‘Writing is a pleasure, an obsession’: A publisher’s tribute to MT Vasudevan Nair

Growing up in Bangalore in the 1950s and early ’60s, far from my roots and in a school which actively discouraged our mother tongues, I hadn’t the faintest idea about Malayalam writers or literature. Bored with unimaginative Kannada and Hindi lessons, I thought that “MT”, whose name I heard nearly every day, was a family member I had never met. My brother and I were taken to the occasional Malayalam film. We heard the drone of Malayalam news which came through a small radio atop a shelf only because our uncle was the broadcaster. No wonder Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

In the six months after high school and before pre university, a tutor was appointed to teach us Malayalam. We studied it only to please Amma but it came in handy 25 years later when I began working in Macmillan India and led a programme of English translations from eleven Indian languages. The year was 1992.

One of them was PK Ravindranath’s translation of Randamoozham, which we titled Second Turn, (1997) referring as it did to Bhima’s silent and hopeless passion for Draupadi, for whom he waited …and waited…

By then I had woken up to our massive post-colonial amnesia and with the help of MR AR Educational Society which made available a Rs 50 lakh grant, began working against the market tide which prized Indian writers in English several levels above translations of Indian literature. If at all there was a session on translation at a literary seminar or conference anywhere in the country, the room emptied by the time the speakers reached the microphone. No one outside these language-islands even knew what our national writers looked like.

In his Author’s Note to Second Turn, MT says, “In November 1977 when I reached death’s door and returned I decided to reserve a portion of my remaining years to writing a novel based on the Mahabharata. I have not changed the framework of the story put together by the first Vyasa. I merely read between the lines and expanded on the pregnant silences. …Dhritarashtra says that the single reason he could not sleep was because Bhima was on the opposite side. The leader who won the war but did not gain anything. For that very reason, I adopted Bhima’s point of view.”

“No one can teach another person how to write fiction or poetry…a writer dissects himself…”

(Samvatsar lecture, Sahitya Akademi 2000)

I began editing PKR’s translation in June 1996 and with his concurrence, and through three drafts, sent MT ten pages every day. He told me not to wait for his responses by post and that I was to call him at 10 am every day. Our conversations never lasted more than a minute.

“Namaskaram…did you?”

“Yes. Approved. Please carry on…pages in post.”

I usually panic when it comes to selecting a cover image for the translations I publish but in this case, I had no doubts at all – it had to be Namboodiri’s illustration of Bhima. Fortunately, PK Ravi agreed.

“Shall we try shades of sandalwood and gold?” I asked MT.

“Gold-o? What about red?”

“I will send you some alternatives.”

“Hmmm.”

Jayan G Menon of Shanka Graphics who designed the Macmillan India translations did a glorious cover – back and front – using red, and the colour of fresh sandalwood paste. He outlined Bhima in gold. To my indescribable relief, there was a smile in MT’s voice when he called to say that he liked the printout I had posted. He also appreciated the blurb I prepared for the back cover. The late VC Harris wrote a marvellous introduction to this now out-of-print edition, saying, “To wrest this huge mass called Bhima out of the epic tradition, endowing him with a raging mind and a tormented spirit, and ultimately rereading the whole of Mahabharatha through his angle of vision – this is no mean achievement.”

Second Turn was one of a cluster of seven translations published in time for India’s 50th year of Independence. Macmillan UK lifted 200 copies of all the books and presented them at Pembroke College, Cambridge in December. A member of the jury that had awarded that year’s Booker Prize to The God of Small Things was in the front row, a faint smile on her face. No one in the room had heard of any of the writers. The translators and project editor were not even mentioned in the leaflet.

“You call when you can,” MT had said before I left India. International phone calls those days were very expensive and I did not feel like calling anyone.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“There was nothing to tell.”

“Oh.”

Three years after that day, MT delivered the 13th Samvatsar lecture in which he said, “And now yet another anxiety assails third world intellectuals: that, as a far-reaching result of globalisation, regional languages may disappear in order to accommodate a trade language convenient for everyone.”

A quarter of a century after that day a multi-crore film is under preparation, based on Harper Collins India’s retranslation of the same novel.

“The best way to write a good story is to write a good story.”

(Samvatsar lecture, Sahitya Akademi 2000)

Ten years after publishing Second Turn, and by which time I was in Oxford University Press I asked Gita Krishnankutty if she would contribute to the OUP list of translations. She suggested Naalukettu, MT’s first novel, then in its 40th reprint. The translation was readied in time for the golden jubilee of the original in 2007. The cover was an exercise in translation! I wanted to convey something about the complex mystique of a tharavad via a photograph. I think someone went out and photographed many tharavads in Malabar from the outside. The central courtyard around which the house is traditionally raised just wasn’t coming through. Finally, Lathika Digital Studio (Thrissur) sent us photos from which emerged the silent, brooding quality I had been moving towards unable to articulate a precise requirement.

Gita contributed much more than the translation. I see her as three pillars of the Naalukettu OUP published, MT being the fourth. In her introduction, she described at length the sarpa-puja to propitiate serpents of misfortune, the construction of the special enclosure for the performance and the kalam or sacred drawing made on the floor with different powders made of rice, paddy husk, turmeric and green leaves. She even sourced a drawing of a kalam by Basant Peringode showing intertwined snakes.

The back cover of the book carries an evocative photo of the two-hundred-year-old Chalapurathu Puthenveedu tharavad which belongs to MT’s physician Dr R Krishnan.

“As for the reader – he is uncompromisingly demanding.”

(Samvatsar lecture, Sahitya Akademi 2000)

In 1990 when The Hindu launched its Literary Review I rang Nirmala Lakshman to campaign for translations. “You must create a space for Indian writers and translators…” When she invited me to help with suggestions, themes, and articles, one of the first things I sent was Gita’s translation of “Sherlock”.

When he saw the newspaper, a delighted MT asked Gita, “How did this happen?”

I finally met MT Vasudevan Nair 19 years later when his physician Dr R Krishnan took me to “Sithara.” Dr Krishnan took a photo of us together. I have besides this photo, something else to treasure – an acknowledgement he wrote for the Macmillan translation of Randamoozham.