MALAYALAM: Perumbadavam, Fyodor and some random thoughts
Manoj
available in the US? Does anyone have a copy?
thanks
manoj
sup...@rahul.net
This happens on a cold and lugubrious Sunday afternoon in
June of `92. Editor of Deepika Periodicals calls up Mr. Sreedharan
at his home in Thamalam, Thiruvananthapuram with vicissitudes to
his earlier request for a short story . Now he wants a Novel. And
he has to come up with this in a record time of 3 weeks!
Agreed, he had written about 10 novels and a few short stories in
the last 3 decades. Worked on a few movies.. Received a few
accolades for them alright .. OK, he was a notable writer in
Malayalam, but never anything to suggest that he could produce
a story that would never fade away from the minds of the readers.
He was no Basheer, He was no M.T., for that matter he was not
even a Radhakrishnan, Well, probably he was an also-ran... Now
this publisher has put him in real fix. How could he come up with
a work which can at least match up to all his previous works... 54
years of his life played back in his mind. What was his trump
card? Probably some theme which very few people have ever
attempted? A stroke of genius made him think about his favorite
authors...
Like many of us Crime & Punishment was the first Dostoyevsky
Novel he had ever read way back when he was a teenager. It was
a relentless quest to assimilate all of Fyodor's works after that.
It took him a few years to read Fyodor completely. At that time not
all of Dostoyevsky's works were even translated to Malayalam.
Once he finished reading everything he started from the begin
ning once more. This time in chronological order... He went back
to it again, and again. For him it was like a devotee's daily visits
to the temple. In the meantime he had read others too. But no other
writer made him think about the meaning of life in this predominantly
nihilistic world more than Fyodor.
Now he knew what he wanted to write about. But the million
dollar question was still unanswered. Where to start? What
should be the theme? There came Anna Dostoyevskaya as an
angel as she had done before;-) If you look at the tumultuous life
of the Great man spanning over 60 years, he basically had 2
incarnations in the same life. One, the disturbed one till the age
of 46, probably where almost all the story lines of his greatest works
such as C&P, Idiot, Possessed, Karamazovs and Gambler evolved,
from his own life experiences and turmoil he had to
experience in trying to synchronize his mind and a less forgiving
19th century russia. Other, the later years he lived with Anna -
his most creative 14 years . When he died of TB in 1881,
he had by then made all the groundwork possible for a human
being to be on the threshold of Greatness.
The last book Sreedharan had read at that time was the memoirs
of Anna Dostoyevskaya. Starting from the days she met Fyodor as
a 17 year old, falling in love with someone who was old enough to
be her father, the pains of an almost incestuous relationship, her
influence on him and the part she played in giving the generations
to come the uninhibited philosophical thoughts of Fyodor.
Sreedharan finally decided to tell the story of those 27 days starting
from the day Fyodor met Anna till `Gambler' was completed. Specifically
in 1867, Oct 3-30. It was the birth of one of the finest
novels to come out in the history of Malayalam literature. When
it was out in 1993 almost all critics who reviewed it wasted no
time in ranking this the best work in Malayalam in the last
25 years. "Oru Sangeerthanam Pole" made Perumbadavam
Sreedharan something he always thought he could be. Ranked
amongst the best in the language.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the man who supposedly had the "signature
of God on his heart", is probably the reason why a lot of
weak folks like me grind through the monotonous life diligently
in this callous world. Personally I feel this book is one of the best
I've ever read in Malayalam. His imagination in this work has no
limits. The metaphysical undercurrents he brings out in those
200+ pages measures up quite well with the Dostoyevsky the common
man knows. It was perhaps a couple of decades or so ago I was
first introduced to Fyodor by my kid sister. During the initial years
the so called wellsprings of his mature philosophy rubbed me really
on the wrong side. Once after reading `The insulted and the
Injured', for the first time, I wanted to drop out of school and
become a recluse.. `Gambler' and `C&P' many a times made me
weep rhapsodically at the futility of life... Probably it was too
early for me to have read him... Well.. Now that's another story
altogether;-)
If you love Dostoyevsky, read this book by Perumbadavam Sreedharan.
If you are a lover of Malayalam literature this is a must-read.
You will never ever regret it...
Cheers,
-AS