Tracing the journey of a multi-realm traveller

This book, edited by poet and critic EV Ramakrishnan and eminent academic KC Muraleedharan, gives a comprehensive view of OV Vijayan’s world, mapped with his works, cartoons, commentaries, interviews, letters and other markers of the mind. It tries to assess him in the context of the world in which he lived, worked, wrote and evolved and provides a one-stop source for information about him. Vijayan spanned many worlds, and it is difficult to use the same standards to measure his presence in all of them. He was complex and versatile, and the writers in this volume have used diverse tools to assess him. We get a good picture of the writer, the cartoonist, the commentator, the spiritual seeker, and above all, the person who moved through all these stations of the mind. Vijayan is best understood as a traveller through these realms, and the writers have succeeded in tracing his journey through them. 

The book is in two parts. It introduces the reader to Vijayan’s creative and reflective worlds with excerpts from his works. It also studies them from the reader’s and the critic’s perspective. Vijayan wrote in two languages and moved with ease between them. He was also a cartoonist who spoke with lines and laughter. The book contains sections from his novels, including The Legends of Khasak and The Saga of Dharmapuri and some short stories in translation from Malayalam. Autobiographical notes, interviews and correspondence are included, as are studies of translations of his works — Vijayan was his own translator. There is a section that looks at his intellectual and philosophical ideas and engagements. Some of his cartoons are reproduced, and we find some fine studies of the cartoons and the cartooning mind. There is also a section on Vijayan in the 21st century, which contains some contemporary views of his works. A timeline of his life and works, photos, and an exhaustive bibliography make it a complete volume. 

The book describes Vijayan as a critical insider, a term used by UR Ananthamurthy to refer to an organic intellectual who is not a prisoner of any ideology. Ananthamurthy’s words: “In India, the creative people are those who have roots in their own tradition, while at the same time are also exposed to the West.” This was true with Vijayan, whose writing and persona evolved over time. Actually, what matters perhaps is not that they evolved but how they evolved. For critical insiders, art and life become sites for experimenting, as it was for a person whose name does not need to be mentioned. Involved in this process is the relation between the individual and the world, and in the case of artists, the relationship between their work and the person, too. This works in strange ways for critical insiders in India. When they try to change the world, they change themselves. They get the sense they are changing the world when they try to change themselves. It is more complicated in the case of artists and writers, and especially for those such as Vijayan who had many avenues to express himself through and which impacted each other. K Satchidanandan, in his essay, says Vijayan had a double awareness that gave him a kind of detachment that was the source of his laughter, which was closer to that of a Vyasa than of a Mark Twain. It had its roots in the predicament of the artist as the critical insider.  

I think this idea, in its various forms, shapes the theme of the book and holds it together, even as individual articles study the works. Vijayan’s works are such that they hide unexpected meanings and patterns, and the reader is often surprised by their discovery. They have literary, social, political and philosophical dimensions. They deal with human relations within the family and community, especially gender issues. He engaged at the same time with the challenges and contradictions of both tradition and modernity. Vijayan started as a writer in a minor language and evolved to speak a national and universal language, and went beyond it. He created a new sensibility in Malayalam and even influenced the newspaper language, the lowest common denotation of the spoken and written word. He created a new cartooning language, too. Writings about his works, the best of which we see in this volume, also gained a new language, created new tools of understanding and developed new critical sensibilities. These articles, observations and insights are good guides to the world of an extraordinary genius. Vijayan’s themes and concerns are still relevant, and that adds to the book’s value.