M. Sukumaran has been selected for this year’s Kendra Sahitya Academy award for literature for his short story collection title Chuvanna Chihnangal. . Sukumaran, who? If this is your natural response to this news, then you, like most others, I am sure, are badly in need of a lecture on Malayalam literature. Sukumaran has been a remarkable short story writer in Malayalam to such a degree that no discussion on the golden era of Malayalam short stories (1960s, 70s, 80s) concludes without a mention of M. Sukumaran. That was precisely the problem. He got only passing mentions of the critics. Detailed studies were reserved for others. He never got the attention that other stalwarts of the same era like O.V. Vijayan and M.T. Vasudevan Nair received. One can safely say that he never had been a poster boy of Malayalam literature. And he was in fact happy about that. His was a lone voice in Malayalam literature.
His short novels such as Janithakam, Prithru Tharppanam and Sangha Gaanam rank among the best of that genre in Malayalam. He was never at ease with journalists and coldly rejected interview-seekers. His elusiveness was so famous that once noted poet Aiyyappa Panickar quipped that the letter ‘M’ in M. Sukumaran stands for ‘mounam’. (‘Mounam’ means ‘silence’.) In his stories, he always managed with ease to convey his feeling of pain and loss over the inequalities in life and the abject heartlessness of the people in power. His sharp sarcasm blended nicely with his penchant for social criticism. Learned literature critics are of the opinion that Sukumaran was pre-occupied with communism and the fall and rise of its various avtars. Most critics hail his initial stories like Paara, Thookkumarangal Njhangalkku, Marichittillathavarude Smarakangal as his best. But I think the two stories of his second coming (Janithakam and Prithru Tharppanam) are his best works.
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