Tribute: MT Vasudevan Nair’s fiction holds the fragrance of Valluvanad and luminance of River Nila
MT wrote about ordinary longings, existential reflections, and familial conflicts when the Malayali literary scene was dominated by social realists.
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“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?”
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...
