Nārāyanam - Book Review

Nārāyanam - Perumpadavom’s verbal visualisation of the Guru’s biography

In the setting of a movie storyboard, accomplished novelist and scriptwriter, Perumpadavom Sreedharan’s recently published novel Nārāyanam provides anecdotal glimpses into Sree Nārāyana Guru’s biographical recollections. The novelist commences storytelling from the pre-samadhi days of the aged and ailing Guru, whose recollections are presented in a series of flashbacks and cut-ins to chronologically narrate a spellbinding biography.

It would be unfair to directly compare Nārāyanam to K. Surendran’s classical and award winning novel ‘Guru’, which was published in 1992. Perumpadavom’s work is more on an author’s narrative style in contrast to detailed dialogues that move the story forward in the former novel. Nārāyanam is brief. It is an over-the-weekend reading material that sombrely portrays the prophetic soul ‘Nanoo Bhakthan’ who treaded the sands and shores of our land, not so long ago, when our recent ancestors lived in a feudalistic society infamous for its appalling oppression in the name of caste. The book successfully renders the Guru as the deep thinker, humanist and pioneer liberator who set the ball of social freedom rolling across present day Kerala.

While the novel portrays many sketches of the Guru’s contemporary human relationships, the most remarkable one is the author’s daring visualisation of the less talked about and brief marital life of the Guru and Kaalikutty. This saga is peaked by a touching scene in which years later the distanced and aging Kaalikutty is one amongst the thronging crowd at Sivagiri, waiting for a glance of her sinking ex-husband. The man she lost or, perhaps more appropriately said, the husband she sacrificed for humankind in support of his search for truth in the spiritual and social uplift of the downtrodden.

When the author rightly commented in his foreword, “How could a saint be born without experiencing persecution?”, frankly an imaginative reader would have expected more from the author on this count. Perumpadavom somehow limited the episodes of untouchability and unapproachability to one incident of the young contemplative Nanoo’s encounter with the village Namboodiri. The author could have stretched creativity and added more such moral confrontations that compelled young Nanoo to corroborate his ‘case for change’.

Perumpadavom commences his foreword note with the background to the writing of Nārāyanam. Over the last seven years the author was working on another novel ‘Avani Vaazhvu Kinaavu’ – a story in which the principal characters are Sree Nārāyana Guru and Mahakavi Kumaranasan. Nārāyanam is an overriding creation, on a smaller canvas, that Perumpadavom quickly brushed together. It is a product of persuasion by Kerala Kaumudi’s editors who wanted a novel included in its souvenir publication in connection with the Guru’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations.

Despite the brevity of the creation, Perumpadavom’s Nārāyanam is a handsome newborn piece of literature that inherited high-end genetic material from the seven-year pregnancy and development of ‘Avani Vaazhvu Kinaavu’. Nārāyanam is yet another star now pinned to the sky of creative memoirs of a greater than life Guru.

Distributors: Current Books. ISBN 81-240-1427-2. Indian price Rs. 80.