O. V. Vijayan

Ottupulackal Velukkuty Vijayan (2 July 1930 – 30 March 2005), commonly known as O. V. Vijayan, was an Indian author and cartoonist, who was an important figure in modern Malayalam language literature.

Born in Palakkad in 1930, Vijayan graduated from Victoria College in Palakkad and obtained a master's degree in English literature from Presidency College, Madras.

O. V. Vijayan was born on 2 July 1930 at Vilayanchaathanoor village in Palakkad district in Kerala.

Born premature in the seventh month, Vijayan was sickly from childhood and spent most of his time confined to his room.

His father O. Velukkutty was an officer in Malabar Special Police of the erstwhile Madras Province in British India.

His youngest sister O. V. Usha is a Malayalam poet.

As a child, Vijayan was largely homeschooled.

Formal schooling began at the age of twelve, when he joined Raja's High School, Kottakkal in Malabar, directly into sixth grade.

The informal education arranged by his father during his absentee years was sufficient to keep him at par with his peers.

The following year, Velukkutty was transferred and Vijayan joined the school at Koduvayur in Palakkad.

He graduated from Victoria College in Palakkad and obtained a master's degree in English literature from Presidency College.

Vijayan taught for some time at Malabar Christian College, Kozhikode, and Victoria College before opting for journalism.

He wrote his first short story, "Tell Father Gonsalves", in 1953.

A year before, it was serialized in Mathrubhumi weekly for 28 weeks starting from January 28, 1968 and set off a great literary revolution and cleaved the history of Malayalam fiction into pre-Khasak and post-Khasak eras.

The former era was romantic and formal; the latter is modernist, post-modernist and post-post-modernist, with tremendous experimentation in style and content.

The novel, which has drawn comparisons with One Hundred Years of Solitude of Gabriel García Márquez, is about Ravi, a teacher in an informal education centre in Khasak, and his existential crises.

The central character is shown as a visionary who completed his post graduate programme in Physics from a college at Tambaram.

The novel ends when Ravi begins his journey to some other realms of existence.

The existential puzzle of man as to why he should exist is explored in this novel.

The novel introduced a new poetic style of prose, combining Tamil, the Palakkad dialect and a sanskritized Malayalam.

It also introduced a narrative style that moved forth from reality to myths and back.

The work was later adapted as a play by Deepan Sivaraman.

Best known for his first novel Khasakkinte Itihasam (1969), Vijayan was the author of six novels, nine short-story collections, and nine collections of essays, memoirs and reflections.

Khasakkinte Itihasam (The Legends of Khasak), Vijayan's first novel, appeared in 1969.

It set off a great literary revolution and cleaved the history of Malayalam fiction into pre-Khasak and post-Khasak.

While Khasakkinte Itihasam continues to be his best-known work as an angry young man, his later works, Gurusagaram (The Infinity of Grace), Pravachakante Vazhi (The Path of the Prophet) and Thalamurakal (Generations) bespeak a mature transcendentalist.

Vijayan authored many volumes of short stories, which range from the comic to the philosophical and show a diversity of situations, tones and styles.

Vijayan translated most of his own works from Malayalam to English.

He was also an editorial cartoonist and political observer and worked for news publications including The Statesman and The Hindu.

Khasakkinte Itihasam (The Legends of Khasak), Vijayan's first novel, which took twelve years' writing and rewriting to reach its final form, was published in 1969.

Malayalanadu weekly announced that the novel would be serialised from July 1975, but the plan was dropped when the Emergency was proclaimed on June 25, 1975.

The novel was finally serialised only in 1977, after the Emergency was lifted and it proved to be prophetic.

There were hindrances for its publication as well due to its sexual-scatological language and imagery and as the atrocities perpetrated during Emergency were still haunting the public.

Dharmapuranam (The Saga of Dharmapuri, 1985) is outwardly a great political satire where the author knows no restraint in lampooning political establishments.

The works attempts to lampoon modes of governance through its characters and the setting.

The central character is Sidhartha, modelled after Gautama Buddha, whose personality is shown to lead people to enlightenment.

Though satirical in its tone, the novel has a spiritual level, too.

Finally, it was published in 1985.

Two years later, Penguin Books published the English translation and the book drew critical reviews.

...dangerous stuff and cut close to the bone were the words of David Selbourne, in The Times Literary Supplement and Khushwant Singh rated the novel as not the kind of novel you forget in a hurry. Vijayan himself described it as a cleansing act that he had no desire to repeat.