Bear with Me, Amma: Memoirs of M.T. Vasudevan Nair

MT, as he is popularly known, is one of the most illustrious writers and film-makers from modern Kerala. His life’s work has won him the Jnanpith Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the National Film Award and the Padma Bhushan, among others. MT grew up in the village of Kudallur in Kerala and his writings constantly evoke the landscape of the years he spent there. Many of the characters in his stories are based on people who lived in this region and the stories themselves often retell incidents that happened there.

Born in 1933, in Kudallur, Kerala, M.T. VASUDEVAN NAIR-- or MT, as he is affectionately known to friends and readers-- is one of the most loved and widely read writers in Malayalam. He started out as a teacher and then moved on to journalism in 1957, finally retiring as editor of Mathrubhumi Weekly in 1997.

MT’s literary oeuvre is varied: novels, short stories, screenplays, travelogues, literary criticism and books for children, but the short story is, by his own admission, MT’s favourite literary form. He has over twenty collections of short stories, written between the 1950s and 1990s. Much of his fiction chronicles the disintegration of the matriarchal joint family system of the Nairs of Kerala and the conflicts associated with this process, which is the world he grew up in.

Unusually for a literary giant, MT is closely associated with cinema. Apart from being a prolific screenplay writer, he has written over fifty screenplays. MT has directed or been otherwise associated with films based on his screenplays or stories. Nirmalyam, his first film which he wrote, produced and directed, based on his short story ’ Sacred Sword and Anklets’, won the President’s Gold Medal in 1973. Oru Cheru Punchiri (2000), Parinayam (1994), Sadayam (1992), Kadavu (1991) and Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha (1989), all won national awards. Twenty-two of his screenplays have won state awards.

MT was awarded the Padma Bhushan (2005) and Jnanpith (1995). He has also received the Kerala Jyothi (2023), the state’s highest civilian honour; the Central Sahitya Akademi Award (1971, 1982 and 1986) and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (1958).

GITA KRISHNANKUTTY has translated novels and short stories by several Malayalam writers into English, including M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Lalithambika Antharjanam, Paul Zacharia and Anand. She lives in Chennai.