MT Vasudevan Nair: Celebrated Indian author and screenwriter dies at 91
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Malayalam writer leaves lasting impact on Indian cultural landscape. MT Vasudevan Nair, one of India’s most renowned writers, died on Wednesday. He was 91. Nair died in a hospital in Kozhikode city in the southern state of Kerala. Madath Thekkepat Vasudevan Nair’s seven-decade career spanned literature, journalism and film, leaving a lasting impact on India’s cultural landscape.
His stories, often set in the countryside and drawing on his childhood, celebrated the range of human emotion and connection. Nair was born on 15 July 1933 in Kudallur, a small village in Kerala’s Palakkad area, and grew up a voracious reader. He started writing very young.
“Once I reached high school, I started reading everything. After reading, I wanted to write something. I knew I could not match the writing I had read, but, in my loneliness, I felt like scribbling something.”. After graduating college, Nair joined the Malayalam magazine Mathrubhumi in 1956 and went on to become its editor in 1968. In this role, which he stayed in until 1981, Nair is often credited with discovering and mentoring young writers who went on to have prolific careers.
He was awarded Jnanpith, India’s highest literary honour, in 1995 and the Padma Bhushan, the country’s third-highest civilian honour, in 2005 . He received the highest civilian award given by Kerala’s state government, the Kerala Jyothi Award, in 2022.
Nair’s debut novel Naalukettu, meaning the legacy, about the decline of the traditional joint family in post-Independent India is considered a classic in Malayalam literature and won Nair his first Kerala Sahitya Akademi award in 1959, when he was only 25.
