Malayattoor Ramakrishnan

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Malayattoor Ramakrishnan(1927-1997) was a prominent Malayali novelist of the 20th century. He is credited with having authored several important works in Malayali literature.

[edit] Life

Malayattoor Ramakrishnan was born on May 27, 1927 as K.V.Ramakrishna Iyer in Kalpathi in Palakkad in a family of Kerala Iyers.He was one of six siblings. The family settled down in a small village near the banks of the River Periyar. He studied in Perumbavoor and in Aluva and completed his Bachelor's degree and a Law degree in Thiruvananthapuram.

Even during his student days, he had started writing and cartooning. He became a communist sympathiser and even contested elections in Perumbavoor (he lost). He started his work as a sub-editor in Free Press Journal in Bombay. He was a contributing cartoonist to Shankar's Weekly. He is also credited with the first Malayali translation of Bram Stoker's Dracula apart from translating Sherlock Holmes' novels into Malayalam.

In 1954, he entered the Kerala judicial service and served as a magistrate. That year, he married Krishnaveni (1935-1999). They had two children.

In 1957, Ramakrishnan entered the Indian Administrative Service(IAS). He served as Sub-Collector in Ottapalam, Collector in Kozhikode, and held various positions in the Secretariat of Kerala, including as Member, Board of Revenue and Chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi. The memoirs of his long career as a bureaucrat are narrated in his work The Service Story.

Malayattoor wrote his best known work - Verukal (Roots) in 1965. It is a semi-autobiographical work which tells the story of a family of Tamil speaking Iyers who settled in Kerala. This won him the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award. A reference to him on the Kerala Sahitya Academy website is http://www.keralasahityaakademi.org/PROFILES/Malayattoor/Html/MalayattoorPage.htm.

In 1981, he resigned from the Indian Administrative Service in order to devote his time to writing. It was during the period 1981 to 1997 that his most famous works emerged from his pen. Among his other famous novels are Yakshi, Yantram, Nettoor Mathom and Amritham Thedi. For Yanthram, he was awarded the Vayalar Award.

Malayattoor had also authored scripts for several films. The most famous of these were Yakshi, starring Sathyan and Iyer The Great starring Mammootty. Malayattoor was also a well-known cartoonist and painter. Some of his paintings are displayed in the Kerala Chitra Tirunal Art Gallery.

Malayattoor remained active though his later years and was working on a novel when he died in 1997 at Thiruvanathapuram. He was given a state funeral by the Government of Kerala.