TRIBUTE TO MT

'MT Bhiman Nair' and the epics he wrote

For a writer, compassion in its purest form is best exercised in his writing. This is because, in the real world, compassion is a dangerous thing. It can destroy the compassionate one and the person who is the beneficiary because compassion transcends judgement of right and wrong. Justice and punishment, especially in these our times of outrage and vigilantism, are not the soul companions of compassion.

MT Vasudevan Nair, who passed away in Kozhikode aged 91 on Thursday, wrote Valarthu Mrugangal (Pets, more popularly known as Pet Animals), one of his first short stories when he was still in his early 20s about an animal trainer in a Circus company on its last legs. Chandran (as he called in the movie version) himself, is getting on in years. He must intervene on behalf of his lion, aged and no longer up to tricks. The company is too poor to feed the lion. They decide to allow him to be slaughtered. Chandran tries to prevent it but fails. Soon, he realises, he too would be retired. In 1954, the story won the International Herald Tribune’s prize. 

The story and the prize define MT’s career and life disposition. Consider the story again. No one is to blame in that fictive world. Not the company— which is struggling. Not Chandran — he is helpless. Certainly not the lion, no matter he might have been a king had his fate been different. This is pretty much the human condition. Social media vigilantism of our times and justice mongers are ill-equipped to grapple with a gray situation like this. Each character is just. MT's work(s) is about the human condition, which is nothing if is not tragically ironic. Almost Hemingwayesque. Pets foreshadow MT’s fictional and cinematic world.

Consider, too, his confidence. Born in a village in Palakkad in 1933, by the time he is in his 20s, he is sending out a translated (so I believe) story from Malayalam to International Herald Tribune. It could be out of ignorance of the giants in the 50s literary world of the West. It could be in defiance. But MT continued to challenge his small-town origins, submitting his genius to the possibility of at least occasionally mediocrity judging him — and mostly was not disappointed, as the scores of awards and honours he won in India and abroad show.

In the early 70s, Valarthu Mrugangal was made into a movie, with MT writing the script. By this time he had already written and directed Nirmalyam (Offering), adapted from another short story he wrote, which won the national award.

Almost every second or third story or novel MT wrote was turned into a movie, with MT himself writing the scripts. This way, early on, he created a business model for himself, and by the 80s was possibly one of the wealthiest writers in India.

Bhim from Valluvanad
The first time I met MT was in Bombay, when I was working for the Times of India. My father (the late Pavanan) was one of the facilitators at a function to honour MT. This was in the late 90s when I suspect my father was already, unknown to us, suffering from Alzheimer’s, which eventually killed him. There were three chairs on the stage. The central one was something like a throne -- plated with gold tinsel, and the cushions blood-red. The other two chairs were plastic. The throne was for the emperor. But as they entered the stage, my father made for the throne and sat in it for a minute before he realized that his role was that of the courtier for the evening. Sitting in the audience, I watched the proceedings with some slight sadness. MT showed no sign of annoyance. He was looking at my father, trying to understand the very human situation on the stage.

Much later, at one of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) events, MT, already a little ailing, had to be introduced. Possibly the personality who was supposed to do the job was either not up to it or was missing, or perhaps just did not exist. V K Karthika, one of India’s best editors, asked me if I would do the honours.  

Though not quite an MT scholar, I believe I did a passable job. Passable, because I said — by way of compliment really — that MT was so compulsive a genius historian of the disintegration of the Nair joint-family that in his 'Second Turn' (Randamoozham, the Mahabharata told from the point of view of Bhim), that even ‘Bhiman’ had to be a Nair from Valluvanad, the geographical area, whose dialect, diction, hills, and river are the backdrop against which the MT narratives unfold. MT grunted. I turned around to look at him. He was smiling.

Creative genius

A few years later still, I went to his house in Calicut and was pleasantly surprised to see my collected poems (Available Light) on his bookshelf. I doubt though if he remembered the Jaipur session.

MT won just about every award for his work in fiction and cinema. Not only was he a truly original creative brain, but also one of the shrewdest careerist writers that India produced.

In the mid-1960s, MT wrote a short story, Irutinte Athmavu (The Soul of Darkness). In 1967, it was made into a movie. The protagonist was a mentally-challenged man, Velayudhan in a Nair tharavadu, which as it turned out, was challenged equally in as many ways, if not more.

Velayudhan's only solace is his pretty and warm cousin, whom he loves and with whom he feels like a human being. It is not as if the disapproving Nair family is really at fault. As with the Circus firm’s relationship with the aged lion, Velayudhan's family can only think of putting the young man in chains to save himself and others from harm: the stupider you are, the more cruel you become.

Into that dark world comes Devaki (the role enacted by Sharada in the movie, Velayudhan was essayed by Prem Nazir) like a lamp. In the end, as with all traditional Nair families, Devaki has to be married off to someone that the patriarch chooses for her good. Velayudhan is shattered and loses his will to live.

It is a very disturbing story and, again, one with no villains. It is the human condition at work. I remember watching it in Shakthi theatre in Trivandrum with my uncle and family. When I went home, I stuffed a corner of the pillow into my mouth so my tears were attached with silencers, and went to sleep crying.

There might have been lakhs who cried with me that night.

Writer in control
Far from his fated characters, who suffered the privations of life and as often were defeated, MT took life in his stride. He was the lion, and the Circus was in his control. A great artist. A great life. He died knowing a statue would be raised to him. That he is forever. But what might have he thought of it, of the artist’s immortality stakes? That would be another novel or a movie. But this one he would not write. Not now.
(C P Surendran is an author and senior journalist.)