KOZHIKODE: P Valsala, who has been selected for the state government’s Ezhuthachan Award, is known as a writer who portrayed the social realities with a focus on women, marginalised community and nature. She started writing in the late 1960s.
She has penned around 70 works spread across novel, short story, children’s literature, travelogue and memoirs. A known Left fellow traveller, she had twice adorned the position of Kerala Sahitya Akademi chairperson. Valsala began her career as a high school teacher and retired as the principal of Government Teachers’ Training College, Nadakkavu, here.
Her noted works include ‘Nellu’, ‘Nizhalurangunna Vazhikal’, ‘Kooman Kolly’, ‘Vilapam’ and ‘Chaver’. Ace filmmaker Ramu Kariat made a movie adaptation of ‘Nellu’ later. P Valsala’s works have been marked for strong identification with feminism and ecology portrayed through social realities.
The writer herself has said that her writings are against the society which treats women as second-class citizens. She published ‘Nellu’ in 1972 which featured the lives of the oppressed Adivasi women of Wayanad. “Valsala is a writer who wrote good social novels. She belongs to the realistic genre of writers in Malayalam,” observed literary critic Dr P K Rajesekharan.
Dr Mini Prasad, critic and Associate Professor at Mar Thoma College, Chungathara, puts Valsala among the first ecofeminist writers in Malayalam. “She portrayed how nature and women were exploited. In ‘Nellu’, Wayanad’s cool climate, indigenous seeds and its animals were featured. But when she wrote ‘Kooman Kolly’ after nine years, the entire Wayanad had changed for worse. Its ecology and women were destroyed. ‘Kembi’, the tribal woman in the novel, was afflicted with a sexually transmitted disease out of the sexual abuse she was subjected to. Read this along with the stark reality of unwed tribal mothers of Thirunelly in Wayanad which shook our conscience,” said Mini Prasad.
‘I am always a Leftist’
Reacting to the news of her being selected for the state’s topmost literary award, 83-year old P Valsala said she was happy to receive the recognition in the name of the father of Malayalam language. “I met my characters since my early childhood. All my characters came to me from life situations and experiences of my own,” she told TNIE. A native of Vellimadukunnu in Kozhikode, Valsala always shared a special bond with Wayanad. “I had bought a house in Thirunelly a long time back and used to go and stay there,” she said. Valsala had a run-in with Left politics a few years ago and was widely perceived as supporting the Hindutva ideology. Reacting to this, she said she has always been a Leftist and she
cannot be anything else.