THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The house faced east, and in the east there was Mukaliyadimala.
On Pournami nights, an orange moon emerged from behind this hill like an over-ripe fruit. So enormous and splendid an orb that you could almost reach out and touch it. Night instantly became day.
“It’s such an alluring sight. The moon appears so huge. When he was small, Maamen’s grandmother used to show him that moon while feeding him,’’ says Shylaja Raveendran. It is not known whether the little boy made a grab at the heavenly luminescence.
But years later, he would help a nation reach out and do just that - touch the moon.
The ‘Maamen’ (Uncle) whom Shylaja refers to is ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair, who took India on its maiden lunar adventure last year. Shylaja is Madhavan Nair’s niece - his sister Sarojini Amma’s daughter - and is writing a book on her uncle.
‘Ambili Maamen,’ to be published by India Books, is not about the world-renowned space scientist whose declared mission is plotting paths to Mars and beyond. It is about the ‘other side’ of the moon, the lesser-known Madhavan Nair - the down-to-earth, soft-spoken human being with whom you can easily connect, the man who gets a thrill watching Tom and Jerry on TV or relaxes to Mohammed Rafi songs.
Shailaja decided to write about her uncle on the suggestion of friends.
“He is such a simple man. But he speaks so little. It seems funny to think that the conversations we’ve had, from my childhood days upto now, can be condensed into an hour or so. He is not given to expressing his affection so much,’’ says Shylaja, a writer who has several works to her name, including a pocket translation of ‘Thirukkural.’ Madhavan Nair’s family comes from Thirunandikkara village in Kanyakumari district. Mukaliyadimala dominates the scene around ‘Erathuveedu,’ the ancestral home. “Maamen’s role model was his grandfather Kesava Pillai. The latter was an important man in Thirunandikkara. He would take his grandson on walks, and was amazed at the questions the boy asked him,’’ Shylaja says.
When Kerala lost Kanyakumari to Tamil Nadu, Madhavan Nair’s father Gopala Pillai moved to Thiruvananthapuram.
Years later, Shylaja would visit the Sasthamangalam home during school holidays. “Maamen’s elder son Dileepan is three years younger to me. We would press him to take us out in the evenings. And he was such a busy man,’’ she remembers with a laugh. “He would take us to the Museum, ‘dump’ us there, and speed off to his office. He would pick us up on his way back.
Once we got caught in a downpour and had to take shelter under a tree.’’ Always caught up in his work - that’s Madhavan Nair for you, says Shylaja. His wife Radhakumari also is a former ISRO staffer. “Family talk always tends to stray off into a talk about his ‘ISRO family.’ We tease him about that.’’ Shailaja had her education at Nagercoil. Her father K.G.
Chandrasekharan Nair had translated both ‘Thirukkural’ and ‘Thirumanthram’ into Malayalam, an art which she picked up.
The pocket edition of ‘Thirukkural’ aside, her translations include ‘Kayattukattil,’ a collection of Tamil short stories and the novel ‘Panamullu.’ She is a winner of the Rashtriya Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Award for translation and has also brought out a collection of short stories, ‘Nombaram.’ Shylaja is married to K. Raveendran and lives at Valiyavila.
The couple has a son, Sharath.