MT - two letters that were seared into my memory right from the time I began to remember. His was a name I knew even before I learned my first letters.
I could have had a much closer connection with the great man who passed away on Wednesday.
It harks back to the time when my mother had joined Victoria College for her intermediate. But she had to drop out due to poverty. If only her brother, who was working in the British Army, had applied for a fee concession, my mother would have gone on to be a classmate of MT's. Instead, she joined Raja's School, Kollankode, for her Teacher's Training Certificate. And it was Rajagopal, the son of my grandmother's younger sister, who became a classmate of MT's.
My mother and Raj ammavan (uncle) were like twins. Thus, MT's first collection of stories, Raktam Puranda Mantharikal (Blood-stained sand), reached my mother's hands with a warm embrace. When my mother got married and came to my father's house, she brought Raktam Puranda Mantharikal as dowry. My mother would keep telling the story until her memories began to fade.
Like my mother, MT the storyteller would still have millions of fans in many parts of the world and they will continue to share some of these joys until their memories fade.
It has been no different for me. Like everyone else in my time, I climbed the ladder from children's books to the literary world of T Padmanabhan, MT and C Radhakrishnan.
These were difficult worlds to explore. More disappointment than love and more sadness than happiness. Everything that was considered success soon turned into failure and everything that was achieved turned into self-deprecation. Their characters made us accustomed to loneliness -- we were left alone in the storm of life.
Turning into a writer and meeting the God of letters
The joy of starting to write stories in the Mathrubhumi children's series was that it was the very same Mathrubhumi where MT towered over everyone as the editor. Every time a children's story of mine was published, I wondered if MT would have seen it.
Then there was my love for Kozhikode. Each time I saw a bus from Thrissur to Kozhikode, I was very happy - for it was the Kozhikode where Baburaj's music was playing, where SK's sweet street was belonging and where MT was sitting solemnly in his perch at the Mathrubhumi office on Kesava Menon Road.
It was during this period that I learned in 1994 that, under the leadership of MT, Mathrubhumi Weekly was resuming the literary competition for students after many years. N Prabhakaran, NS Madhavan, TV Kochubava, Ashita and Aymanam John were the earlier winners of the Vishupathip literary competition. If only my name were to make it to that august list!
I was a first-year degree student then. I wrote and sent a story with the innocence and enthusiasm of youth.
Thankfully that April did not turn to be a "cruel month". The second place in the college story competition was clinched by my story Mruthi Vruththam (Death Circle). The first place went to Subhash Chandran, then a second-year MA student at Maharaja's College, for Khadigarangal nilukkunna samyaththu (The time when the clocks stopped).
I felt I had earned my passport to the world of short stories. NP Mohammed, M Achuthan, and CV Sreeraman had been the judges.
The days that followed were filled with excitement and then came the high point.
I set off to Kozhikode to meet MT. I saw him -- in the flesh. He gave me a gift. I took a photo with him. As expected, he didn't say a word. I was hit by the realisation that Gods don't talk, only we talk before them.
Decoding the fascination with MT
A few years later, I was studying for my MA at Kerala Varma College, Thrissur, when MT was the president of the Sahitya Akademi.
MT, thanks to his literary ties, was able to bring many Indian writers to the Akademi. In this way, I was able to hear and get to know them all. This was my passage from the stuffy classrooms to the blue sky of independent thought.
I got to see many of India's most accomplished writers -- Nirmal Varma, Indira Goswami, Pratibha Rai, Ajit Kaur, Chandrasekhara Kambar and many more. There were no literary fests back then like there are today and all of them came to the Sahitya Akademi only because of MT's influence and their closeness to him. It afforded a great opportunity for a group of youngsters who were literary enthusiasts in the nineties. Thrissur celebrated this amalgamation of prodigious talent.
Discussions about MT have always been plentiful.
I recently saw a glimpse of this at Thunchan Parambil in Tirur. I heard one member of a group say that MT wrote Varanasi in Goa in a few days. He wrote systematically from eight in the morning to one in the afternoon and then from four to eight in the evening. I have read many stories about the experience of many filmmakers and of this felicity MT always had in completing his work on time.
