Noted writer M Sukumaran passes away

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Noted writer M. Sukumaran, whose writings were soaked in the pain of the dispossessed, died at the Sree Chithra Institute of Medical Sciences here on Friday. He was 75. He had been admitted to SCTIMST since March 14 for heart-related ailments. He is survived by his wife Meenakshi and daughter Rajani. It was in a sugar factory in Palakkad, where he managed to get work after completing high school, that young Sukumaran was exposed to the “thankless toil” of the workers, and was soon caught up in the Communist movement that swept the state during the post-Independence period.

With his strong pro-Left leanings, Sukumaran guaranteed for himself a tumultuous life and career. He was dismissed from the Accountant General’s Office, where he was clerk, for trade union activities in 1973. By then his short stories, few and far between, that reflected the unrest of the marginalised shaped a unique modernist sensibility in Malayalam literature. And then, almost two decades later, frustrated by the CPM’s vagrant ways, he vehemently criticised its decadence in his celebrated 1981 short story ‘Sheshakriya’. The story landed right on target and Sukumaran was promptly ousted from the CPM.

The writer responded with a resounding silence. He stopped writing for over a decade. Sukumaran returned to writing in 1992, with Pithrutharppanam. Later, in 2006, his novel Chuvana Adayalangal won the Kendra Sahithya Academy award. It was three decades ago, in 1976, that he had won the Kerala Sahithya Akademi prize for Marichitt-illathavarude Smarakangal. 

Sukumaran wrote, as he himself had once said, only if the urge gripped him like fever. In a fifty-decade writing career, he had written just three novels and 50 short stories. His other works included novels Suddhavaayu and Janithakam, and other short story collections. Thookkumarangal Njangalkk, Marichittillaathavarude Smaarakangal, Vanchikkunnampathi and M. Sukumarante Kathakal .