Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai | |
|---|---|
| Pen name | Thakazhi |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Genre | Novel, Short story |
| Subject | Social aspects |
| Literary movement | Realism |
Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai (Malayalam: തകഴി ശിവശങ്കര പിള്ള) (17 April 1912 - 10 April 1999)[1] was a novelist and short story writer of Malayalam. He is popularly known as Thakazhi, after his place of birth. He focused on the oppressed classes as the subject of his works, which are known for their attention to historic detail. He has written several novels and over 600 short stories. His most famous works are Kayar (Coir, 1978) and Chemmeen (Prawns, 1956; film adaptation, 1965). He was awarded India's highest literary award, the Jnanpith in 1984.[2]
Born in the village of Thakazhi, in Kuttanad, Alappuzha district of Kerala, he started to write stories when he was a schoolboy. His literary taste was nurtured by his high school headmaster Kainikkara Kumara Pillai (1900-1988) who exposed him to Indian literature. He met Kesari A Balakrishna Pillai (1889-1960) while pursuing his law studies in Thiruvananthapuram. He introduced Thakazhi to modern European literature and thought.
His novels and short stories basically discussed various aspects of societies in Kerala in the mid-20th century. His novel Thottiyude Makan (Scavenger's Son, 1947) is considered a pioneer work in Malayalam realistic novel. It is about modernity challenging the rationale of the caste system, that one's profession should depend on pedigree.
His political novel, Randidangazhi (Two Measures, 1948) projected the evils of the feudal system that prevailed in Kerala then, especially in Kuttanad. The film adaptation, directed and produced by P. Subramaniam from a screenplay by Thakazhi himself, received a certificate of merit at the National Film Awards in 1958.[3]
His love epic Chemmeen (Prawns, 1956) which was a departure from his earlier line of realism, met with immense popularity. It told a tragic love story set in the backdrop of a fishing village in Alappuzha. The novel and its film adaptataion, also titled Chemmeen (1965) earned him national and international fame. Chemmeen was translated into 19 world languages and adapted as film in 15 countries. Chemmeen won for Thakazhi the Kendra Sahitya Academy Award in 1958. The film adaptation, directed by Ramu Kariat won the National Film Award for Best Film in 1965.[4]
Despite the populairy of Chemmeen, his novel Kayar (Coir, 1978) is quite widely considered as his masterpiece. The novel spreads to over 1000 densely printed pages and deals with hundreds of characters over four generations, bring back to life an axial period (1885-1971) during which feudalism, matriliny and bonded labor gave way to conjugal life, everyone’s access to a piece of land, decolonization and the industrial revolution of the 1960s.
Thakazhi has been known to often write an entire novel within one weekend. Its argued that the novel Chemmeen was written within one weekend.[citation needed]
Dr V Radhakrishnan:
Thakazhi is normally remembered as a writer who looked analytically at the continuously changing Kerala society since the turbulent decade of 1930s. At the same time, without denying him his place as a social chronicler, one could find in him a poet who could look at the minutest aspects of human life.
Thakazhi was a pioneer of the progressive literary movementwhich enabled Malayalam literature to break out of the `colonial mould'.
Francis Olivier Zimmermann (Directeur d'études, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) on Kayar:
The fact that (Thakazhi,) the master narrative of this axial period (1885-1971) was told in Malayalam by a Nayar or Nair (the land-owning caste) who turned communist, and a writer who made a living as a modern lawyer (perfectly at ease with English) but who had been trained in classical Kathakali (music-dance-drama) and other genres of verbal art, is indeed part of the story.
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