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CHAPTER - IV

M.T VASUDEVAN NAIR: A POST-PASTORAL READING

Malayalam is one of the most versatile and exuberant of Indian

vernaculars. Kerala, the land from which it issues forth is one generously

blessed by nature with all its boons in abundance - plentiful rains,

backwaters and numerous rivers, a copious diversity of vegetation,

beautiful landscape, fertile soil and moderate climate. The traditional

culture of the state bears testimony to the ecological argument that the

cultural develops from the natural landscape, from the anatomy and

physiology of spaces and landscapes, thus bringing out the mutuality or

interdependence of man and region. Kerala can boast of a holistic culture

nourished by the pastoral conventions of the agrarian civilization and the

Hindu faith with its symbiotic concepts.

The ecologically viable aspects of the civilization are manifest in the

rich and glorious literary tradition of Malayalam which is distinctly marked

by silver streaks of eco-sensibility. It appears as a distinctive feature of the

literature from the days of the ancient bards like Thunchath Acharya to the

poets of today like Sugathakumary. In spite of the erosion of religious faith

and the slackening of customary beliefs the affinity with nature remains a

remarkable aspect of our culture. M.T Vasudevan Nair, one of the dominant
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figures on the cultural scenario of Kerala is a true heir to the cultural and

literary traditions of the land.

MT, a celebrated presence in the literary and cultural scenario of

Kerala is a genius who excels in different genres of writing. He was

awarded the Sahitya Akademy award for novel in 1959, the same for drama

in 19778 and for short story in 1980.MT won the Kendra Sahitya Akademy

award for his novel Nalukettu in 1970 and the Jnanpith award the greatest

national honour to an Indian writer, in 1996. He has been honoured with

umpteen other awards and distinctions like Vayalar Award, Odakkuzhal

Award, Honorary D.Litt from various Universities of Kerala and so on.

Equally impressive are his achievements in the field of cinema. As one of

the most successful script - writers and Directors of Kerala his merit has

been repeatedly recognised by State level and National level laurels.‘

Nirmalyam’, the first film for which he wrote the script, and of which he

himself was the director and producer won the President’s Gold Medal for

the best feature film in 1973. “Iruttinde Atmavu”, the film version of

his novel of the same name was awarded the President’s Silver Medal.

One of the factors to which Kerala owes its bio-diversity and cultural

richness is an ecosystem nourished by a massive network of great rivers.

Nila, the longest of the forty two rivers flowing through the state is

regarded highly for its geophysical value as well as its cultural and

historical significance. MT was born and brought up in a sylvan village on

the banks of this great river --Koodallur, in Ponnani Taluk of Malappuram

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District. The writer has so often acknowledged his indebtedness to the

ethos of his village and to Nila which has ever been the mainspring of his

creative inspiration. As part of the new ecological revival studies have been

conducted to estimate and analyse the contribution it has made to the socio-

religious, cultural and literary life of Kerala. According to a report in

Hindu, titled , “Kerala Culture Dependent on Nila Legacy: Study”, a seven-

year study assisted by the University grants Commission on the cultural

geography and habitat of Nila river has reportedly come to the conclusion

that the Nila or Bharathapuzha valley, a unique river valley system was the

cradle of civilization in Kerala . The study comes to the conclusion that

Kerala culture depends heavily on the Nila .

The heritage of the region is traced to the pre-historic settlements and

through the Aryan settlements to the period of Brahmin migration when the

Brahmins who had uprooted themselves from the nearby state came across

the Palakkad gap and settled all over Kerala. Four of these early

settlements were on the banks of Nila. The river basin proved itself to be

highly fertile soil not only for agriculture but also for culture and

literature. Generations of Malayalam writers including Vallathol, P.

Kunhiraman Nair and Idaserry have drawn inspiration from Bharathapuzha

and the beauty of the landscape on her banks. The construction of

Kuttippuram bridge across the river filled the heart of Idassery with

apprehensions about the impact it would make on the purity of the villages
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on the banks of the river. The popular poem “Kuttippuram Bridge” is the

poetic expression of his feeling of fear and anxiety with regard to this.

The present predicament of the river has been a source of grave

concern to MT. Many kindred souls who have a genuine feeling for nature

and the precious cultural legacies engendered by it have joined issue with

him for the protection of the river. The wide and deep river which used to

be brimming with crystal clear water round the year has degenerated into a

thin current in the middle of a vast sand bed stretching like a desert.

Natural and geological factors have surely had their role in effecting the

depletion of the river. But this does not reduce the gravity of the part that

reckless and indiscreet activities of a human society motivated by greed

and selfishness played in damaging the rive. Excessive sand- mining has

been identified as the most destructive of all human activities which led to

the depletion of the river.

An expert committee appointed by the state Government to investigate

the problems of Bharathapuzha, submitted its report in 1997. According to

the committee, “the Bharathapuzha system , is seriously affected by

unsustainable exploitation of its resources and over-utilisation of its

surface and ground water resources, particularly in the lean period. The

indiscriminate sand removal has almost killed the river”(The Hindu Sept.11

2003) . The large-scale deforestation in the catchment areas and the

adjacent valleys also has been fatal to the river. In spite of the numerous

commissions and committees, studies and reports official and unofficial, in

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the absence of sincere and creative measures the precious river system

continues to be in peril.

MT has for long been engaged in a persistent and relentless campaign

for the protection of Nila. The twin picture evoked by him in many of his

speeches and articles, is an effective visualization of ecocide and its

disastrous consequences _the long rows of lorries waiting to be loaded with

sand in the vast desert which was river Nila once, and alongside with it the

long queue of house wives with colourful plastic pots in their hands waiting

for the vehicles distributing drinking water in the villages on the banks of

the river, in the summer months. MT’s “Requiem for a River” is an article

of unfathomable ecological wisdom. He dwells on the cultural, religious,

mythical and sentimental value that Bharathapuzha, also known as Nila or

Perar holds:

The Nila river has inspired many of our great poets like

Vallathol, P. Kunhiraman Nair and Idaserry. For the common

people this river is the ever sacred’ Ganges of the South’. It was on

the banks of this river, in the village of Cheruthuruthy that

Vallathol set up his famous Kerala Kalaamandalam. Many artists

have come up from the villages of Kalpathy to Ponnani on the

banks of this river as writers ,singers and Kathakali Artists. May be

that is why Nila is described as the cultural spring of Malabar

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(Kannanthalippookkalude Kaalam 37).

Apparently a psycho cultural shift has contributed to the degeneration

of the river. It is the Indian tradition to attribute some religious and

mythical significance to every river. The tales about the fairies and spirits

who made the river-bed their playground on the moonlit nights and the

legends establishing a link between the river and the local deity, of which

MT gives an account in his requiem , formed part of a culture which

nurtured love and reverence for nature. The peasants in these villages a few

decades ago would not and dared not pollute the river which was sacred to

them. But here as every where else in the world the demythification of

nature has led to uninhibited assault on nature. While admitting the

inevitability of change, people like MT remind us that retaining the feasible

and salient values of our ancestral culture may save the earth and save

ourselves. In his book, Nilayude Theerangalilude(Along the Banks of Nila),

Alankode Leelakrishnan gives a detailed study of Nila -an account of the

multidimensional history and importance of the river. As he observes, for

the Malayalee , it is not simply a river, but a grand current of his identity,

heritage and cultural progress(9) .Nila occurs and re-occurs in MT’s

fiction, as a presence and as a symbol ,endorsing this view.

It was in the sixties that MT rose to prominence as a writer. The phase

of social realism had come to an end. In his opinion, class-war the ideal

which had inspired the writers belonging to the preceding generation had

almost lost its relevance by the time he entered the literary career. The
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prominent Malayalam writers of the pre-independence phase -Thakazhi ,

Vallathol and Kesavadev- were all stimulated by the Progressive Leftist

ideals. They focused their attention on social conflict as the theme for their

writings-Conflict between capital and labour, between the landlord and the

tenant, between the oppressor and the oppressed. MT felt that this theme of

conflict was an outdated phenomena in the context of present Kerala. He

says: “In Malayalam, writing about a labourer who is exploited is not easy

simply for the reason that exploitation of labour has almost come to an end.

In the contemporary context of Kerala conflicts occur more at the

psychological than at the material level -- the conflicts of ideals and

values, of ideologies and the conflicts on legal issues” (“Cherukathayude

adarukal” 74). The protagonists of MT are men out of society and at war

with themselves, a sharp contrast to the heroes of Kesavdev or Thakazhi

who fight a losing war against the hostile forces in the society.

MT, in spite of his broad and deep sympathy for the marginalised

doesn’t identify himself with any particular political ideology or

movement. Though he has firm convictions with regard to the social and

ethical responsibilities of an author, he never dons the robe of a preacher or

reformer. His fiction never becomes a direct statement of his ideas or

beliefs. But through his non- fictional writings and his speeches (most of

which have been collected and published as books ), he has been effectively

intervening in local and global issues. Like that of his predecessors , the

Progressive writers, MT’s voice rises to a high pitch of indignation and

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protest against domination, exploitation and oppression. But he lives in a

different context and the victims are no longer the tenants persecuted by

the landlords or the labourers tortured by the entrepreneur. In this post-

industrial , post -capitalist phase, especially in a state like Kerala man’s

domination over man no longer exists in its ferocious forms as it had a few

decades ago. MT, unlike Mulk Raj Anand and the Progressive Malayalam

poets had no experience of rigid and inhuman caste discrimination. The

.Kerala society had become enlightened enough to treat all human beings

with some respect by the time he became an established writer. MT often

refers to ‘Koppen Master’s school’, the first local school attended by him

where all children were admitted without any discrimination based on class,

caste or religion.

