Facebook | Sreejith V T Nandakumar: K. Satchidanandan on V T Nandakumar.

Facebook | Sreejith V T Nandakumar: K. Satchidanandan on V T Nandakumar.: "Samakalika Malayalam, 23rd June 2000:

'NANDETTAN'

by
Satchidanandan

V T Nandakumar was a writer caught between heaven and Hades.

I stood witness to the ashes that were once Nandettan, floating over one of the tiny lakes, scattered as shattered memories of the pristine immensities of Bharatha Puzha in Thiru Navaaya. Along with my sister, brother and the children of Nandettan. I don’t know what was the final prayer those ashes made to that liquid Sita, which kept on threatening in silkened soft voice to vanish underneath. Was it, take my hand and lead me into the secrets of earth? Or, perhaps, sour my sublime soul to the unknowns beyond the skies?

Nandettan, better known as V T Nandakumar was an artist caught between heaven and Hades.

My close encounter with a writer for the first time was through Nandettan. I was witness to his rise, fall and resurrection.

I remember that leisurely afternoon when Nandettan had come to our home in Pullut, crossing the courtyard where sun had spread its carpet, hibiscus and basil bloomed in smiles. My father was resting in the armchair, reading the Express daily. Someone whom youth had not quite divorced yet; someone with straight hair, shining face and seemingly dreamy eyes because of their slightly veiled iris. Someone who was, on our family scale, tall. Since I was a regular reader of Jayakeralam, I was familiar with his writing. It was hard to believe that this man with a child-like innocence was the one behind those works: because all of them were permeated with a sense about evil. It was only later, in the sixties of modernity, that an omniscience of this kind about the diabolic had manifested in Malayalam literature.

It was Basheer and Uroob who were Nandettan’s favorite Malayalam novelists. To the best of my knowledge, he was friends with them as well. I came to know him better after he had got married to my sister. I was sixteen or seventeen. A season when poetry was gushing forth and I was translating Shelley, Keats, Omar Khayyam and Wordsworth. But I was not very familiar with contemporary European literature. It was Nandettan who had introduced Sartre, Kafka and Camus to me. His other picks were Hemingway, Steinbeck, Flaubert and Stendhal.

It is heard that Nandettan was one of the first communists in Kodungallur. He was close friends with E. Gopala Krishna Menon, K.V.K Varrier, C. Achyutha Menon and their ilk. ‘Naalathe Mazhavillu’ vividly describes those days. It was “Raktham Illatha Manushyan’ that had catapulted Nandettan to fame. I have always felt it could have been a masterpiece.

Nandettan was working at the ‘Employees Insurance Corporation’ when he married my sister. He had to put up with a lot in the capacity if a trade union leader. After working in Thrissur, Kannur and Kottarakkara, finally he put in his papers. If he had received the emoluments that were to come to him is suspect. It took courage to decide to make a livelihood out of writing during those days. Life suddenly became insecure, once he lost a steady income. He had to sustain three lives. And that was only the beginning of the trials. Serial novels, initially: ‘ Daivathinte Maranam, Vandipparambanmar, Ente Karnan. In between, a fortnightly titled ‘Yaathra’ from Ernakulam. (It was in ‘Yaathra’ that I had written my first column; as well as a liberal translation of Camus’ Outsider, as suggested by Nandettan.) Then, a small treadle press in our home in Pullut. These were not, clearly, up his street. He never had the discipline or dexterity to run a business. Everyone took advantage of his good intentions. A good number of scripts for movies, many of which, hits in the box office. But even there, he failed to succeed in financial negotiations. It was my sister’s Life Insurance agency that had sustained the family. Nandettan had supported her in the profession. I have only heresay about his vagabond life before marriage and the many types of jobs that he had done, including that of a medical representative. It was this vagrant life outside Kerala that inspired his novels like Raktham Illatha Manushyan and Chattayum Malayum. I still feel they contain a certain power and courage.

Nandettan was an engaging conversationalist. He had a special flair for narrating ghost stories. Even as an adult, I had spent sleepless nights, listening to those tales. He was rather proud of my adolescent literary activities, though he had never told me directly. By and by, his maverick lifestyle settled down somewhat. The institutional responsibilities of a family reigned in that whirlwind too. I had felt he experienced immense guilt for describing Krishna in a devious way in Ente Karnan, which was anathema for my mother. Gradually, he felt it was wrong, himself. He discontinued the novel. I feel it was this guilt that had prompted him to romance Viswa Hindu Parishad. Yet, it’s my belief that he never changed his stance on this, though losing its edge a bit. It had astonished and pained me, this volte-face of Nandettan who was a Communist and a trade unionist. It seemed he had lost the art of conversation, along with this.

I had negotiated my path through the extreme left in the meanwhile. Nandettan never disputed me. He merely cautioned me when I was arrested. His Amityville was devoid of horrors, was firm and deep. An eclectic lodge. P.K. Abdul Khader, ex-Congress MP who was shot dead, Dr. Sageer, Dr. Manmohan, Ramadas Vaidyar, Dr. Siddiq, Appukkutty Gupthan who owned Jayakeralam…and others including Omcheri. I had always got only love and affection from him.

I am not sure how Nandettan had assessed himself as a writer. He had always quarreled with literary institutions and refused to repose trust in them. After growing up, we had never discussed literature. After all, we were traveling in different directions. Nandettan failed to become an acclaimed writer. But he could not compete with the Mills and Boons of Malayalam, despite switching from Kafka to English detective novels and suffering from a critical mass of agony. The truth is, he was so committed to reality. He refused to write about anything outside his first-hand knowledge. Randu Penkuttikal could have easily become pornography. But it puts forward a female bonding – not Lesbiansism – a feminine affinity. It may contain a tender and oblique Eros. But it is not at all direct same-sex lust. His model was a couple of girls who could not leave each other. I have felt that it was this realism that had always constrained him from growing beyond a certain limit. Was he the soliloquist in Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning? An artist who had everything and yet missed out on something crucial?

This much I know: his earnest life that lived three-fourth of a century to see the dawn of the millennium speaks volumes about an artist’s fate and challenges in our times. Even his failures are eloquent – like wounds with lips."