A few years back, I picked up a copy of Verukal by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan. The story of a city-based man returning to his village to sell his ancestral home struck a chord and I returned to Malayalam reading after many years. I seldom read Malayalam after school, except a few newspapers and magazines here and there. But I felt that so many great stories are not being discovered just because they are in our regional languages. And their stories are far more relatable to you.
Changing Styles, Changing Times
A lot has changed in the last few decades in Malayalam writing. Award winning novelist M Mukundan feels that today’s writers bring out local flavours of a place replete with the rituals, beliefs and dialects. “We followed a standardised language for writing. Today, the language is more colloquial.You can see the diversity of Malayalam through the books that are coming out today. Also, writers in the past felt the need to choose themes that passed a social commentary. That is not so important today.”
Most writers set out to create a bestseller and want their books to run into several reprints and be read by the masses. But KJ Johny, publication manager, Current Books, looks at popularity differently. “This is a commercial game and books are a creation of this game. If you really see, the Holy Bible and Quran are the most sold books in the world today. Their sale has not been outnumbered by a Ramayana, Mahabharata, or the works of Marx. The Communist Manifesto was never a bestseller because one doesn’t have to read it to become a Communist. Hinduisim doesn’t insist that you read the works of Vivekananda or the Ramayana. But these stories are passed on through oral storytelling traditions. Many hold the superstition that the Mahabharata shouldn’t be kept in one’s home as it can lead to family feuds. In Kerala, there is a practice among many Hindus to read the Ramayana during Karkidakom but it’s not a rule followed across Hindu homes in India,” he says.
Johny believes that writers are brands placed for sale on the global marketplace and with time, the older brands replace the newer ones. Which is why, new generation readers are more keen to read the books of Akhil Dharmarajan or Nimna Vijay than the works of Bashir or Madhavikutty,” says KJ Johny, publication manager, Current Books.
Akhil P Dharmarajan self-published his first two books and his third work Ram c/o Anandhi seems to have created a great deal of interest, with people even creating reels and YouTube Shorts featuring his book. Nimna Vijay is a content creator with more than 1,00,000 followers on Instagram and her second novel Ettavum Priyappetta Ennodu has sold over 85,000 copies. “But that does not mean they are not reading the works of MT Vasudevan Nair, Bashir or Madhavikutty. This could be a passing phase. The new generation has let go of the baggage of the past. They relate to a language that is transparent and free of ornamentation,” says Johny.
Also, money and market aren’t bad words anymore. As Johny puts it, “We have moved on from times when books were treated as something sacred and as something not to be sold in the market like other objects. Lit fests give a fillip to the sale of books. It gives a thrust to the books and their writers. And commercialisation is a part of every industry.”
India has the fastest growing population of youngsters today and Mukundan believes that it’s important that books appeal to youngsters. “A lot of our stories are still set in a bygone era. We need to tell the stories youngsters, which belong to their times. I think Chetan Bhagat did it successfully in English, whose works spoke directly to a new generation in the IT sector and call centres. He faces criticism for his writing, but nobody can take away the fact that his stories were contemporary.”
Found in Translation
When Mukundan began his career as a writer many decades back, Malayalam literature was a totally different world. He feels that the business of translations has been a game-changer. “For long, translations were largely done by Sahitya Akademi or the National Book Trust. Those were not really professionally done, and were not available easily for people to buy. My first book to get a proper translation was Deivathinte Vikruthikal, which was taken up by Penguin for translation as God’s Mischief. It was a well received book.”
Later, Mukundan’s Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil transcended the borders of the country with its English translation On the Banks of the Mayyazhi and later, a French translation titled Sur les rives du fleuve Mahé. “What worked was many readers from former French colonies resonated with its characters. Many people from France didn’t know how some of their forefathers lived in a small town called Mahe. There was a character called Kurumbi Amma in it, who was a French loyalist, who wept when the French left Mahe. People in Morocco and Senegal too had known such old timers who felt that they were better off as a colony. So only through translations can such works reach readers worldwide.”
But there is also a catch here. When a book gets taken up by a Penguin or Harpercollins, one might assume it will reach readers worldwide. Mukundan feels these books still remains restricted to Indian readers. “I once visited a village in China and struck conversation with an elderly gentleman who spoke English. The only two Indian writers he knew of were Rabindranath Tagore and Arundhati Roy! But there were several generations of great writers across Indian languages in between these two names, whose works have not crossed borders. For our books to cross borders and win international exposure, the country as a whole should lobby for it. The Bengali lobby was strong at one point, which is why their writers also got widely translated.”
Also, Mukundan points out that translation requires much more than academic knowledge of languages. “What we need is transcreation. It’s a creative work and not just about using correct English. When I visited a leading bookstore in the US, the only regional language writer I saw on the shelves was Perumal Murugan. I also saw books of Anita Nair but she writes in English.”
Also, the translation business is slightly skewed when it comes to Malayalam. Mukundan believes that while books from other languages are widely translated into Malayalam, not many Malayalam books are getting translated into other Indian languages. “Bengali books get widely translated. But it’s been a century since Tagore won a Nobel prize. A small country like South Korea is able to win a Nobel. We need to buck up and lobby hard for our writers. We have very powerful works happening in regional literature.
A new generation is experiencing life differently. They are living in a new era and books need to talk to them to remain relevant, regardless of the language. “Without understanding that, there is no point lamenting that books are dead and reading is dead,” says Johny.
Despite that, Mukundan believes it’s a good time to be a writer in Malayalam. “Books are getting sold in much bigger numbers today. When I wrote my first novel, the publisher printed only 1000 copies. They took a year to sell that lot. Also, there was a culture of borrowing from libraries. Today, the first edition runs into 10,000 copies. The purchasing power of people has gone up, which means they are buying more books. It’s a truth that many of them buy and might not read but I think it’s good that books are at least placed on bookshelves at home. Kids see that and are likelier to pick it up and read some day.”
Madraswallah 
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