There are also many stories around his reading habits.
His reading group in Kozhikode included VKN, N Padmanabhan and Aravindan among others. These geniuses fired each other's imagination. They drank the brew of friendship. They became lovers of books. This was a group the thought of whose very existence makes you feel jealous. I have always wondered how people like MT and Aravindan, who were both silent, could have interacted. I have heard that VKN (Vadakkke Koottala Narayanankutty Nair) affectionately called MT "Nooluvasu".
Someone said that even until recently, MT would come and read in street bookstores in Chennai. I feel that reading, that silence, is what made MT an idol.
Even then, I have wondered how Kerala fell so much in love with someone who only allowed people near him after carefully judging them for long and who rarely smiled at anyone. What was behind that unalloyed attraction he commanded?
The magic of his words
It was quite simply the magic he wove with his words.
When Sumitra in Kaalam says "Sethu, you have always loved one person - yourself", it became the life story of the average Malayali man.
When a Malayali destined to spend three-quarters of his life in a foreign land leaves, he was apt to turn to an MT line "I have begun this journey to return."
When I have been haunted by past delusions and homesickness, I too resort to an MT line in justification: "I prefer my Nila River to the ocean that carries unknown secrets in its womb."
There is also an MT line that throbs in my mind every time I walk down the hill to see the local Kumaranchira Bhagavathi: "I am not one to say whether there is a God. But if you say that there is no Goddess, I will not agree."
Then there is that line from MT which always governs me. It is not from literature, it is from cinema. When I feel pity or remorse for someone, I use this sentence to control myself. In the movie Sukritam, a dying journalist says, "Sympathy is a private expression of the happiness that I didn't fall prey to this."
There are then so many MT words that every ordinary Malayali has engraved in their minds. This Perumthachan carved his lines in everyone's mind with his literary chisel.
That brush with death and what he leaves behind
I have heard that MT came face to face with death in the middle of his life.
But then, he went on to complete his most thought-provoking and brilliant works. I remember with amazement that neither diseases, Dinesh Beedis (which he always remained fond of), nor the intoxications of life could touch the unwavering strength of this genius till he was 91.
It was MT who taught Malayalis to love Chanthu (Oru Vadakkan Veera Gatha) and Bhim (Randamoozham).
From the cat in Sherlock to Appunni in Naalukettu, everyone is doomed to the punishment of life. They will never succeed. Life is about failure. Unni in Karkidakam is failing after longing for a grain of rice. The journalist in Kadugannawa has no escape even after reaching a foreign country in search of his lost sister. Those human souls who are destined to melt in the sorrow of loss can be loved forever.
That is why Malayalis have such affection for the two letters MT.
In life, I have always held that he was a person who always succeeded. Beyond writing, he displayed a level of practicality that gave balance to his life. People from other parts of the south can be heard calling MT "MD". The management expertise of an MD was there with him all his life.
The great man was someone who turned everything he touched into gold. This was so with cinema, literature and even speeches. The same happened with institutions he was associated with. It was only because of MT's excellence that he was able to build a suitable monument to the master of Malayalam language, Thunchathezhuthachan, and maintain it beautifully.
A spotless childhood in the grip of poverty, then a young age filled with struggles, conquests and sins, before a disappointed return to reality after finally realising the futility of life -- one that is completed with the knowledge that there is no such thing as victory or defeat. This is what I have felt to be MT's vision of life.
More than his novels, I have read his memoirs and speeches. First there were the speeches he made when Shihab Thangal died and the Babri Masjid was demolished. Another excellent political speech was the one on From Hitler to Tughlaq that exposed the atrocities of those who have been termed by history as fools and madmen.
Kerala universities should include these speeches in their textbooks. They are so relevant and beautiful.
(K Rekha is a Malayalam short story writer and worked as a journalist. Currently, she works as a lecturer.)