Malayalis know C. Radhakrishnan as a prolific, award-winning novelist but not many may be aware that he was once a journalist with premier English publications in the big cities.
Malayalis know C. Radhakrishnan as a prolific, award-winning novelist but not many may be aware that he was once a journalist with premier English publications in the big cities. Fewer still may know that he gave up a career in science to join a science magazine. He has drawn from his considerable experience to pen his thick and realistic novels. And given that his subject matter and worldview have always been national, if not international, it is a pity that he was never read by non-Malayalis. Now, one of his important works that he published in 1994 has been translated into English as Now for a tearful smile.
In the late 60s, Radhakrishnan was an assistant editor with Patriot newspaper in Delhi and volunteered to go on a two week assignment to live with the Naxalites of West Bengal. Two weeks got extended to four and he succeeded in infiltrating the ranks of the Naxals. But when it was time to leave, the extremists did not let him go as the cops were hot on their heels. He ended up living and travelling with them for about six months before they were all captured. “There was a Tamil officer who believed me when I told him that I was a journalist and I was able to get my job back,” says Radhakrishnan.
What might have been a big scoop didn’t create much of an impact. “You know how it is, with passage of time the peg loses its importance,” says Radhakrishnan who went on to write a novel based on his adventures titled Munpe Parakkunna Pakshikal (Birds that fly ahead), the first in the series that have Arjun as one of the main characters.
At the height of the Punjab extremism, he was sent as an ‘expert’ to cover the ethnic trouble in that state. He came back to write the book called Karal Pilarum Kalam (When heart breaks into two) based on his experiences. Now for a tearful smile covers the post Emergency period when Indira Gandhi, and later her son, ruled India, their assassinations and the political intrigues associated with that era. Even as he narrates the love between Arjun, the ‘terrorist’, who leads a double life as Sidharth Thapa, the journalist, and a tribal girl he saves from a village ravaged by an upper class landlord, he also chronicles the social and political history of the country by bringing out the power struggle in the capital. Those who know history will instantly recognise the characters; Virendra Brahmachari is clearly Dheerendra Brahmachari and Surya Swami is none other than Chandra Swami. As for the Prime Ministers, he has not even bothered to substitute them with false names, reiterating his intention to record history through fiction. The only problem being, the modern reader is a bit baffled sometimes about where fiction ends and facts begin. What might have been an explosive book, lost some of its firepower then because it was written in a regional language. The book gets its second chance now through Kairali Narayanan’s translation.