As a writer MT never denies the social significance of literature. The

primary duty of the writers is to create a moral awareness against the evils

in the contemporary society, according to MT. Literature is a social

institution and which exerts as much influence on people as religion and

the judicial system. A man of letters can provide his readers with a right

perspective of contemporary events. In his opinion: “A writer is a man who

stands watching on the shore of human life, witnessing the disasters which

are part of it. He is not in possession of the remedies for all. When the

body of the society of which he is also a member gets polluted by

poisonous elements he can just make those around him aware of

it”(“Ezhuthukaarante Aakulathakal” 88). Faithful to his ideal, MT holds a

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mirror to the age, not an ordinary mirror but a magic mirror which reveals

much that remains hidden to the ordinary eyes.

Like Jane Austen who was content to work on her two inches of ivory,

MT draws his material almost exclusively, (except for a few exemptions

like Mist) from the small world of his personal experience, his native

village and the surrounding region. As he has said he has been able to

project the universal man through the characters he picked up from the

remote village of Koodallur. “It is not”, says M.T, ”a shortcoming or a

limitation if you write only about yourself and the village where you were

born and where you grew up. Limitation should be transformed into a virtue

and strength... when you make your own experience the material for writing

you should consider whether it has a universal nature”(“Cherukathayude

Adarukal “76). His success as a writer lies mainly in that magic charm

possessed by a gifted writer to assimilate the global into the local.

The temporal milieu of MT’s fiction stretches over the second half of

the twentieth century, a period of tremendous social, cultural and economic

changes . The feudal system was on the decline and the traditional joint

family pattern was giving way to the nuclear family system. Agriculture

was no longer a lucrative occupation, mainly due to the partition of

property into small plots, rising labour costs and various other factors.

Social structure became fragile and fluid and many, especially the youth

,seemed to be left in a sort of void. The sense of place and the feeling of

identity and security experienced by the individual in the close-knit

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mutually supportive village community no longer existed. As the villages

got transformed into suburban enclaves, the community disintegrated into a

crowd. The strong ties of family relationships and neighbourliness

characteristic of a peasant community used to function as a supportive

social network. MT fictionalises the conflicts --internal rather than external

conflicts -- ensuing from this transition . Though his works are firmly

rooted in the definitive space_ the village of Koodallur with Nila as a

constant presence - he repeatedly moves from spatial dimensions into the

inner space of his characters.

The early part of MT’s literary career spanned the fifties and sixties --

the period of modernism in Indian literature. The society suffered from a

trauma brought about by colonial education, ruthless urbanisation and

inhuman industrialisation. The identity of the individuals and of

communities was challenged . MT concentrated on the wretchedness of the

lonely individual who has lost his identity and finds himself alienated from

himself as well as from the society.

The autobiographical dimension of his fictional world has been much

discussed by the writer himself and by his readers and critics. The indelible

impressions left in a fertile imagination by a not very happy, and rather

lonely and financially insecure childhood and boyhood days in a crumbling

matrilineal Nair tarwad continues to be the spring well of MT’s stories and

novels. His mother who had accompanied her husband to Ceylon where he

was employed as the manager of a plantation, returned to Kerala and settled

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down at Koodallur. She had great regard for the indigenous culture and she

was very particular that her children should not be alienated from the rich

heritage. Time has proved the wisdom of her decision for MT would never

become such a great writer if his genius were not nourished and

strengthened by the ethos, the cultural atmosphere and natural environment

of this land.

The responsibility of bringing up the four boys--M.T and his three

elder brothers-- was shouldered, almost entirely, by his mother and she

struggled hard to make both ends meet, especially as there was a steady

decrease in the amount sent home by her husband. His gradual

estrangement from the family and the rumours about his having another

family in Ceylon cast gloom in the atmosphere of the house. MT’s mother

struggling to keep her balance amidst all the financial and psychological

pressures, in spite of her limitless affection for her children, was not in a

position to cater to their emotional needs. MT had great admiration for his

mother which gets is reflected in the archetypal mother images in his

novels and stories. The void left by an absent father is as deeply felt as the

balmy presence of the mother in his stories

The glorious saga of MT’s literary career began with the publication

of “ Valarthumrugangal ”, in 1953. It was a short story delineating the

pathetic plight of the artists in circus . The numerous stories which

followed dealt with themes culled from widely different milieus and

contexts but were uniformly successful and popular. The noted collections
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of his stories are Iruttinte Atmaavu , Olavum Theeravum , Bandhanam,

Varikkuzhi, Dare-e-Salam, Swargam Thurakkunna Samayam,

Vaanaprastham and Sherlock. There is a special charm in this gifted

writer’s style which renders his non-fictional writing no less interesting to

read than his novels and stories . He has authored two books on the craft of

writing- Kaathikante panippura and Kaathikante Kala and his anecdotal

columns articles on various topics and speeches on different occasions have

been compiled under the titles Kilivaathililude, Ammaykku,

Kannanthalippookkalude, Kaalam Vakkukalude Vismayam and

Eekakikalude Sabdam. Manushyar Nizhalukal and Aalkkoottathil Thaniye

are his travelogues.

The childhood haunted by a feeling of despair and neglect became

instrumental in strengthening MT’s congenital fascination for nature .He

describes his usual rendezvous on top of Thanikkunnu and on the banks of

Nila where he sought the company of nature to assuage his pain and

desolation. It has been rightly observed that in his fiction the inner

struggles of the individual get priority over the happenings in his life. But

the individual even when he wills himself out of society as many of MT’s

protagonists do, moves in an orbit- the orbit of his natural and social

environment. MT shifts them on to his canvas with this orbit. Thus

Govindankutty or Appunni or Sethu has no existence if they are detached

from the village where the drama of their life is enacted.

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The writer admits his nostalgia for the lost beauties of village life. He

is aggrieved to see that Kannanthalippookkal --the beautiful wild flowers--

no longer bloom on the hill sides which used to be carpeted with them in

the Onam season. He laments, “How many colours, how many sweet smells,

how many wonders I have lost!”(Kannanthali 16) .It is a nostalgia for the

diminishing charms of nature as well as for the rustic way of life, a life in

the living presence of nature which possessed its own simple beauties and

pleasures. It is this awareness growing out of a genuine feeling for nature

that makes him a vociferous advocate of environment .He appreciate the

wisdom of Baba Amthe who dedicated his life to save the woods and the

aboriginals who live in them( “Maappu Parayunnu Makkal” 33). He

expresses his admiration for the Sidha mentioned in J. Krishnamurthy’s

biography, according to whom plants and trees possess life and feelings and

their leaves give the desired medicinal effect only when they are plucked

with their consent (“Vadakkan Muthasikkatha”60).

MT’s essay, “Mad Dreams ” reflects his deep-seated sympathy for

animals. It begins quoting the slogan of SOCELEX(Society Against

Elephant Exploitation)--‘Elephants have right of way’. The writer praises

the selfless activities of Maria Hennese who pleads the case of elephants,

Gerald Durrell who is engaged in a search for flying mice in the forests of

Latin America and John Walsh who endangers his life to save even the

venomous creatures that might be drowned by the construction of the new

dam. In the essay he makes an earnest plea for the circus animals: “For
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God’s sake be considerate. These are our animals, they belong to you, to

everybody in the world; it is not for the entertainment of men that they

have been left in the world. They came first. We should be protectors not

callous persecutors to them” (89). Here he is correcting an error of

omission he had made when he wrote his first published story

“Valarthumrugangal”(Tamed Animals) dealing with the wretched plight of

those human beings-the circus artists who wear out their life as ‘trained

animals’.

A deep-hearted concern for nature and every element of the natural

phenomena gets reflected in all these utterances. He abandons the

taciturnity to which he is prone by nature, whenever there crops up an issue

of injustice to the marginalised sections of humanity, aggression on nature

or cruelty to animals. The vehemence of his words against the Grassim

factory polluting Chaliyar, against the multinational companies over-

exploiting the fresh water sources of Perumatty and against the authorities

resorting to violence to subdue the indigenous tribes is derived from a

generous heart inspired by genuine feeling for man and nature. He is

convinced that a viable civilization must necessarily have the enduring

human values as its foundation. In his words :”civilization means being

anxious about the miseries of those who are inferior to us and those who

are not as privileged as we are. Their wretchedness should be recognised as

ours....Being civilised means being able to love one’s language and to love

Nature”( Cheriya Lokavum Valiya Padakkoppukalum” 112).

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The interrelationship existing between biophysical and socio-cultural

dimensions of life is a subject pursued with immense interest by

contemporary social anthropologists. It is widely recognised that the

ecological infrastructure i.e., soil, water, flora, fauna, climate etc. exert a

considerable influence on what is called culture. They stress what is called

the anatomy and physiology of spaces and landscapes, illustrating how man

and his culture grows out of natural landscape. Man and region are not

separate but mutually interdependent entities and there is a constant

process of give and take between the land and the various organisms and

the rhythm of natural cycles as well as man’s life process. Bioregionalism

emphasizes this interrelatedness. Man is not an isolated factor but a nod in

a vast and complex network in which everyone affects every other directly

or indirectly, and in turn is affected by all others. Greg Garrard explains :

“Dwelling is not a transient state rather, it implies the long term

imbrications of human in a landscape of memory, ancestry and death and

rituals, life and work” (108) . MT is a writer who recognises and portrays

this interrelationship in his fiction .

