its structure gave the power to MT that very few writers of his generation had at their disposal.

But MT will be remembered for more than just the quality of his literary works. The feature films he has scripted and directed have exploded a popular myth – that good authors and books do not necessarily make good directors and films. If Nirmalyam launched Sri Vasudevan Nair in the film world in a grand way, his Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha is one of the all-time block busters of Malayalam Cinema. Almost all his movies have won critical acclaim, some have fetched him important awards at national level and some like Kadavu won awards at International film fests.

There have been great writers before Sri Vasudevan Nair and in future too there will be a number of great writers. But he was also a great human being. Among the writers he was a genial giant, the giant who not only inspired generations of writers, but also identified wonderful talents and helped them to grow. He evokes immense desire among one and all to emulate him but not jealousy. Indian literature will never be poorer if we had more people like MT.

Indeed, the literary legacy of MT is the one worth emulating.