One chance remark from a friend set me off into thinking. And counting on my fingers. The many big and small people I have met in my life. For a person who has never ever traveled abroad, and has been tied to a clinic in a remote corner of this planet for the last ten years, I have been privileged to meet some very eminent people from all sections of our society.
It is nostalgia time.
In my usual style, I shall begin right in the middle. As in Mahabharata.
In the summer of 1980, I was a final year student in Journalism at the University of Calicut, amongst a small number of students who had managed to get in. As part of internship, we traveled to New Delhi, where I had spent my childhood. We were fifteen of us, coming as we were from different parts of God’s Own Country. We were thirteen boys and two girls, all of whom except for me had never been to Delhi.
We were put up at the Youth Hostel at Chanakyapuri in the heart of the capital city, where all the Embassies of all the nations around the globe is situated. Very few rooms were occupied, and most of them were foreign students. Some of my classmates had the most wonderful time in their lives, chatting up the ‘female’ students from European Countries. We would even goad them on. We would say, Come on Suresh, ( Suresh Karat, married to the eminent writer, Anita Nair – of ‘The Better Man’ fame), this is the right time to make your move. And Suresh Karat made all the right moves in his hip hugging jeans.
Our HOD, Prof, Syed Abdul Samad, incidentally is the best possible teacher one could get. He was young, dynamic and well, good looking, to say the least. He would call me ‘Gudiya”.
Our first destination was the Kerala House, where V. K. Madhavan Kutty reigned. He took us to Khushwant Singh, the doyen of Journalism, and in his usual style, looked at us and said, ‘Only TWO girls!’ in an aside to V. K. May be that remark had a tremendous effect on the boys and to be honest, I was surprised at the bombardment that followed. The one who led the barrage against Khushwant Singh was Roy Matthew. (Where are you, Roy?)
Our next stop – Mario Miranda, eminent cartoonist. I had to be pried out from his chamber by force, as I stood mesmerized at the speed with which he worked. He made a caricature of all of us and I believe that paper was snatched from me by George Stephen. (Where are you George?)
The next day, hold your breath, we were given a choice of either spending a day with O.V. Vijayan, writer and cartoonist par excellence, or a visit to the Kerala House, where Kerala’s Chief Minister was giving a press conference. I jumped at the first option. While the boys made a beeline for Kerala House, me and Geetha Thilakam (her father was the then Principal of the Palghat Engineering College) made our way to O. V. Vijayan’s flat in tilak Nagar.
We spent an entire afternoon at O.V.Vijayan’s house, his wife Dr. Theresa serving us tea and snacks. I kind of interviewed O.V but found that the stuff he spoke about, went straight above me. The aura of Khasak remained with me till two years back, when I chanced upon an English translation of Khasak and my dream crashed. People used to ask me, if THIS was the one book and THIS the author who had changed the course of Malayalam Literature?
The translation was done by O.V. Vijayan himself. I feel that was his undoing. It should have been translated by a professional. Everything would not have been lost. By the way, I flicked the translated version from my sis-in-law Lata’s Bookshelf, while she was in the US interviewing Microsoft Chairman and the richest man on this planet, Mr. Bill gates, himself. Lata was one of the first Indian journalists to interview Bill gates.
Back to O. V. Vijayan.
The best remembrance of that afternoon was the meeting with O. V’s son Murali who was about ten to twelve years of age and very boyish and naughty. He showed us a trick that took our breath away. I use that trick now on my niece.
V.K.Madhavan Kutty took us out to dinner at a Chinese restaurent and treated us to some exotic Chinese dishes.
We cubs met and interviewed many more minor and major people in those frantically hazel hued days. But as I was floating on cloud nine because of a letter I received, everything became stilled in time.
I was married three weeks later. On the said day, I came face to face with V. K. Madhavan Kutty inside the temple premises. Instead of his usual safari suit, he was wearing a gold bordered mundu.
His daughter was getting married at the temple.
The date: 26 June 1980
Place: Guruvayoor.
Posts