MT made his native village, Koodallur a special precinct of the

imagination. Though he did not follow the example of regional writers like

Hardy and Faulkner and create an imaginary land out of the landscape

familiar to him, in his fiction Koodallur becomes the epitome of the world.

All his experiences are applied back to his place and his experiences of the

place colour his experiences of the outer world. Robert D. Richardson

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observes how Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the

fields, hills and rivers of his town: “Concord was his only home, it

provided him with much of his education and most of his literary subjects.

Concord was his world, the pivot of his emotional, intellectual and physical

life”( Myerson,12). It is a comment which can be applied with equal truth

to describe the relationship between MT and Koodallur. His attachment to

the native land does not, however limit his vision .On the other hand it

gives him access to a larger vision of the universe.

The revival of pastoral has initiated a rethinking of the relation of

human beings to their place of dwelling . Eschewing the Cartesian subject

/object bifurcation of Western thought, ecocritics persistently argue that

human beings are as much part of the places where they live and the places

are as much part of them. They view the concept of a mind apart from both

body and place promulgated by Cartesian theory as a fundamental error in

the history of human thought. In the introduction to Milton and Ecology

Ken Hiltner remarks: “Place is of profound environmental importance.

Indeed if we all acted well towards our individual places on Earth, from our

bodies down to the earth beneath our feet, the Earth would not be

experiencing global devastation”. He points out how there has been a

thorough change in our attitude to place. Our peasant ancestors were so

thoroughly bound to their local habitation that separation from the place

was deemed a fate worse than death. Excessive mobility, a characteristic

feature of post modern life has led to an attitude of indifference to and

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detachment from the place of one’s origin and dwelling, and this in turn has

adversely affected our unity with nature. Ecocriticism sets great store by

regional fiction and other writings of place that may serve as a means of

reestablishing this lost unity.

Eudora Welty who strongly pleads the case of localisation in fiction in

her essay, “Place in Fiction ” waxes eloquent on the merits of regional

fiction. In her opinion, ‘regional’ is a careless and condescending term

which fails to differentiate between the localised raw materials of life and

its outcome as art.

Regional is an outsider’s term, it has no meaning for the

insider who is doing the writing, because as far as he knows he is

simply writing about life. Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Thomas

Hardy, Cervantes Turgenev, the authors of the books of the Old

Testament, all confined themselves to regions, great or small, but

are they regional? Then who from the start of time has not been

so?

(Kumar & Mc Kean 245)

The vital impulses derived from the native soil become the source of

inspiration in such writing. Welty regards place as the most important

aspect of fiction as place makes an aesthetic experience concrete and lends

it a local habitation and a name. A novelist ‘writing from where he has put

down roots’, has a distinct sense of place and will find it easier to sift the

essential in character, incident or setting from the random, irrelevant and

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meaningless elements of life as novel is an art form essentially bound up

with the day-to -day experience of life. Fiction derives its life from place

which is the source of the author’s experience and feeling. “Fiction is,”

says Welty ,“all bound up in the local. The internal reason for that is surely

that feelings are bound up in place”( “Place in Fiction” 233). Wendell

Berry also emphasises the view that there is an intimacy and depth of

feeling which is possible only with a place of which you are a part.

MT’s novels derive their strength and authenticity from his genuine

feeling for the place of his origin, which as he has always admitted, is the

mainspring of his inspiration and an inexhaustible storehouse from where

he draws the material for his fiction. He has not followed the practice of

the writers of regional fiction and created a fictional town or village like

Hardy’s Wessex, Faulkner’s Yoknepotawha or R.K Narayan’s Malgudi. But

there is a specific geophysical area which serves as the milieu of his

stories, and as he has often admitted it is the region lying between the hills

known as Athirahlan( athirahlan Kunnu) and the river, Nila-- his native

village, Koodallur and the circumjacent villages. He unswervingly attaches

his identity to this’ Valluvanadan’ area. A complement that Emerson paid

to Thoreau applies very well to MT’s achievement in this context: “Thoreau

dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills and waters of

his native town, that he made them known and interesting to all reading

Americans, and to people over the sea”(Myerson 12).

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The unique way in which MT has recreated an enchanting world out of

his native village confirms Buell’s opinion that “the imagination is

regulated by encounters with the environment both personal and mediated

through the unofficial folk wisdom to which one has been exposed”(94).

His understanding of the rural experience and familiarity with the rustic

myths with all their associations are put to diligent artistic use in order to

create a world of imagination which merits special credit for plausibility.

The authenticity of MT’s narratives depends chiefly on his fidelity to the

life he has known, the truth of experience how ever limited or apparently

insignificant it may be.

MT has proved that a skilful craftsman can create wonders out of

what Jane Austen referred to as two inches of ivory --the life one witnesses

in the vicinity of his home. He has manifested how the transitory can be

transformed into the perennial and the local into the universal by the magic

of art. Expressing his sense of gratitude to his village which challenged

him to find out the stories ‘hidden in the lanes, in the dark corridors, on the

hill-slopes and on the banks of the river’, MT admits his inclination to the

rustic identity and his nostalgia for the lost features of peasant culture.

However the picture of the village we get in Nalukettu, Asuravithu and

Kaalam shatters the pastoral myth of the village as an idyllic haven of

peace and happiness. The deceiving image of the rustic as the epitome of

humane values is not maintained by MT.

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The real Kerala village striving to keep itself steady in the quicksand

of drastic economic and social transition is delineated with fidelity. The

author does it very simply and naturally without resorting to an

exaggeration of rustic idiosyncrasy or an excessive dependence on dialect.

He doesn’t make any attempt to project country life as something more

intense and personally fulfilling than life in the towns. Welty holds that the

more intense an author’s feeling for the place he takes as model, the deeper

the impression that it has made on him , the more authentic and appealing

his rendering of it will be. She observes: “The inhabitant who has taken his

fill of a place and gone away may look back and see it for good from afar,

still there in the mind’s eye like a city over the hill”( “Place in Fiction”

243). MT who left the village early in life preserves it in minute details in

his mind and it has always provided him with a solid background and real

life-like characters.

The life in the village as MT saw it and experienced it was one of

rivalry, strife, afflictions and lacerations. The feudal system was declining

and the matrilineal joint family system was reluctantly giving way to

nuclear family pattern. As the focus of the novel we have the life in the

collapsing joint family mansion --the tharavadu--of an aristocratic Nair

family which has lost its wealth and glory. The dilapidated house shelters a

few estranged souls with no love or sympathy lost between them and they

can hardly be described as a family. Exploitation and oppression prevail

here also but not springing from economic or social factors as in Anand’s
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novels, but from the egoism and meanness of human hearts. The matrilineal

system bestowed inheritance rights on women but in spite of their right to

property women became the helpless victims of patriarchal domination. The

eldest male member of the family- -the Karanavar (maternal uncle) - -was

the head of the family and his authority was unquestionable .Naalukettu is

a veritable depiction of the situation which prevailed in a typical joint

family when its fortunes is on a steady decline.

An agrarian village community, of necessity, lives in close contact

with nature. Their hand to mouth existence depends on the fertility of the

soil and the mercy of weather. In the early novels of MT this material

dimension of nature- human relationship gets more attention than its

symbolic or emotional significance. Land is a commodity, it is the main

source of income and the bone of contention. There is unending conflict

over the ownership of land and the right to its yield and the family

degenerates into a crowd -- a crowd consisting of wrangling women,

starving children and grumbling men as it happens in Vadakkedathu

tharavadu in Naalukettu. Youngsters engaged in a quest for identity and

self fulfilment sink into despair, fall out with family and society and

gradually become exiles like Appunni of Nalukettu, rebels like

Govindankutty of Asuravithu, fugitives like Sethu of Kaalam or even

maniacs like Velayudhan in Iruttinte Athmavu. They are not ostracised by

society but sickened by the claustrophobic atmosphere they walk out of it .

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As it happens with Anand’s heroes emotional alienation from society leads

to alienation from the inner self and from external nature.

Gifford observes that ecocritical reading seek images of “what might

be called accommodated man at home in the natural world as much as in

the social world’(149). There is a focus on this theme of accommodation in

MT’s novels. Disharmony with the society and ultimately with nature- -

internal and external nature-- puts his protagonists in a quandary. A

reconciliation and return to where they belong strikes an optimistic note at

the end. Naalukettu and Kaalam conclude with the heroes back in the

village and Asuravithu closes where Govindankutty bids farewell to

Kizhkkummurri with the words, “Dear ones I am beginning a journey which

will bring me back”(449).The wounds have healed and the reconciliation

has already taken place.

In Nalukettu internal elements alone are responsible for the decay and

disintegration of the community. The chief perpetrator of mischief is the

Karanavar, Appunny’s mother’s uncle. Domineering and egoistic, he is

ruled by avarice and arrogance. The ogrish tyrant has no consideration for

others and no respect even for his elder sister ten years older than him.

Decisions are taken by him and the rights and desires of the other members

of the family are trampled. Kuttan, his nephew who toils day and night has

no claim on the yield.

