THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : It was a love for writing about nature and environmental conservation that brought friends Jayakumari T R and Vinod Kumar R together. The duo recently won the ‘Grand Master’ title for ‘Maximum Books written and published by male-female friends duo’. This was approved by India Book of Records, Asia Books of Records and Universal Records Forum. So far, as joint-authors, they have published 28 books in Malayalam. The subjects included the forest, wildlife, environment, and life sciences.
Jayakumari is a retired principal at the Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram, while Vinod is doing business. Considering their partnership as a rarity and as suggested by some of their friends, a year ago, they had applied to the Limca Book of Records. However, due to certain criteria, they weren’t selected. The pair didn’t stop with this setback and continued writing books. “We didn’t even know that such a record existed also.
We started writing Malayalam books as a hobby a few years ago but after co-authoring a few, we thought of bringing out more books together related to nature, which is a favourite theme for both of us,” says Jayakumari.
Their first book was ‘Janmanakshatrangalum Vrukshangalum’ (2012). “There hasn’t been any clashes related to ideas whenever we picked a theme to write about. Before writing, we discuss between ourselves. Moreover, we proofread the books together to avoid mistakes,” says Jayakumari.
While Vinod has authored 17 books on his own, Jayakumari has written nine books related to nature and environmental conservation. Two years ago, the authors co-authored about 18 books exclusively related to the environment which were released as part of the World Environmental Day celebrations.For their work ‘Keralathile Vrukshnagal’, they were selected for a Paristhithi Sahitya Award by the Sparrow Nature Conservation Forum, an NGO based in Pathanamthitta.