O.V. Vijayan (1930 - 2005), an Indian cartoonist, novelist, and short story writer, was a leading figure in Malayalam literature. His novel titled ‘The Legends of Khasak’ which was published in a serialized form during the 1960s, is considered as one of the greatest novels in the Malayalam language which is spoken by 35-40 million people in southern India.
These translations are part of my efforts to educate and learn Malayalam more carefully and intensively. Many of these are what could be called ‘Micro Stories’. Why exactly did O.V. Vijayan write these fabulist pieces is not clear to me. Perhaps it was inevitable for one who saw the world through two distinct mediums of expression: as a cartoonist who relies on economy and surprise to comment on what he saw, and as a novelist, who experiments with prose and content. Either way, he has left behind a collection of stories that indexes not just India’s transformations since the 1950s but his own journeys that led him away from Communism of the 1950s to a contemplative life under the guidance of his guru by the 1980s. These micro stories were written over a period of three decades that were punctuated by other major literary novels, including his singular novel, The Legends of Khasak, which first appeared in a serialized form in the Matrubhumi magazine. In many of these micros, the narrative strategy appears similar to what one would expect from a master cartoonist: paring down the prose to its essentials, and that which remains is then sharpened further, leaving behind for us a text where each sentence is pregnant with meaning and portent. No excesses seem to have been his operating principle—an aspect that is all the more stirring to read in a language that is given to easy prolixity and descriptions. The result of this hard-won style is a world that is self-contained. The storytelling tone is that of an austere but laconic spirit. There is no laughter for laughter’s sake, but a quiet despondency, perhaps even despair, at the world being what it is. Given the diversity of tone and content, he didn’t write these micros to fit into a form or style of narration; rather he seems to have enjoyed the freedoms that came from their fragmentary nature which allowed for explorations. What he has left behind could be classified as social realism, fantasy, obscenity, myths, absurds, or adaptions; pieces that, irrespective of their taxonomy, burst from the menagerie of his mind into the wild world of letters. Some of them work better than others, but in all his primary interest—to see beyond what is visible in the world— shines through.
Almost all of these translations are unpublished barring two of them which appeared in an edition published by the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. These are translated for my own pleasure and curiosity to see the shape of text that eventually takes form.