A meagre quantity of paddy is measured out as ration for the family

and the rest is either sold or sent to his wife’s house Poonthottam. He could
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never forgive his niece Parukkutty, Appunny’s mother who dealt him a

blow on the face by eloping with Konthunny Nair on the eve of her

wedding --the wedding he had arranged for his own convenience with a

man far advanced in age and with patches on his skin. The miserable plight

of his niece when she becomes a widow briefly after the marriage and when

she is later forced to take up menial work at the Illam, ( a wealthy Brahmin

household in the neighbourhood ) doesn’t soften his attitude of hostility to

her. When Appunny her child comes on a visit to the family the hard-

hearted old man kicks him out, disregarding the pleas of his elder sister.

From early childhood itself Appunny is left alone in a world of

rivalries and hostilities .His mother, the only person he is attached to, is

away at the Illam from dawn to dusk and he has no company except for the

old woman--Muthachi - -who lives in a tent nearby. The only entertainment

in his stark life is listening to her tales. Since Muthachi told him about

Saithali who treacherously poisoned his father to death he has been waiting

for an encounter with the man to avenge his father. But by some strange

irony of fate Saithali comes into his life quite unexpectedly and assumes

the role of his patron. There is another man to occupy his place in

Appunny’s heart as his arch enemy, Sankaran Nair , the only person who

extends a helping hand to his mother in her helplessness. Cavaliero points

out how the solidarity and sense of community projected as a great blessing

of a village community has another side to it. It results in an unthinking

conformity and almost an obsessive concern with one’s neighbours. The

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over -inquisitive neighbours who start a scandal about Sankaran Nair and

Parukkutty are responsible for Appunny’s drift with his mother.

Encouraged by Saithali the boy walks into the tharavadu and settles down

there daring the Karanavar.

The deep emotional experiences of his early days in the village have

gone into the making of MT’s novels. The young protagonists share his

passion for nature and an instinctive awareness of its presence, its power

and beauty. We find Appunny contemplating the course of the river, the

changing colours of the sky or the play of light and shadow in the sacred

grove on a moonlit night. His attitude offers a clear contrast to that of the

others who are interested in owning the land. Never for once does he think

of his share of the property or the prospect of possessing it. His is the

selfless, disinterested love of land which transcends utilitarian calculations

and takes more delight in belonging to land than possessing it. In moments

of vexation when there is no sympathy forthcoming from human beings he

seeks the company of nature. There is his favourite haunt on the slope of

the Narivahlan Kunnu--the cliff projecting from amidst the Kannanthali

bushes. On three critical junctures in his life, his aimless walk brings him

here. These three most painful occasions are when Valiyammama has

kicked him out of Vadakkeppadu tarwad, when he walks out of his house

for ever and when he is in utter despair finding no means to pay the

examination fees-- It is an instinctive bond with nature that leads him to

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this favourite rendezvous. He goes to the spot almost involuntarily, by an

impulse whenever he is badly in need of ‘company’ and consolation.

The profuse lyricism which characterises MT’s later novels like Mist

is not to be found in Naalukettu or Asuravithu. The language employed is

mostly direct and plain and characterised by exceptional austerity.

Instances of romantic imagery and symbolism are rare in the narrative, but

not totally absent. Appunny's return to the village after five years of total

detachment is to be distinguished from the back to the country romanticism

which forms part of the usual scheme of sentimental pastoral. MT uses it to

assert a basic fact of human life; a heart which retains its humanity cannot

stand isolated; there are bonds of attachment, to people and places, which

cannot simply be severed. For five years he successfully banished

memories of the village from his mind. “He had been haunted by memories

of his boyhood days but he stoically resisted revisiting the old places. He

had not cared to enquire about anyone in the village. The five years were

more like fifty to him because of the distance he had put between what he

had been and what he was now”(163).

It is an urge to prove himself, to assert his identity and triumph over

his enemies that motivates Appunny to set out to the village. But once back

in the village, on the slope of Narivalhan Kunnu he undergoes an

experience of disillusionment. He realises that a mean sense of vanity had

deceived him into thinking that he has nobody, that he is alone. It is the

moment of revelation when the oppressed mind is liberated and the

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suppressed human impulses of love and sympathy are released. He is able

to understand his mother and his heart wells up with sympathy for her

.Sankaran Nair is no longer an enemy but the Good Samaritan who helped

his mother in need. Ultimately the return to the native place here is a return

to the true self, return to the mother and return to society and to nature. It

is the triumph of nature and of human values and impulses.

Asuravithu can be considered almost as a sequel to Nalukettu. It has

the same geophysical and socio-cultural setting. Kizhakkemuri in the

former and the unnamed village in the latter are identical in the sense that

they stand for any typical Valluvanadan village in the middle of the

twentieth century and Thazhathethil and Vadakkeppattu can be any Nair

family on the decline, on the verge of disintegration brought about by an

obsession with family pride, inefficient management and disunity. The

village as it makes a swift progress to modernity is delineated by the author

with the genuine feeling of pain experienced by one who has personally

received the impact of this transition. The feeling reflected is not the

nostalgia for the supposedly glorious past but the tension resulting from the

conflict between the rational awareness of the inevitability and historical

necessity of change and a sentimental attachment to the relics of the past

which are being displace. A drastic contextual change forms the pith of

both the stories. A traditional village society was a community with high

levels of trust, support and strong connections among members. MT

portrays the conflicts arising in individual and social consciousness as the

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peasant rural society founded on shared values and density of connections

gives way to a loose structure of society devoid of mutual understanding

and trust. The corroding system suffers from inherent defects. But the

invasion of an alien culture with different values accelerates its decline.

Even blood relationships come to have no meaning as men grow more and

more self-centred, internalising the new culture of utilitarian capitalism.

In Asuravithu there are clear indications of the damaging impact of an

alien culture in the pollution of the indigenous culture and the

disintegration of the family and the community. Most of the characters are

average or below average men and women with their share of human

frailties. None of them impresses us as possessing the exceptional qualities

usually associated with peasants--ardour, integrity, endurance etc.. The

only exemption is perhaps Kunharakkar who keeps his independence and

firmly and steadily follows a course of righteousness and justice, unswayed

by the fluctuations in the community. Govindan Kutty’s mother, the

querulous old woman who has little consideration for the emotions of her

son and goes on cursing him as ‘ the demon-seed that had brought penury’.

He is considered an ill-omen because he happened to be born after his

parents had gone far in age. “He thought with blind rage about the mistake

his father had committed. In his fifty-first year ,after a lapse of eleven

years he had made his mother bring forth a child”(145).His elder brother

Kumarettan is her darling as his birth is believed to have brought her

fortune. But he is now burdened by his obligation to maintain his prestige

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as the son -in -law of a wealthy family and Kunhikkaliyamma herself

obsessed with family prestige can fully sympathise with him in his

predicament. She has no complaints about her two elder daughters who live

comfortably with their husbands and children little bothered about what

happens in their own family. The vain, narrow-sighted mother, the selfish

sisters, the weak-willed brother all contribute to the degeneration of the

family and the doom of Govindankutty. But after all they are just helpless

victims of fate and hostile circumstances to some extent.

There are two characters who are the outright villains, directly

responsible for the discord and disasters which befall Thazhathethil family.

Both represent the intrusion of disintegrating external forces. The Nair

from Kollengode had wrecked Kunhioppol’s life. Sekharan Nair is

responsible for the tragedy in the life of Govindan Kutty and Meenakshi,

the Girl who was his wife for a few days. They represent the values of the

utilitarian commodity culture which is gradually gaining control over the

villages of Kerala. Sekharan Nair belongs to a noble family of the village--

Poonthottam. He is a member of the community, an insider in that sense.

But he had left the village early in life following the partition of the family

property which left him an utterly poor man. Years later he returned to the

village with the huge fortune he had made as a hotelier in Calicut city. He

brought back Poonthottam tarwad and added many acres of paddy fields to

the property. As it becomes evident from his unscrupulous actions he is

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imbued with the urban culture of ego-centrism and greed in which he has a

companion in the Nair from Kollengode.

Kunhukutty ,the youngest daughter of Thazhathethil --Govindankutty’s

‘Kunhioppol’-- had been the paragon of beauty among the girls of the

village. A Nair who had come as foreman for bridge construction had

established a friendship with their father. He mooted the proposal of a

Brahmin from Thanjavur who, according to him, had property worth lakhs.

The man came with his retinue to see the girl and he was wearing

‘jewellery worth half a lakh of rupees’ which seemed to confirm the tales

about his fabulous wealth. Govindan Kutty’s father was more fore-sighted

than the typical credulous peasant and sent people to make enquiries. Since

the information brought by them seemed to tally with the reports of the

Nair the Muhurtham ( the auspicious moment for the wedding)was fixed.

The bridegroom’s request for simple ceremony was ignored and

preparations for a grand wedding with a sumptuous feast were made.

Hundred of people were invited. But the bridegroom didn’t turn up and the

marriage didn’t take place. The treacherous game played by Sankaran Nair

was exposed later. He was the agent of a merchant who got girls by such

mean tricks and sold them in Madurai and Thanjavur --an instrument of the

pernicious civilization dominated by the profit motive which degrades

women into commodities. The girl was lucky enough to escape narrowly

but the episode turned her life into a grim tale of sorrow. “After that

Kunhioppol had remained secluded within the ancient walls of the house”,
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Govindankutty remembers. “No one came again to ask for her lovely hand

in marriage. It did not take many years for her youth to fade. By her thirty -

third year grey was visible in her hair” (157). This unfortunate victim of

man’s meanness and greed presents an extreme case of alienation. She

seldom goes out of the house, rarely utters a word. She moves about as if

she were a shadow and not a human being possessing a soul. She is out of

tune with the social as well as the natural environment. Her benumbed soul

makes no attempt to revive the vital contacts. Gradually she comes to an

extreme stage of emotional alienation when her heart remains dry as the

parched river. She is strongly attached to Govindankutty and his

degeneration is more than she can bear. When she listened to people talking

about his brother who had taken refuge in the Muthalaali’s house after his

conversion ,”Sorrow rose like a steam and disappeared. Her mind was

empty like a leaky vessel”(349). When her mother died she did not weep”.

