Description: Aaram Viral, a novel [Malayatoor] published three years before his death in 1997, has now found a good English translation. The Sixth Finger, portraying 1970s-80s south India, reads all the more relevant today, when the country has its burgeoning babas effectively competing with Hindu gods in number.
Brief description: MALAYATOOR RAMAKRISHNAN (1927-1997) started his career as an advocate and worked as a sub-editor in The Free Press Journal in Mumbai before joining the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1957. Malayatoor wrote a semi-autobiographical work Verukal (Roots), which won him the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award. In 1981, he resigned from the IAS to devote himself to writing. From 1981 to 1997, he wrote his other famous novels including Yakshi, Yanthram, Nettoor Mathom and Amritham Thedi, besides short stories and scripts for several films. For some years, he was chairman of the Kerala Lalit Kala Akademi.
Review Quotes:
'This compelling narration by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan, one of the finest storytellers in Malayalam fiction, of the making of a godman who despite his desire to escape is imprisoned in his own fame as a seer, has a legendary quality about it . . . The novelist's sense of humour turns it into a fascinatingly searing tragicomic work of fiction that has several parallels in recent Indian history.
'Prema Jayakumar's excellent translation captures in full the nuanced pungency of the original narrative.'
K. SATCHIDANANDAN, Poet and writer
'Malayatoor's Vedaraman ranks with R.K. Narayan's Raju among fiction's reluctant godmen. How Vedaraman's glowing sixth finger makes him the darling of power brokers and power seekers is narrated with incisive wit by the author, Malayatoor Ramakrishnan.'
A. SETHUMADHAVAN, Writer
'A page-turner'
KEKI N. DARUWALLA, Poet and writer
'Aaram Viral, a novel [Malayatoor] published three years before his death in 1997, has now found a good English translation. The Sixth Finger, portraying 1970s-80s south India, reads all the more relevant today, when the country has its burgeoning babas effectively competing with Hindu gods in number.
'Ashram debauchery comes so loaded with wry humour that vignettes of "spiritualists" blur with that of the morally-corrupt politicians and sensation-seeking journalists. Bids for another anti-Hindi agitation by Tamils and early phases of LTTE rebellion by the Tigers dot the narrative, that has its climactic build-up intact by translator Prema Jayakumar.'
SREEVALSAN T., Outlook