{"id":157,"date":"2004-10-21T11:26:23","date_gmt":"2004-10-21T16:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/server97.snhdns.com\/~ravik\/wp\/?p=157"},"modified":"2004-10-21T11:26:23","modified_gmt":"2004-10-21T16:26:23","slug":"mallus-shame-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200410\/mallus-shame-shame\/","title":{"rendered":"Mallus shame shame."},"content":{"rendered":"

I am utterly disappointed with my countless Mallu readers. If the most literate state in India cannot identify answer a question concerning its authors<\/a> properly, then I don’t know what to say. You should all go drown in the Arabian sea and let the rest of your countrymen use your pristine unspoilt homeland as a holiday resort.<\/p>\n

The connection I was talking of was this. The district where Veerappan lived and died was Dharmapuri<\/i>. That should have immediately reminded you of O V Vijayan’s novel Saga of Dharmapuri<\/a>. The book is a must-read for all Nehru-haters. It is an allegory about India caught between two superpowers. The treatment of Nehru and the communists has to be read to be believed. In the book, Nehru’s courtiers are depicted as eating his shit – literally! (Vijayan used to be a communist who got disillusioned by the ideology after the Soviets invaded Hungary)<\/p>\n

If you Mallus want to redeem your honour, you can help me out by answering this question about Mallu literature that I have. This time, there is no trick, and I don’t know the answer to this one.
\n
\nI dimly remember reading long time back (as in many years back) in a newspaper about some Mallu author who had written a novel called Parinamam<\/i> about a talking dog. The author was given an award by some government agency. The author had apparently rejected the award because he believed that it was not the job of the government to give awards. In fact, the government ought not to have any job except running a police force, army and the judiciary. <\/p>\n

All this, I repeat, I am quoting from memory. Something brought back the memory and I wondered if I remembered right or whether I got some details wrong, especially the part about his views on government. Those views seemed unusual when I read them. I remember that it was the first time I had heard such an idea. So it is very very unlikely that I remembered wrong.<\/p>\n

Naturally I turned to google, and sure enough, I found that there was indeed an M P Narayan Pillai <\/a> who had written a novel called Parinamam<\/i> which was about a talking dog. He was in fact awarded a prize by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi in 1992, but the reasons he refused the award are not clear. So most of my memory seems to be confirmed, but not the most interesting bit.<\/p>\n

Can any Mallu impress me with his knowledge of arcanities of Mallu literature?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am utterly disappointed with my countless Mallu readers. If the most literate state in India cannot identify answer a question concerning its authors properly, then I don’t know what to say. You should all go drown in the Arabian sea and let the rest of your countrymen use your pristine unspoilt homeland as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}