Her mind had become numb and her eyes were dry”(397).

Sekharan Nair’s deeds and their outcome prove how dismally and

disastrously a man without allegiance to his community can affect the

atmosphere of a village. He is a selfish man dominated by avarice and

vanity. In order to triumph over his rival Kunhamed he instigates the Nairs

to pick up quarrels with the Muslims and thus destroys the communal

harmony that prevailed in the village. The ‘oorcha’ festival, which marks

the beginning of the agricultural activities for the year with the ploughing

of the paddy field, used to strengthen the amity and kinship of the
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community. The celebration ends up in a communal riot because of the

dirty manipulations of Sekharan Nair.

The author renders a very detailed and illuminating account of the

festival. The life of the rustic was closely intertwined with agricultural

activities. Festivals and celebrations marked important occasions in the

seasonal calendar in accordance with which the farming activities were

organized. Onam falls in the season of harvest and Vishu marks the

beginning of the new year. These conventions have their own ecological

significance which has been forgotten. The Oorcha and Pootu marked the

first step of paddy cultivation. As men ploughed the fields with bullocks

women planted the seedlings. It used to be an occasion of enthusiasm and

hilarity for the villagers --an occasion which not only strengthened the

solidarity of the human community but also established the unity of man

with the land and the animals. Govindan Kutty has no land to cultivate as

the fields have been mortgaged by his brother. With a sense of loss he

watches the activity going on in the field. The scene brings out the true

sentiments of a farmer with sincere interest in the work. Only an

empathetic writer who has immediate first hand knowledge of and genuine

interest in the life of the folk can manage a detailed account of these events

with such accuracy.

As he looked on Govindankutty experienced the same delight

he used to feel as a child when he watched temple festivals. On

one side there were the shouts of the cherumans leading some
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twenty pairs of animals with ploughs or oorcha planks, churning

and splashing mud. On the other side were cherumis kneeling in

a row and rhythmically moving their hands as they planted the

seedlings. The green seedlings that peeped out of the earth

looked like green skirts on the soil . After he had become a

farmer he had enjoyed transplanting seedlings even more than

harvesting....It was only when the plough and oorcha plank

competed with deft fingers in transplanting seedlings that the

field came to life.(Demon Seed 163 -4)

The corruptive influence of the money culture is detrimentally

affecting the rustic atmosphere of harmony with nature and unalienated

labour as indicated in the following passage: “He heard someone shout to

Kandankoran who was arranging the piles of seedlings, ‘Have these women

lost their voices in all this work? Ask them to sing’ Kandankoran”, and

somebody else gives the reply, “Songs and dances were in the old days.

Now they want to while away the time and ask for higher wages”(164).

There is a suggestion of the changing social and economic situation

Capital-labour equations were undergoing a change and with the

strengthening of the Trade Union Movements the bargaining capacity of the

workers and the material conditions of their life improved considerably.

But work became alienated and mechanical, devoid of the spiritual

involvement and pleasure which had been part of it. The paddy fields which

used to resound with the folk songs and special songs for the occasion
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became silent, marking the slow death of a rich culture. More over, self-

seeking men like Sekharan Nair turned the oorcha into just another

occasion to show off and to whet their rivalries springing from jealousy.

The perfect breed of oorcha men to which Koppakutty belonged also

was becoming extinct. “Bull fanciers said that the animals could read

Koppa Kutty’s mind. He gently patted the animals on their back and never

used the stick on them. .Koppa Kutty shamed the usual run of oorcha men

who did a devil dance on the oorcha plank, shouting beating the animals

right and left and biting their tails”(166). The author’s sympathy and

concern for animals is reflected in these words of approval for the right

way of dealing with them. We see here the same sensibility which comes

out as the plea for the protection of elephants’ rights and as a call to be

merciful to the animals in circus. MT has clarified his position in this

regard: “ man who needs the service of animals even in this age of

machines has to be more considerate and humane to them” .(“Mad Dreams”

90)

The same meanness and parochialism which prompts Sekharan to

divide the village community into two warring groups is at work when he

plays a very undignified game against his brother-in -law. Kochappan, his

dandy son arrives on vacation from the law college where he studies.

Meenakshi , a distant relative who has been staying at Poonthottam

becomes a prey to the lustful youngster and the clever father tricks

Govindankutty into a marriage with her when she becomes pregnant.

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It is this foul game of his own relative, whom he trusted, that makes

Govindankutty a rebel who turns his back on the family and the society. He

chooses a rather impudent course to retaliate--he gets converted into Islam

mainly as a token of protest. On his return to the village he is warmly

welcomed and carried about as a trophy by Kunhamed Muthalaali (the

wealthiest among the Muslims of the village and Sekharan Nair’s rival),

and his followers for whom Govindankutty’s conversion is a point scored

against Sekharan Nair. But their enthusiasm and hospitality don’t last long

and Govindankutty is left a destitute as even Kunharakkar, his ever-

dependable friend abandons him. A man with Kunharakkar’s integrity and

clarity of vision can never approve of what Govindankutty has done --

forsaking one’s community and religion just out of an impulsive urge for

revenge. He takes shelter in the house of Chakkamma who is virtually

ostracized by the village on the ground of immorality. The exile comes to

the help of the fugitive. She is not part of the inquisitive village community

and didn’t pester him with questions. “But she asked nothing-about his

family, his marriage his conversion”(420). She is just an outsider living

within the geographical limits of the village and now Govindankutty’s

predicament is the same. But soon it becomes worse than that as the village

denigrates his status from that of an exile into that of an outlaw as he is

charged with all the thefts taking place in Kizhakkemuri and hunted and

pursued The villagers’ treatment of Govindan Kutty proves that they can be
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inhuman as against the pastoral assumptions about the peasants’ virtues.

This anti pastoral aspect also is integral to the vision of MT.

The double curse of ceaseless rain and the epidemic of Cholera comes

as the catastrophe of the tragedy in progress in the village . The Mappila

gives a stark picture of the village to Arumukhan who has been away from

Kizhakkemuri for eight months: “There’s been everything to bedevil men’s

lot. Unceasing rain. All the crops in the fields have rotted ... You can’t get

rice even for the price of gold. And if you want to fill your belly with

tapioca, where do you get that?”(372. It is a striking contrast to the pastoral

image of the idyllic village of peace and plenty. Kizhakkemuri which gives

no illusion of a paradise on earth degenerates into a hell with the breaking

out of cholera. The toll of death goes on ascending steadily in spite of all

the poojas and ceremonies to appease the angry goddess. Ignorance and

superstitions worsen the situation as it often happened in peasant

communities. The people of the village have little faith in ‘ the inspector

who gives injections’, who has been sent for. They believe that ‘Cholera

and small pox are curses sent down from heaven, which means they are

seeds scattered by the goddess Bhagavathi’.

“The monsoon rains came down relentlessly, night and day. It looked

as if death was circling over the rain-soaked village like a vulture with

outspread wings”( Demon Seed 396). It is the reign of Death that brings

about the reunion of the estranged hero with his village, with his people.

Govindan Kutty who has been rejected by the community comes to be much
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in demand when he comes forward to bury the victims of cholera.

Kunharakkar who joins him to bury Chakkamma’s daughter is the first one

to recognise the worth of Govindankutty, the outcaste: “Today I realized

that there is one real human being in Kizhakkemuri ‘, he tells his wife and

of course the old man is too unassuming to claim the same distinction for

himself though he has every right to claim it. As Govindankutty thinks to

himself: “The people of Kizhakkemuri had not needed him. But he dead

needed him. For the dead did not distinguish between Mappila and Nair,

between loafer and thief”(441). For the sake of the dead the living accepted

him back into the fold.

One of the features which Gifford sets forth as fundamental to the

post-pastoral appears very prominent in the design as well as the vision of

Asuravithu. It is the recognition of a creative- destructive universe equally

in balance in a continuous momentum of birth and death, death and rebirth,

growth and decay, ecstasy and dissolution-often requiring a recognition of

the death process as found in Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner(151). The

outbreak of the epidemic snatching away the young along with the old

effects a real catharsis in the mind of Govindan Kutty, and the village

community in general. People like Sekharan Nair are freed of their hubris

and Govindankutty takes on a new identity different from his old self, and

the new birth he had taken as Abdullah. His heart is purged of resentment,

grudge, the desire for revenge. He fears neither death nor the dead and

engages in extending his help to those who need it, the dead or the living.
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It is an instance of spiritual transcendence from ego-consciousness to

a heightened degree of eco-consciousness which enables one to accept the

processes of nature with equanimity and perform his role with a clear sense

of responsibility. Govindan Kutty, after burying Meenakshy marches to

Poonthottam, carrying her baby in arms, not with any ulterior motive to

humiliate his one-time enemy or to avenge himself, but because he knows

the value of human life very well now. He speaks with a clear conscience.

“I would have taken it to Thazhathethil, but they can’t afford to keep it.

Look upon it as a human being, a baby that should not be allowed to die.

That’s enough”. And he leaves repeating the words, “ I will come and take

it back. I will come”(444).

