N. S. MADHAVAN- CONTEMPORARY MALAYALAM NOVELIST

N. S. MADHAVAN-

CONTEMPORARY MALAYALAM NOVELIST

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N. S. Madhavan is one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Malayalam fiction. A short fiction writer, novelist, football columnist and a travel writer, Madhavan enjoys a wide readership in Malayalam. Madhavan was born in the port city of Kochi (old name Cochin) in 1948. He was schooled in his native place at Sree Rama Varma High School. He graduated in economics from Maharajas College, Ernakulam. Later he moved to Thiruvananthapuram to do his masters at the Department of Economics, University of Kerala. It was during this period he started writing. 'Sisu', a short story that won him the first prize in a contest organized by a Malayalam literary magazine, Mathrubhumi, in 1970, was his first published work. He was born in Ernakulam, Kerala, in 1948. He once confessed that he enjoyed a 'happy childhood', opposite of Hemingway's prescription for a good writer. He studied at Sree Rama Varma High School, a government school, teeming with three thousand and odd students. Though the school ran like a factory with morning and evening shifts, it never lowered the bar as far as teaching Malayalam went.

Madhavan's luck with Malayalam teachers followed him to the Maharajas' College, Ernakulam, where he majored in economics. He had recounted that writing came to him by accident. One day, in 1970, when he was doing his post graduation in Thiruvananthapuram, Madhavan noticed that his hostel mates had all withdrawn into their rooms with reams of paper. They were busy writing for a short-story competition for college students, by the prestigious Malayalam weekly, Mathrubhoomi . Herd instinct, more than anything else, prompted him to write. Madhavan's story Sisu (The Child) won the first prize. Freed from the fear of rejection slips, he followed this story with more. In 1975, Madhavan joined the Indian Administrative Service and was seconded to the Bihar cadre. His career followed the usual graph of administering sub-districts and districts, jobs in the state and the union secretariats and running departments and corporations. By 1980, he had practically stopped writing. In 1983, his friends paid a tribute to a 'late' author by publishing Choolaimedile Savangal (Corpses of Choolaimedu), a collection of Madhavan's published stories.

 The decade of the 80's saw him write nothing and he later said he was slowly losing touch with his mother tongue. In 1988 his job took him back to Kerala. This helped him to reclaim his language. Within two years, in 1990, he published a short story, Higuita , about the quixotic and eponymous goalkeeper of Columbia's World Cup team. Madhavan's reentry was welcomed with critical and-much to his surprise--popular acclaim. Higuita was followed by Vanmarangal Veezhumpol (When Big Trees Fall), which forms the kernel of the movie KAAYA THARAN. "More than imagination," Madhavan once said in an interview, "sometimes pollen flying about from contemporary events fertilise minds." After the Kerala spell, there were no more pauses in his writing. Madhavan has published five collections of short stories since then. In 2003, his first novel, Lanthanbatheriyile Luthiniyakal (Litanies of Dutch Battery) was published. Though his stories in translation are not anthologized, his individual stories have appeared in Katha Prize Series, The Little Magazine etc. Some links to Madhavan's stories, translated to English, are given below: Stories :-Chulaimedile Savangal' (Corpses of Chulaimed), 'Higuita', 'Thiruth' (Blue Pencil), 'Paryaya Kathakal'(Stories about Names), 'Nilavili' (The Cry)Novel 'Lanthan Batheriyile Luthiniyakal' (Litanies of Dutch Battery)

Madhavan was born in the port city of Cochin where he attended the Sree Rama Varma HigSchool,. After graduating in economics fromMaharajas College,Ernakulam  he moved to Thiruvananthapuram to study for his masters at the Department of Economics, University of Kerala. During this period he began writing, and in 1970 won the top prize for his first published short story 'Sisu', in a contest organized by the Malayalam literary magazine Mathrubhumi  . In 1975, Madhavan joined the Indian Administrative Service where he was seconded to the  Bihar cadre. His civil service career followed the usual path of initially administering sub-districts and districts, then jobs in the state and union secretariats followed by the running departments and corporations.In the 1980s, Madhavan went through a decade-long period of writers block  , until the release of his story 'Higuita' in 1990. In this work, Madhavan models his protagonist, priest Father Geevarghese, on Higuita, the 1990 FIFA World Cup goalkeeper for Columbia. Higuita's unconventional playing style whereby he would often abandon his goal and try to score goals, occupies the priest's imagination. Likewise, he temporarily abandons his cassock and saves a tribal girl Lucie from the clutches of the trafficker Jabbar. The short story was adjudged the best in hundread years  of Malayalam literature. Since then he has published four collections of stories, a novel and one collection of plays. Madhavan's works of short fiction are: Madhavan's contribution to the short story genre, which is dying in most parts of the world, is reckoned by critics to be unique and noteworthy. As a short-fiction writer, his art gives importance to minute details and exemplifies the manifest skill and compact craft that writing short fiction demands. In Madhavan's works the subtle connections of criss-crossing dialogs and interlacing plots ultimately reveal an integrated narrative continuum.

After thirty-three years as a writer, Madhavan published his debut novel in 2003 as Lanthan Batheriyile Luthiniyakal, translated as Litanies of the Dutch Battery in 2010. He has been chosen for the prestigious Padmaprabha Literary Prize. The award consisting of a cash prize of Rs.55,000 and a citation is in recognition of Mr. Madhavan's literary contributions which had transformed and enriched Malayalam literature with their extraordinary sense of history and social sensitivity, M.P. Veerendrakumar, chairman of Padmaprabha Trust which has instituted the award, announced here on Monday. The award is in memory of Mr. Veerendrakumar's father, the late Padmaprabha, who was a leading planter and a socialist in Wayanad. Mr. Madhavan, a 1975 batch IAS officer, has been chosen for the coveted award by a committee headed by M. Mukundan, and consisting of Vijayalakshmi and Santhosh Echikkanam.

Mr. Madhavan's writings explore deep undercurrents that move the human mind, and his writing style jells with the intense emotions portrayed, the award-committee said in its assessment of his writings. Some of his novels have their roots in history – ‘Shurakan' (Barber) is written against the background of the U.S.- occupied Iraq; ‘Sarmishta' and ‘Mumbai' discuss power and sexuality, and ‘Nalam Lokam' (Fourth World) deals with the decline of the Soviet Union) while ‘Vanmaragal veezhumbol,' ‘Thiruthu,' and ‘Nilavili' have the unmistakable flavour of contemporary reality .

Prof. John Kurakar