THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kakkanadan, one among the neo-literary trio, the others being M Mukundan and the late O V Vijayan, had ignited and influenced a sizeable section of young Keralites till a couple of decades ago.Though he had made a retreat from his usual self with the passing of age, experiences and unfounded answers for the ideological realm in which he had been groomed, he stood apart by carving a niche for himself in the state’s literary scene.College campuses in the state in the 70s and 80s were yearning to hear the words and thoughts of Kakkanadan, as he unfolded a fiery new world of asserting oneself in the myriad contours of flesh and soul, in a language passionate, but easily identifiable, with the readers. While he went on searching one’s self in an honest way by looking around at ordinary lives and translating the hopes, desires and desperateness through characters in their own vein, his writings became a genre in itself.Even when being clubbed as one among the trio, who had infused a new wave in the Malayalam literary scene, he had a pattern more accomplished and adaptable to the readers than many other stalwarts. His articulateness and unassuming ways also endeared him more to the readers, even when he remained uncompromising in his path-breaking ways of story-telling, with an unsaid yet open invitation to the youth to feel and experience it in a radical splash.For a society of those days, when the electronic media had relatively little influence, life was something which absorbed sparks from the goodness and freshness presented by the literary world, and Kakkanadan had a definite slot for him in that milieu. There was a time when many college-going students used to restlessly wait for the weekly publishing day of vernacular magazines which serialised Kakkanadan’s novels, which naturally became bestsellers soon. Works such as ‘Ushnamekhala, Parangimala and much more had depicted the journey of the mind to the untread and unusual in ordinary parlance, but definitely realistic and challenging for a transforming society, where doubts on political and ideological beliefs were also growing.As a voice of the Malayali mind anchored from Kollam, he was more comfortable with the region but looked far beyond and sourced much strength through his youthful wanderings in various places in the country and Eastern Germany.Along with his bosom friend the late Vaikom Chandrasekharan Nair, he sailed to the hearts of the rural and urban landscape alike, attending meets convened by small libraries, schools and whatever gatherings where they were sought after. Even when he enriched his works purely taking threads out of his personal experiences and keen observations, and reached out to sublime strokes of passion, Kakkanadan had always kept his feet on the ground, giving an unfailing earthiness and all-time appeal to his writings.
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