Another instance for the projection of the creative-destructive

dynamics is the description of the birth of Kunharakkar’s daughter

Nabeesu. She was born on the day of the cyclone. Late at night, when

Kunharakkar came to Thazhathethil with his wife she was nine-months

pregnant. “The cyclone was doing devil’s dance in the areca garden, and

trees were falling right and left” and Thithumma gave birth to a girl in the

chaotic night and Kunhikkaliyamma often refers to the smoothness with

which it happened, “It didn’t take the time to chew a betel leaf and spit it

out.”(191). Nature has her own way, a process which comprises of

destruction and creation and not only trees and animals but ultimately

human beings also are bound to this dynamics.

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According to Gifford., an awe in attention to the natural world- ‘a

respect derived from a deep sense of the immanence in all natural things’ is

the first feature of a text which can be called post-pastoral. The opening

page of the novel itself furnishes an instance of this sort of awareness

which is sustained throughout the work. Govindan Kutty enjoyed sitting on

the parapet of the temple and watching the river.’

He would sit on the parapet in the evenings. As he sat on the cool

cement surface on the northern side and gazed at the muddy

foam-flecked water swirling by, the river seemed imbued with

life. When chunks of earth detached themselves from the bank

into the water, tiny plants would go round and round in the

current. The fast flowing river would growl and grunt like a wild

animal which had caught its prey. The floating greenery would

disappear in moments.(131)

The third post-pastoral aspect identified by Gifford is the realisation

that what is happening in us is paralleled in external nature-- the

recognition of the analogy in the working of the inner and outer natures.

When the processes going on in outer nature brings an awareness of our

own cycles of growth an decay and of our emotional ebbs and flows we

have what Buell calls ‘spontaneous pantheism’(192). No eco-conscious

writer can desist from the natural impulse to turn to the outside nature

seeking parallels for what he feels inside. The feelings, desires and urges of

the characters are often imputed to the objects and elements. MT’s affinity
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to Bharathapuzha gets reflected in the frequent appearance of the river as a

symbol. It stands for the rise and fall of fortunes, the ebb and flow of

emotions, the flow of ceaseless time and so on.

These two early novels--Legacy and Demon Seed -- depict a phase in

which the economic and cultural scenario of Kerala manifested symptoms

which were to develop into dangerous ecocidal tendencies at a later stage.

As money became the most decisive factor and land became a commodity it

passed from the hands of peasants like Govindan Kutty, who genuinely

loved the soil and had an interest in agriculture, into those of who wanted

to possess it and make the maximum profit out of it. The Karanavars of the

tarwads also had little contact with soil as they simply established their

claim over what the land yielded as the result of the hard work of nephews

like Kumaarettan of Naalukettu or Govindankutty. So they mortgaged or

sold the land without any regret or sense of loss. Agriculture was evincing

a tendency to become more profit-oriented .Appunni becomes aware of this

transition during his journey to Wayanad. The dangerous process of

deforestation and the growth of the timber industry which flourished by

denuding the sylvan hills were making visible impact in this area. “The bus

lumbered up the mountain path. On one side rose steep hills and on the

other one saw richly wooded valleys. The path climbed higher and higher.

Appunni sat at a window seat observing the landscape with wide open eyes.

He had never seen such hills or woods. “But soon the beauty of the scene

began to fade”. It was a thickly wooded hill, rich in vegetation though it

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was not green now except for some patches in the valleys and on the slopes.

“There was a huge clearing and from the talk of the neighbours in the bus

he knew that it was a clearing for a rubber plantation that was to come

up”(Legacy 153). This marked the first stage of the reckless and greedy

human invasion on the hills of Wayanad ,uniquely blessed by nature with

beauty and richness in bio-diversity.

The male patriarch subjected the women of the house also to

domination and exploitation .There was a total denial of freedom of

expression and no freedom of choice was granted even in such crucial

matters like marriage. So Parukkutty is expelled from the family and the

legitimate right to her share of the property is denied to her for choosing a

man she liked as her husband. There were Kunhukutties and Meenakshies

who wasted away their lives in the dark old mansions of the tarwads. They

had no rights but only duties, the heavy burden of feeding the family--often

on inadequate provisions-- rested on their shoulders They bore it without

raising any complaints or demands. The patriarchal values enshrined in the

system impacted devastatingly on women especially those who were meek

and submissive by nature, and made further so by the conditioning of a

traditional culture that buttressed patriarchal values. MT portrays them

with sympathy and the concern for the marginalised is another feature of

the post-pastoral

The ecofeminist theme of patriarchal domination and exploitation

gains more prominence in Mist, MT’s only novel with a female protagonist.
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It stands apart as set in a milieu different from the usual one, the

Valluvanadan village. The backdrop of the splendid landscape of Nainital

stimulates the nature -lover in MT and brings out the genius in him. The

author has traced the origin of the novel to an actual experience of a visit

to the hill resort and the meeting with a Malayalee spinster leading a

solitary life there. He has successfully lifted the landscape on to his canvas

with the life-like portrait of the woman looming large in the middle.

The narrative testifies to a remarkable deepening of MT’s green

sensibility. The landscape and the weather operate as pervading symbolic

presence imparting solemnity and intensity to the human drama. The

technical skill with which the story is presented as to make the narrative

time warp the linear time, the exceptional beauty of the lyrical passages

and the emotional power of the compact delineation make Mist a unique

artistic achievement.

Michael .J Mcdowell hails the landscape writers who ”tend to

emphasize their sense of place and to create narratives that are so

geographically rooted, that so link the narrative and landscape”(Glotfelty

387). Mist, the short novel which brings out MT’s gifts as a lyricist and a

landscape artist as well as a novelist wins for him a place among such

writers. Images of the lake, the lingering mist and of the hills and the sky

changing colour in accordance with the shifting seasons are all woven

deftly into the narrative without ever creating the impression of being

extraneous or ornamental. MT shuns detailed and eloquent descriptions and

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achieves wonderful effects through subtle evocative images like an imagist

painter who imparts beauty and meaning to his pictures with light, gentle

strokes of the brush. The protagonist and her emotions and moods are fused

with the changing colours of the scenario shifting with the progress of the

seasons, as illustrated by the following passage.

Outside, the sky was a pale grey. The flimsy clouds of mist

dived into the clusters of pine trees on the hill slopes. In

December afternoons she always stood like this near the open

windows. Every bit of earth would be covered with snow as far

as she could see.

As winter faded, the days touched the fantastic world of

silver and green with change. In the end some stray patches of

snow would be left here and there like flakes of fallen clouds.

Faint memories of another winter... (6)

After months the hill sides warmed themselves in the summer

afternoons. As the sun shone higher, the melting snow would fan out into

small streams. Yesterday’s tears. As she gazed, the grey sky slowly cleared

and the red glow of the evening sun bathed the hills. On the hill slopes

where the track turns, the snow-covered leaves shed by the huge birch tree

glistened in the sunlight. She could see the snow -clad mountains glistening

in the afternoon sun through the window.(6)

In Mist, the features of the landscape are subtly used for symbolic

purposes, a technique on which MT has not much relied upon in the earlier
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novels. The two most predominant symbols in the novel are the lake and

the mist, and they are used beautifully to develop the image of the

protagonist as an alter ego of Nainital. The images are developed

parallelly, so as to establish a close analogy between the two. Both of them

are victims of the utilitarian patriarchal culture and its use- and -throw

policy. Both are images of waiting, and in the case of Vimala it is passive

and futile waiting. Vimala, with ‘rich dark locks hiding grey lines’ waits in

vain for her erstwhile lover Sudhir Mishra and the hill-resort with ‘the

freshly painted lamp posts hiding dents and cracks’ waits for tourists. As

the premises “were carefully dressing after a nap” as the season was

approaching Vimala thinks :“she could read the heart of this place. They

understood each other so well”(10). But it is only a feeling of sympathy

and fellow-feeling and not the sentimental attachment that may result from

nine years of relationship with a place, especially a heavenly place like

Nainital.

The bond between person and place is one of the most prominent

motifs of the novel. The enchanting landscape which draws so many

tourists to the hills has little appeal for Vimala. She feels neither the

transient sensuous pleasure of the visiting tourists nor the sense of fond

delight and pride of one privileged to dwell in such a blessed place. She is

a person in a state of sensory deprivation, totally detached from almost

everything , including her physical environment. The feeling of frustration,

the outcome of long years of futile waiting has culminated in a sort of

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emotional passivity. For her time ‘lay imprisoned like the water in the

mountain lake’. Time as well as space has lost significance for her, for in a

state of total detachment the alienated soul is equally indifferent to the

passing of time and what passes around. There had been a time in the past,

before she realised the futility of her waiting when she had been keenly

conscious of the changing seasons and the changes that they brought to the

hills: “But when the apple orchards bloomed, when the hardened snow

slowly melted, when the distant hill-tops glistened in the sun she would

think: one more season in the Kumaon Hills! Now she had started to ignore

the changes on the face of nature!”(17).

Arne Naess who stresses the internal relation between the self and the

place points out that when individuals fall out of this relation they become

just viewing subjects who perceive objects. Ken Hiltner means the same

thing when he says “When we are in an internal relation we do not

objectify that which is in the relation with us. So rivers, mountains, plants

and animals are not apart from us as some-thing ... but rather existing in

the same place as we do, part of ourselves”(12).

