Ootupulackal Velukkuty Vijayan () (July 2, 1930 – March 30, 2005) was an Indian author and cartoonist, who was an important figure in modern Malayalam literature. Best known for his first novel Khasakkinte Itihasam, Vijayan has six novels, nine short-story collections, and nine collections of essays, memoirs and reflections.
O. V. Vijayan was born in Palakkad on July 2, 1930. His father O. Velukkutty was an officer in Malabar Special Police of the erstwhile Madras Province in British India. As a child, Vijayan was largely homeschooled. Formal schooling began at the age of twelve, when he joined Raja’s High School, Kottakkal in Malabar, directly in to sixth grade. The informal education arranged by his father during his absentee years was sufficient to keep him at par with his peers. The following year, Velukkutty was transferred and Vijayan joined the school at Koduvayur in Palakkad. He graduated from Victoria College in Palakkad and obtained a masters degree in English literature from Presidency College.
Vijayan wrote his first short story, "Tell Father Gonsalves", in 1953. He went on to write five novels and translated a significant portion of his own work into English. His first and most famous novel, Khasakkinte Itihasam (The Legends of Khasak, 1969) tells the story of a teacher named Ravi dispatched to a newly created school in remote Khasak. He brought about a sea-change in Malayalam literature with this novel: so much so that it can be divided into pre-Khasak and post-Khasak eras, named after Vijayan's pioneering first novel. The former era was romantic and formal; the latter is modernist, post-modernist and post-post-modernist, with tremendous experimentation in style and content. In a way, Vijayan released Malayalam fiction writing from the shackles of tradition. He wrote many other short stories, essays and satire. He was also an editorial cartoonist whose works appeared in various news publications including The Statesman and the Far Eastern Economic Review. He also worked for The Hindu.
O. V. Vijayan was almost certainly India's foremost fabulist in the recent past. An extraordinary writer with enormous range, he wrote everything from a semi-fictional history of his feudal-landlord family, 'Generations' to the scatological 'The Saga of Dharmapuri'. His works have often been compared with those of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez. While Khasak continues to be his best-known work as an angry young man, his later works, Gurusagaram (The Eternity of Grace), Pravachakante Vazhi (The Path of the Prophet) and Thalamurakal (Generations) bespeak a mature transcendentalist.
While he lived outside Kerala for most of his adult life, spending time in Delhi and in Hyderabad (where his wife Teresa was from), he never forgot his beloved Palakkad, where the 'wind whistles through the passes and the clattering black palms'. He created a magical Malabar in his works, one where the mundane and the inspired lived side-by-side. His Vijayan-land, a state of mind, is portrayed vividly in his work.
Vijayan was unlucky not to win India's principal literary prize, the Jnanpith, possibly because he did not endear himself to the political powers-that-be through his trenchant cartoons. However, in 2003, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's second highest civilian award.
Vijayan struggled with Parkinson's Disease for 20 years and finally succumbed to organ failure in a Hyderabad hospital at age 75. His wife Dr. Teresa Vijayan died a year after his death. Their son [Madhu Vijayan] lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Khasakkinte Itihasam (The Legends of Khasak) - 1969
The first novel of Vijayan appeared in 1969 and took twelve years’ writing and rewriting to reach its final form. It set off a great literary revolution and cleaved the history of Malayalam fiction into pre-Khasak and post-Khasak. It was serialised first and appeared in book form later. The novel is about Ravi, a teacher in an informal education centre in Khasak, and his existential crises. The central character is a great visionary in astrophysics who completed his post graduate programme in Physics from a famous college at Thambaram. The novel ends when Ravi begins his journey to some other realms of existence. The existential puzzle of man as to why he should exist is thoroughly explored in this novel. It was a kind of stepping stone for the writer himself to that world and marked the arrival of a truly visionary writer.
Dharmapuranam (The Saga of Dharmapuri) - 1985
Dharmapuranam is outwardly a great political satire where the author knows no restraint in lampooning political establishments. The language, the setting, and the characters are intended to create as great as possible abhorrence towards the tools and means of governance. The central character is Sidhartha, modeled after the illustrious predecessor of the same name, who lends a supernatural enlightenment to those who are attracted by his enchanting personality. Beyond the apparent level of political meaning the novel keeps in store spiritual and environmental levels of meaning also.
Gurusaagaram (The Infinity of Grace) - 1987
The third novel differs in language, vision and characterization from the earlier works. It is on the immanence of Guru in the life of the'kmijn,...anifested in everybody. The seeker partakes of the grace of the Guru as he happens for him unawares and unconditional. The central character is a journalist from Kerala, working in Delhi, going on an assignment to report the Indo-Pak war of 1971. He undergoes an excruciating experience both spiritually and physically to learn how to annihilate all forms of ego. Gurusagaram fetched him the Vayalar Award, the central Sahitya Akademi Award and the Kerala Sahithya Academy Award in 1991.
Madhuram Gayathi - 1990
This novel has been termed as "a fantastic allegory fusing mythology, spirituality and ecology".
Pravachakante Vazhi (The Path of the Prophet) - 1992
This novel emphasizes the vision that intuition is perennial and it is one and the same always. This oneness of the revelation makes the ways of all prophets the same. This great education in spirituality is got in those barbarous days of Delhi when the Sikhs were maniacally hunted after and mercilessly butchered following the murder of Indira Gandhi.
Thalamurakal (Generations)- 1997
Vijayan’s latest novel Thalamurakal is autobiographical to a great extent. It is historical to a still greater extent. Beyond autobiography and history, the novel is a journey down the collective experiences of a family in search of an awareness about oneself and his clan. This search is of great importance when the collective experiences of the subculture are very bitter and the individual sense of the clan identity is much superior. The novel is a narration of four generations in Ponmudi family in Palakkad, Kerala.
He has written many volumes of Short Stories, the first volume of which was published in 1957 - Three Wars. He has also written many essays, and also published one book of cartoons- Ithiri neramboke, Ithiri Darshanam (A Little Pastime, A little Vision) - 1990.
O. V. Vijayan's best known collection in English is 'After the Hanging and other stories' which contains several jewel-like masterpieces, in particular the title story about a poor, semi-literate peasant going to the jail to receive the body of his son who has been hanged; 'The Wart' and 'The Foetus' about the trauma of the fascist Emergency; the transcendental 'The Airport', 'The Little Ones', and several others.
An incisive writer in English as well, Vijayan translated most of his own works from Malayalam to English. Selected works have been published by Penguin India.
