Kozhikode: MT Vasudevan Nair is, without a doubt, the most-awarded writer in Malayalam. He had bagged everything prestigious in the world of literature, right up to the Jnanapith. He is also the Malayali writer who has been the subject of most literary studies. Forget the fact that he has also sold the most number of books.

Yet, many believe that MT, the editor, should be placed a notch above MT, the writer. As editor of the influential Mathrubhumi Weekly, MT is said to have fathered the modernist movement in Malayalam.  

"As an editor, Writer MT was the godfather of the modernist phase in Malayalam literature," said Paul Zachariah, one of the leading lights of modernism in Malayalam.

"He threw open the doors to modernist writing that was introspective and experimental as opposed to the social and political objectives of progressive literature. Seeds of such a modernist outlook had already appeared in MT's works like 'Naalukettu' and 'Asuravithu'. But the writings that MT embraced with open arms had a modernism that was stylistically and structurally far removed from his," Zachariah said.

He said it was a gigantic cultural responsibility that MT took upon himself. "He went about this task with the heart of a level-headed rebel, with the determination of a humanist, with the purity of uncompromising secularism and absolutely intoxicated by the new voices," Zachariah said.

Sethu, another practitioner of modernism, can still only wonder how MT's brain functioned as an editor. "At a time when Malayalam literature was steeped in 

romanticism, what was it that prompted him to pick MP Narayana Pillai's 'George Aaramante Kodathi' (The Court of George the Sixth) from among the innumerable written drafts that came before him? How did this crazy story that, considering the norm, should have found its way to the editor's rubbish bin reach the pages of the magazine," he said. Sethu had once commented that he was shocked to see the massive mound of handwritten drafts on MT's table.  

'George Aaraman' had violently subverted all literary conventions and beliefs that existed till then. Sethu can find only one reason for MT's rebelliousness as an editor. "If he had set his own tastes aside and kept discovering new voices, it was only because he wanted the evolutionary winds of global literary sensibilities to grace his own language," he said.

According to M Mukundan, another MT discovery and perhaps the most popular modernist voice in Malayalam, MT had the intelligence and the aesthetic sensibility to recognise the changes. "He wanted such changes to happen in our language, too. It was this that made him pick MP Narayana Pillai's and Kakkanadan's stories," Mukundan said. "He could have either returned or junked stories like 'Murugan Enna Pambatty' (Narayana Pillai). Instead, he published them with great prominence," he said.

And when MT returns drafts, which he was often forced to, he does it with honest compassion. Writer Vysakhan remembers the first story he had sent to the Mathrubhumi Weekly in 1963. He was confident about the worth of his story, and wanted it published by his idol MT himself. The story was titled 'Seethanweshanam' (In Search of Sita), and was about a widow who ran a tea shop. Her husband appears in the story as a ghost and she has a cow named Seetha.  

Two weeks later a got a reply in MT's own hands. "Read 'Seethanweshanam'. Liked the way you wrote the story. The characters stood out. However, this story will not be published. Why? The reader in me who felt satisfied while reading the story was disappointed in the end. Someone getting fever after mistaking a real person for a ghost is not new. We have read so many such fake-ghost stories," the letter said.

And in the last line of the concluding paragraph MT casually threw in an advice. "Try. Try harder. I am sure your next story will be better than this one. Create them from familiar circumstances." 

MT published the second story that Vaisakhan sent. The story 'Chekuthan Urangunnilla' (The Devil Never Sleeps) is set, as MT had advised him, in a backdrop familiar to him: trains and railway stations. By then, MK Gopinathan alias Vysakhan had joined as railway station master.

Mukundan had once sent an experimental story to MT: 'Indriyangalil Shaithyam' (Winter of the Senses). It was an attempt to blend Carnatic ragas with Malayalam language. Months went by without a reply. Just when he had trained himself to ignore the disappointment, Mukundan came upon an ad for the special edition of the magazine.

The special edition was an annual event and featured stories of young writers from all over India. One would be from Malayalam. And this time it was 'Indriyangalil Shaithyam', the story Mukundan had very nearly taught himself to forget thinking MT had not liked it. "It was unbelievable. And MT never spoke to me about it," Mukundan said.

MT's silence was often interpreted as arrogance. It was, in fact, humility. He had never, even with a gesture, claimed to have introduced or discovered any writer.   

MT was accessible to young and new writers even after he had put down his editor's pen. TD Ramakrishan had not published even a story before he wrote his first novel 'Alpha'. Still, he thought of sending a copy to MT.

He was not expecting it but Ramakrishnan got a reply: five sentences in English. "He did not say that I had done something brilliant. He said the theme was unique (it was about a scientist going back to leading a primitive life). He said writings of such kind had relevance and wanted me to keep writing,” Ramakrishnan said. "I still keep the letter like a treasure," he said.