The intimacy and proficiency apparent in MT’s portrayal of the

Nainital hills endorses Sanders’ argument that an intimacy with one’s own

place enables one to know and respect other places:

To become intimate with your home region , to know the

territory as well as you can , to understand your life as woven

into the local life does not prevent you from recognising and
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honoring the diversity of other places, culture, ways. On the

contrary how can you value other places if you do not have one

of your own? If you are not ‘placed’ then you wander the world

like a sightseer, a collector of sensations, with no gauge for

measuring what you see. Local knowledge is the ground for

global knowledge. ( 332)

Vimala’ s misfortune is that she is not ‘placed’ as her creator, MT is.

Momady observes that in belonging to a landscape one feels a lightness, an

at-homeness. Vimala does not enjoy this comfort and confidence derived

from belongingness as even after nine years on the hills she is emotionally

an alien there. There exists no reciprocity between the place and her. She is

not part of the hills, nor have they become part of her. She thinks of herself

as “a prisoner of the years caught in the tomb of the hills!”(50). The beauty

and life all around her has no meaning for her. It is her alienated and

benumbed soul that has changed the hills into a tomb and she is her own

prisoner who has detached all ties with the natural as well as the human

world including her family. There is an internal landscape she cherishes--

that of the village in Kerala where she had lived until she was five years

old. When the bells of Nainidevi temple pealed out loud she was reminded

of her visit to the village temple:

In her childhood she used to visit the village temple every

Tuesday and Friday. Beyond the paddy fields and the sand-

strewn lane lined with yellow flowers was the temple. There
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were small huts of weavers on the way and their yards were full

of lines on which yarn was hung. When returning from the

temple she would always gather handfuls of coral nuts near the

fence.(10-11)

The passage of time has not dimmed this picture vividly and deeply

etched in the mind. Trying to recall things which happened in those days

was’ like untying the knots of a web’ and ‘colours and sounds slowly came

undone’. Unfortunately she has been denied the chance to revive her

kinship with the native land . As Paul Shepard says knowing who you are is

impossible without knowing where you are from. Losing the ties with one’s

own place of origin can seriously impair one’s sense of identity and self-

awareness and respect. As Shepard implies the establishment of self

requires the context of place. The roots of the degeneration of Vimala and

her family can be traced to the absence of such a context. It is as if they

exist in a vacuum since they have no attachment either to their place of

origin or the place of their dwelling. It is possible to perceive a

psychological link between this alienation and the nightmare which

frequently worries Vimala - the experience of falling down into an abyss.

The strength and stability of internal nature is, to a great extent,

derived from the external nature to which one is attached . The experience

of one’s own native land and a lasting reciprocity with it contributes to the

development of a healthy character. Vimala who was uprooted from the

native milieu as a child had never got the chance of even visiting the
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village which still remains as a vague but strong passion in her memory.

Vimala’s father the tyrannical patriarch had had cut off all his ties with the

native land, following altercations with his relatives and mention of the

village was anathema to him. Obsessed with the importance of English

education he bans his children from using Malayalam. Thus Vimala, her

brother Babu and their sister Anitha are deprived of access to two factors

which can exercise benign influence on the development of character. They

grew up deformed an depraved under the oppressive domination of a father

ruled by idiosyncratic notions. This rootlessness leads to the disintegration

of the family, and the tragedy of Vimala.

Vimala’s family fell into a state of anarchy after her father became

sick and was bedridden. Her mother started an illicit affair with their

neighbour, Mr. Alfred Gomez, her brother became a drug -addict and Anita

eloped with her lover. It was the fall of the little kingdom ruled by their

father who, as Vimala remembers, “was not only the master of his house

but the tyrant of his tiny kingdom” and “the moment he reached home

complete silence reigned . . . talking was done in subdued tones. Even

eating with him was an ordeal”(21-22). This atmosphere of domination and

terror resulting in the repression of instinctual nature can be diagnosed as

the primary source of their depravity and the tragedy of the family. There is

the continued denial and suppression of impulses and instincts and the

persistent repression of instinctual demands leads to the revolt of nature as

Adorno has theorised. The perversity in the character of Vimala’s family is

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the ultimate result of the revolt of nature. The natural springs of emotion

have almost gone dry in them as Vimala realises when she receives the

news of her father’s death: ”My God, there is something wrong with me”,

she thinks, “I can’t shed even a single tear”(39). She is an alienated self,

alienated from external as well as internal nature and this alienation

plunges her into the pathetic condition of one who is entombed alive for

that is what she often thinks about her life on the hills.

The seasonal cycle is an ecological phenomena that has always exerted

considerable influence on human life and culture. In the traditional peasant

way of life the structure of life-rhythms and activities were integrally

bound to the seasonal cycle. The mystery of the rhythmic rotation of

seasons has for ever captivated human imagination . In art, seasons have

always been employed as a trope establishing the human-nature linkage and

as a symbol for the changing conditions and stages of life. Buell has

observed that the seasonal phenomena is a conventional motif in art and

literature. “The notion that the seasons structure life-rhythms or symbolize

life passage is ancient and ubiquitous. It underlies the art of Paleolithic

cave drawings ”(221). MT has borrowed the fundamental conventions of

symbolic associations of seasonal representation in the narrative. Buell

mentions one of the early texts of Sanskrit literature (fourth century

C.E),The ritu-samhara, attributed to Kalidasa, to illustrate the symbolic

purpose served by seasons as an imaginative device:

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This poem of 140 stanzas imagines the blandishments and

pangs of love from a male point of view as they unscroll over the

course of the six seasons into which the poet divides the Indian

year. In the rainy season, for instance, ‘Clouds bent down by the

weight of water are covering all the sides of the mountain. The

fountains are filled with water and peacocks are dancing in

delight. With these objects of beauty the mountains are filling the

minds of men with curiosity. ’Season signs here become

projections of eroticized desire as the flowing fountains and

dancing peacocks interact to sexualize the mountains.(222)

Winter and the associated environmental phenomena of snow and mist

are loaded with symbolic meaning in the novel. They indicate the eternal

winter of sexual as well as emotional frigidity in the life of Vimala. Spring

arrives, but there is no corresponding change in her life, no sign of renewal

or rebirth: “the new year stood frozen and still”,(5 ) is suggestive of this

frigidity. The self has fallen out of harmony with nature, internal and

external nature. Vimala doesn’t look forward to spring. She is resigned to

the pessimistic acceptance of a never-ending winter. She thinks of Budhu

waiting for his white man-father who, like Sudhir Mishra will never come :

“You and I, we have all been waiting for ages. On the rocks of ages snow

would fall and melt and again the mist would form crusts on them”(17).

A post-pastoral reading of the novel, Mist, may endorse the opinion of

those critics who believe that the Sardarji is the real hero of this saga of
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waiting. He is also waiting - waiting like the city, like Vimala and Budhu.

But there is no uncertainty in his waiting, and neither is there hope nor

despair. With an unusual equanimity springing from a mature

understanding of disease and death as integral components of life, he waits

for death which may come any moment.The sardargi with his buoyant and

indomitable spirit, reaching out to fellow beings as well as nature without

any reservations, serves as a foil to Vimala the introvert. The approach of

death has not dampened his enthusiasm, his passion for nature and music.

He has an ear which is sensitive to the music of rain and wind as he tells

Vimala: “There is a rest house near the rock . If you spend a night there

you can listen to the music of the forest. Yes, a forest has its own music.

Rain and wind too have their own language and music” (45). This man who

recognises and accepts life and death as integral and inevitable parts of the

natural phenomena, and who can attune himself to the music of nature

around him even on the threshold of death is undoubtedly the real hero of

MT’s narrative.

The Sardarji’s soul, ennobled and exalted by the eco-consciousness

that has purged it of egoism is capable of pure platonic love. His simple,

plain words reflect the sincerity and selflessness of his attitude to Vimala:

“Nor imagine any kind of relationship .... I just like you very much”(55).

As a study in contrast there is Sudhir Mishra, the womanizer who takes

pride in the number of women he has conquered and the number of places

he has toured. Vimala fails to realise that she may be just one more in the
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list beginning from the walnut-seller and the girl in the neighbourhood,

even after listening to the tales of his exploits from his own mouth. She can

imagine the situation of Budhu’s origin: “Some seventeen or eighteen years

ago in the month of May a white man came to the hill station. A pimp

might have taken a young girl to him . They could not understand each

other. The hunter had his prey”(14). For the pleasure-seeking white man the

Indian girl meant nothing more than a commodity to be bought at a cheap

price and disposed off after use. The tragic irony of the situation is that

Vimala cannot bring herself to believe that Sudhir Mishra was just another

crooked hunter who ‘got his prey.’ Apparently, it is the same urge of ego-

centrism, the impulse to gratify his inflated ego that motivates him to visit

places, as proved by his pompous words: “I want to see your place, Vimala.

I have seen many parts of India. I have been to Europe, South-east Asia and

Ceylon also. I want to see your Kerala ... , I who have written a thesis

about international relations am ashamed to realise that I have not seen the

whole of my country”(12).

He sets out on his excursions prompted by vanity and not any earnest

desire to see places. Evidently, he has no genuine feeling for nature.

