A reader writes to aksharajaalakam./ഒരു വായനക്കാരന്‍ എം.കെ ഹരികുമാറിന്‌ എഴുതുന്നു.

Dear Shri MK,

My name is K R C Pillai. Living outside Kerala for more than 25 years. Presently in Mumbai. Working with the National Dairy Development Board. I do write in Malayalam under the pseudonym Kunnamthanam Ramachandran, not in a prolific manner (once in a while one story, about which none talks and it automatically goes into oblivion).

I write this mail to convey my happiness to read your Aksharajaalakam in Kalakaumudi. At the age of 19, someone in my village (it's near Tiruvalla), told me to read Malayalanadu weekly. That's why Prof. M Krishnan Nair came into me and since then Sahitya Varabhalam became a part of my reading material, week after week, year after year. Ha! What a personality he was! What a presenter he was! How he made opinions about the writings around him! How he bruised the worthless ones with the mower he rode on them mercilessly! And, numerous ones tried to emulate his writings, and all failed, miserably. But, dear Shri M K, your coloumn is unique, different, of course, the professor is lingering through yours too at times -- that happens in such writings -- yet you show your identify in most of your writings. It's because you are bold, having straight-cuts, have vast knowledge of world literature, know where we, the Malayalis stand with our writings, how worthless are our pieces about which we often make merry and hoopla and show lineaments of the self-possessed. Your recent comment that there is not even a good sentence coming out in Malayalam is worth-noting. See the "Expressway" and "IPL"!(Mathrubhumi). How callous and cunning our writers are becoming, in presenting the social issues, without showing any creativity of them, without knowing the impact the social issues make in the society. Cunning are they, I said because, they want to remain in limelight all the time, the easiest way of which is to write about the issues on which they are ignorant, superficial, without having an iota of social vision – and above all, not knowing how one could instill a social issue into one's creativity! I feel sometimes that those 70s,80s and 90s were good where Satire and Allegory ruled the roost, which showed at least the creativity part of a writer. Gandhiji and Vivekananda were destined to be in their assigned roles. If they ever tried to write short stories with the ideologies and ideals they advocated, it would have been worst –- for literature.

Mumbai is a place to where I am posted a year back. Leaving my family in Bangalore (where I lived for more than a decade), the pieces of the type you write enliven me a lot.

Please do continue your bold and beautiful writings, with harsh view-points opined in apt words.
What I have stated about you is less in a few words. You are an innovative thinker definitely and I value your views. It's amazing that after the inimitable Professor, there is a writer in Malayalam who can write every week, something differently, with a capturing attraction to the each word written. You can definitely rejoice out of this and the lazy ones like me think how would you manage to do this!


Sorry if I have taken much of your time.

Regards


K R C Pillai
Deputy Manager (HR)
National Dairy Development Board
Western Express Highway
Goregaon (East)
Mumbai 400 65