Toms' autobiography raised many eyebrows

ALAPPUZHA: Toms brought laughter to the people through his cartoons, but his autobiography  ‘Ormayile Rekhachitrangal (Portraits in Memory), which was later  named as ‘Ente Bobanum Mollyum’ (My Boban and Molly),  was no laughing matter.  When it  was serialised in Kalakaumudi  from February 10, 2008,   many remarks made in it by Toms kicked up a storm. Several of his former  colleagues questioned the authenticity of the facts mentioned by him and charged him with  distorting facts.

The attack against him was led by the late Thomas Parannur, a Thrissur- based journalist,  who had worked with Thozhilali newspaper  which was founded by Fr Vadakan as a magazine in 1951.   What made him angry was Toms’ linking of  former home minister P T Chacko’s doomed Peechy tour to the late journalist K.R. Chummar. Toms wrote in the book: “Chummar kicked up a storm writing a report in Thozhilali as the throw of a blind at a mango tree.”

Parannur countered it with an article titled  ‘Kaarile Sthreeye Kandethiyathaaru? (Who discovered the woman in the car) that appeared in Kalakaumudi in June 2008.   He said that Toms’ claim was false. Chummar had hardly any connection with the Peechi tour incident.  Toms was trying to distort  history by bringing Chummar into the incident,  Parannur  said and accused Toms by claiming that the complete details of the incident were reported by he himself with the permission of Fr Vadakan. 

He writes:  “The drama behind the Peechi tour  unfolded on December 13, 1964 near  Our Lady of Lourdes Metropolitan Cathedral in Thrissur. Toms wrote in the autobiography his car hit a bull cart, but the fact is,  it was a hand cart.” Explaining the ‘Peechi tour’ incident in chronological order,  Parannur said that it was sad to see linking   Chummar, who was a close friend of Chacko, as an accused in the incident.

Saying that his autobiography was fiction rather than fact, Parannur says  the Manaloor by-election mentioned by Toms was  fiction.  It  indeed took place in Thrissur. Leela Mannadiar was Congress candidate and C. Achutha Menon was the rival. Leela Mannadiar had never contested in Manaloor, counters  Parannur.
He says the real ballot battle in Manaloor took place in 1957.  It was between Joseph Mundassery and Sukumar Potekkad when  Mundassery won. Likewise,  in 1960 there was competition between Mundassery  and Kuroor  Nambudiripad. At that time Kuroor won, he writes.

Though he criticised his autobiography,  Parannur who was a colleague of Toms for a  long time in Thozhilali, had maintained a warm relationship with him,   says his wife Mary Thomas.  Parannur  died two months after the article appeared in August  2008.