Visiting places is a matter of pride or shame for the likes of him. Sudhir

Mishra is not a singular, isolated case. He represents a large majority of

tourists who are not inspired by the right spirit. The pristine beauty and

cultural identity of ecologically sensitive locations like Simla and Nainital

are threatened by the flow of tourists who lack real understanding and
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feeling for nature .Nainital, the valley which had been under the control of

East India Company since 1815 became a favourite haunt of British men

after the British sugar merchant P. Barron discovered its potentialities as a

tourist centre. Before the present hill resort got developed it had been a

place of considerable religious significance for the local people. According

to legend, when the grief-stricken Shiva danced across the universe

carrying the charred remains of his consort Sati to mount Kailash, primeval

forces were unleashed and to prevent total devastation the gods led by

Vishnu cut down her body and as its parts scattered the eyes fell in this

valley. The Ramlila ground and the Nainidevi temple remain as vestiges of

a lost indigenous culture reminding us of an ecocidal process of cultural

invasion that has had disastrous impacts.

In Kaalam also the author problematizes the erosion of geographical

and cultural identity and the resultant conflicts of the individual

consciousness. In this novel he returns to his favourite milieu, the

dilapidated joint-family Nair tarwad set against the wider backdrop of the

Valluvanadan village passing through the throes of transition. Sethu is a

successor to Appunni and Govindankutty, toppled over by the eddies of

social, cultural and economic transformation. The fragmentation of the

community and the substitution of earlier values by new ones established

under the influence of the capitalistic culture and Western education had

shaken the foundations of the familial and social set-up in the villages. The

ascendancy of the service sector and a corresponding devaluation of the

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agricultural sector aggravated the problem of unemployment among the

educated youth. The new generation was not ruled by sentiments like

affinity with the land and the attachment to the community. The new

culture of egoistic utilitarianism made them ambitious and many like Sethu

abandoned their native village and went in search of new pastures. The

mass migration of the poor to the industrial cities in the earlier decades of

the century had created environmental, social and physical problems. But in

the post -industrial situation there was quite a difference. The problems

arising from the migration was more of a personal and psychological

nature. Like Vimala’s family and Sethu they are left groping in a world

where they have no source of emotional and moral support and no ethical

and spiritual values to which they can turn for guidance.

Kaalam, though not strictly autobiographical, has a strong

autobiographical element in it. Gita Krishnankutty, who translated the

novel into English quotes MT’s words, “Sethu of Kaalam is not like me. I

share with Sethu his emotional experiences and the situations he has been

through”(introduction). In both cases the father is away in Ceylon and has

little role in the affairs of the family. This disintegration of family life was

a phenomena attendant on the structural changes the village community

effected by colonialism and the decline of feudalism. As village agriculture

declined men migrated to urban centres or plantation areas in pursuit of

labour and women became increasingly dependent upon men’s income.

Much of the tension and conflict in Sethu’s early life originate from this
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situation of financial difficulties and the lack of a wholesome family

atmosphere of love, emotional support and security that is an essential

requirement for the development of personality.

Thematically and structurally the narrative shares the generic features

of pastoral in many respects. There is the typical circular pattern of a

journey from innocence to experience, from the purity of the village to the

corruption of the city and back to the purgative presence of nature in the

village. The river, Nila is the focal image in the development of this motif.

It is endowed with a multiplicity of symbolic connotations. At one level it

stands for life itself, particularly the course of the protagonist’s life, its

twists and turns, its ebbs and flows. At another level it is loaded with

sexual suggestions. As a symbol it stands juxtaposed to the lake in Mist

which is an image of stillness, passivity and frigidity. Nila in its various

moods is above all an empirical reality of much interest and concern to the

author and it has to be recognised as a presence for its own sake. The river

despite its fluctuating moods-now in spate and a little later reduced to a

trickle-is ever in flux. Time flows with the river in Kaalam while in Mist it

is arrested at a point.

Gita Krishnankutty comments on the seminal role played by the river

as a symbol and as a real presence in the novel:

Written in lyrical prose, the novel captures the changing

moods and seasons of the landscape of MT’s childhood. The

river, a mute witness to every crisis in Sethu’s life, mirrors his

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journey from adolescence to an adulthood empty of hope and

love. At the end of the novel it lies parched and dry as his own

heart. Marked by his experiences the river is transformed from

the rippling surface over which the ferry boats had carried Sethu

to his new life as a college student into a stretch of dry sand

‘dreaming of floods ...’.(Introduction)

The river is integral to the identity and ethos of the village. Sethu

crosses it and abandons his village to be assimilated into a system and a

culture which is wholly alien and proves itself to be detrimental to the

innate as well as imbibed values that the village culture has imparted to

him. He is swabbed in by the materialistic modern culture and revels in the

success he finds in his pursuit of progress and success until there comes the

moment of disillusionment when he realises the futility of all that he has

achieved so far. From somewhere within spurts a nostalgic longing for the

lost innocence and all that he has abandoned. This new awareness of self

results in the re-awakening of the conscience. This convergence of

consciousness and conscience is a post-pastoral requirement according to

Gifford .It enables Sethu to extricate himself from the degenerate system of

which he had become a part, a system which in Gifford’s words can be

described as founded on ‘the complacent, unquestioning, macho desire to

exploit both social groups and natural resources”(171).

The image of the river illustrates how MT’s natural images interlace

empirical reality with symbolic signification in a unique manner. He wants

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to draw attention to the degeneration of the river and at the same time uses

it as a meaningful symbol for the spiritual and psychological condition of

his protagonist. The kinship between Sethu and the river is emphatically

laid down at the close of the novel: “The river, his river, dreaming of

floods even as it grew dry lay behind him like a lifeless body drained of

blood and movement”(235). There is hope left for both as they can still

dream of flood. Led by his desperate urge to find a place for himself in the

world which seems hostile to him, Sethu falls into the vicious circle of this

corrupt system as an employee under the timber merchant. It is an empire

of money flourishing on the ruthless and unscrupulous exploitation of

nature and it takes some time for Sethu to overcome his perplexity and get

initiated into this culture:

Each time he wrote out cheques for the mudalaali’s monthly

bills,.. he had been shocked at how insignificant a commodity

money could be. Hotel bills, club-bills ran to thousands. The

cigarettes alone came to two hundred rupees a month. Even

though he knew that the mudalaali’s bank balance multiplied by

tens of thousands every time a truck took a load of rosewood to

the cochin harbour he still felt astonished. (189)

An encounter with the ugly face of this utilitarian commodity culture

maintaining the same unethical exploitative attitude to women as to nature

has an apocalyptic impact on Sethu. He had given in to the unrestrained

carnal passions of an immature teenager and had never felt guilty about the
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way he had jilted Sumithra and Thangamani. The fact that he was misled by

the romantic fancies of an adolescent who suffered from lack of recognition

and wanted to assert himself does not much alleviate the gravity of the sin

in neither case. However, the pathetic sight of the poor village girl,

Sarojini, who has been ‘hired ‘ by his mudalaali for a few days, and whom

he generously offers to share fills the heart of Sethu with self-reproach.

The tenderness he feels for this helpless victim of poverty becomes the

turning-point in his life. “She brought to mind the country girls he knew

who would walk through the village lanes carrying baskets of straw and

bottles of oil”(194). The image of the tired and frightened girl was so

different from the image of the prostitutes that he had built up in his mind

from descriptions in books and hearsay. “It distressed him to look at

this child playing with the black rubber bangles on her wrists, thin as

papaya stalks”(195). It is the beginning of a journey back in consciousness,

back to the memories he had left behind, to the bonds he had severed.

A letter from Thangamani brought by her brother Unni and a visit to

Eedathi Amma(his eldest brother’s wife ), in hospital act as catalysts for

his conversion .On his way back home, “walking through the crowded

streets he thought of Sumithra . . . . The noise and crowd around him faded

and he saw the jnaval trees and hills of a lost world. He thought of the little

boy with the torn shorts tucked into his waist thread , combing the hillside

for a fallen jnaval fruit that was whole”(216).This nostalgia ‘for the lost

world of childhood innocence’ helps Sethu retrace his steps and escape
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from the doom which awaited him .Recognisance results in reconstruction

and the upsurge of a desire to recuperate, to regain his lost identity. Sethu

crossed the river that had run dry like his life and “walked over its parched

bed, leaving the lost years behind”. Lying awake in the night, longing to

hear the sound of rain drops on the banana leaves and making up his mind

to visit the temple on the next day, Sehtu is acutely aware of the moonlight

that falls through the window, “the world bathed in moonlight like a

marvel, a dream, and the ‘thousands of mandaram flowers seemed to have

blossomed in the sky”. The waning of the ego leads to the awakening of the

eco -consciousness. He prays to the Gods, “Please give me another

chance”(232), a prayer from a conscience brought back to life by the

consciousness which has regained its vitality in its own milieu. Sethu

realises the truth of Sumithra’s words of reproach, “Sethu has loved only

one person ever and that is Sethu himself” (234), and the hope of his

redemption lies in this realisation and the sincere urge to reform himself.

The recessive self is now ready for a process of reassembling and

reattachment.

MT who has a unique fascination for the complex internal world of the

individual does not neglect the external world. He portrays the copious,

multiform and dynamic natural world as analogous to the human spirit. in

his fiction we find the day to day life of man infused with a vague sense of

mystery and myth, an effect achieved through a skilful interlinking of the

interior processes of the human mind with the natural phenomena. Mark .S.
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Lussier has put forth the concept of what he describes as synchronicity. In

his opinion the parallels between the physical objects or events and

psychological states presented in a literary work may signify much more than

coincidences. They serve to establish the link between the internal and external

worlds or between what is perceived and the psychological state of the

perceiver. The mood of the perceiver influences his response to the outside

objects and events and conversely the mood of the environment can exert

an influence on his mood.