The Legends of Vijiyan
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The legends of Vijayan
Personal memories of a great writer, thinker, cartoonist and human being
V.K. MADHAVAN KUTTY
Posted online: Thursday, March 31, 2005 at 0000 hours IST
How does one remember a friend, guide and guru? O.V. Vijayan was all that and more to me since 1952, when he first walked into the classroom as my English teacher. Later, after both of us moved from Palakkad to Delhi, we would talk almost every day. After submitting his daily cartoon at the newspaper office, we would go to the Press Club or IIC for a chat. Once in a while, he would call me home and make me cook Palakkadan delicacies.
His wit, sharp political insight and humour filled our Delhi evenings. Once, John John Kennedy, JFK’s son, who was on his way to Kerala, came home for tea. As he was leaving, Vijayan presented him the cartoon he drew the day after JFK was assassinated. Just an empty rocking chair and a Black girl holding a rose. John was moved , as was everyone else .
I remember the evening at Kerala Club in Connaught Place, when Vijayan first read out excerpts from his Legends of Khasak before it was serialised in Mathrubhoomi. It was a novel far ahead of its time, it took Kerala 10 years to recognise a book that is now into its 25th edition. I also had the privilege of serialising two of his novels in Mathrubhoomi, when I was its editor. Some of his contempories, established writers, may have even been jealous of him. The pieces they wrote against him hurt him, of course, but he never bore them any grudge. That was one of his great qualities.
Vijayan had a small studio in Connaught Place where friends would gather in the evenings. He would sometimes ask me to drop by and bring my tape recorder to record a poem by Edassery, or capture Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan recite his work.
He was paranoid about shackles of any kind. Once a card-holding Communist, he realised he could not remain independent from the party and moved away. It was because of his fiercely independent thinking and deep political insight — reflected in prose and cartoons — that he could foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union. Later, he became very close to the movement started by Karunakara Guru in Kerala and dedicated a book to the Guru — Gurusagaram. But, as always, he again drifted away.
Vijayan’s phobias were legendary. Once we were all set to go to the US for a conference. The day we were to take the flight, I got a call from him asking me to cancel the ticket. He was so scared of flying. When we flew together on a domestic flight later, Vijayan trembled at the smallest sound, fearful of the plane crashing. He was equally scared of spiders. His best friends were cats, the Siamese cats at his Chanakyapuri residence. He would ask me to speak to his cat first whenever I called, and was in deep mourning when a cat died.
Vijayan was not just a Malayalam writer. His works in English were his own, he never had a translator. He deserved much more recognition than he received, awards such as the Jnanpith did not come his way. But, like Shaw and Hardy, who were similarly overlooked, that did not make O.V. Vijayan a lesser writer.
The legends of Vijayan
Personal memories of a great writer, thinker, cartoonist and human being
V.K. MADHAVAN KUTTY
Posted online: Thursday, March 31, 2005 at 0000 hours IST
How does one remember a friend, guide and guru? O.V. Vijayan was all that and more to me since 1952, when he first walked into the classroom as my English teacher. Later, after both of us moved from Palakkad to Delhi, we would talk almost every day. After submitting his daily cartoon at the newspaper office, we would go to the Press Club or IIC for a chat. Once in a while, he would call me home and make me cook Palakkadan delicacies.
His wit, sharp political insight and humour filled our Delhi evenings. Once, John John Kennedy, JFK’s son, who was on his way to Kerala, came home for tea. As he was leaving, Vijayan presented him the cartoon he drew the day after JFK was assassinated. Just an empty rocking chair and a Black girl holding a rose. John was moved , as was everyone else .
I remember the evening at Kerala Club in Connaught Place, when Vijayan first read out excerpts from his Legends of Khasak before it was serialised in Mathrubhoomi. It was a novel far ahead of its time, it took Kerala 10 years to recognise a book that is now into its 25th edition. I also had the privilege of serialising two of his novels in Mathrubhoomi, when I was its editor. Some of his contempories, established writers, may have even been jealous of him. The pieces they wrote against him hurt him, of course, but he never bore them any grudge. That was one of his great qualities.
Vijayan had a small studio in Connaught Place where friends would gather in the evenings. He would sometimes ask me to drop by and bring my tape recorder to record a poem by Edassery, or capture Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan recite his work.
He was paranoid about shackles of any kind. Once a card-holding Communist, he realised he could not remain independent from the party and moved away. It was because of his fiercely independent thinking and deep political insight — reflected in prose and cartoons — that he could foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union. Later, he became very close to the movement started by Karunakara Guru in Kerala and dedicated a book to the Guru — Gurusagaram. But, as always, he again drifted away.
Vijayan’s phobias were legendary. Once we were all set to go to the US for a conference. The day we were to take the flight, I got a call from him asking me to cancel the ticket. He was so scared of flying. When we flew together on a domestic flight later, Vijayan trembled at the smallest sound, fearful of the plane crashing. He was equally scared of spiders. His best friends were cats, the Siamese cats at his Chanakyapuri residence. He would ask me to speak to his cat first whenever I called, and was in deep mourning when a cat died.
Vijayan was not just a Malayalam writer. His works in English were his own, he never had a translator. He deserved much more recognition than he received, awards such as the Jnanpith did not come his way. But, like Shaw and Hardy, who were similarly overlooked, that did not make O.V. Vijayan a lesser writer.
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