In the wake of the western novel came the western short story. the stories in the puranas or in works like Panchatantra could not give rise to a modern form of short fiction. When English came to influence the prose style, it also led to the use of prose for story telling. Among the earliest practioners of the short story in Malayalam are Vengayil Kinhiraman Nayanar (1861-1915), Ambadi Narayana Poduval (1871-1936), Murkot Kumaran (1874-1941), K.Sukumaran (1876-1956) and M.R.K.C. or Chenkulath Kunhiraman Menon (1882-1940). In the place of a native tradition of story-telling, they developed a new mode by incorporating the western narrative traditrion. But the stories of these early decades of the 20th century were quaint accounts of episodes: their main purpose seems to have been to provide entertainment to the literate population. But the short story began to forge ahead in the 1930's. A new generation of writers were just waiting in the wings when the Sahitya Parishath was launched in1927 in the place of the old Kavisamajam started in 1892 and the later Bhashaposhini Sabha which had become defunct. The best link between the older weiters of the short story and the new generation was E.V.Krishna Pillai, whose stories are collected in Kelisoudham. In 1937 the younger writers started a Jivat Sahitya Samiti which in 1944 grew into the Progressive Literature Association. Whatever limitations this movement may have had, the emphasis put on the realities of life and on the need to relate literature to contemporary problems had its salutary effect on the short story. Perhaps without this new awakening, the Malayalam short story would have remained where it was before. But in the new circumstances the short story got a boost. Some of the best talents went into this field.
Karur Neelakanta Pillai (1898-1974), P.Kesava Dev (1904-1983), Ponkunnam Varkey (b.1908), Vaikom Muhammed Basheer (1912-1994), S.K.Pottakkat (1913-1982), Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai (1914 -1999), P.C.Kutikrishnan (1915-1979), Lalithambika Antharjanam (1909-1987) and K.Sarasmwathi Amma (1919-1974) were among the masters of the new short story that began its brilliant career in the 1930's and achieved great heights in the next twenty years. Karur was a humanist to the core and even when he used satire he had his sympathies in the right quarters in the right proportion. The moralizing strain is completely muted in his best stories such as Marappavakal (Wooden Dolls), Poovampazham (Bananas) and Mothiram (The Ring). Compared with the stories of E.V.Krishan Pillai or Bhavathrathan Nambudiripad, the stories of Karur are finished products. His stories about the episodes in the life of a school teachers such as he was, are marked by selective realism and poignant pathos. He is perhaps the most economical of our short-story writers.
Kesava Dev began as a politically-oriented writer and his sympathies lay with the oppressed classes. He is often impatient about the aesthetic side. His view is that if the writer takes enough care about what he has to say, then technical excellence will automatically follow. Nevertheless, some of his early stories are quite moving because of their raw, unselfconscious craftsmanship. No one can write without craft and it is the regard for authenticity in artistic communication that makes a writer care for the way communication is achieved. Meenkaran Koran (Koran, the fisherman) is a story that well reveals both Dev's thematic obsessions and his technique of narration. Ponkunnam Varkey is also concerned with socio-political reality and his early stories are open attacks on the church. The attempt to bring to light the hidden motivations for outwardly pious actions is what Varkey is specially interested in his stories which expose the foibles or cruelties of the church as an institution. His younger contemporary, Ponjikkara Raphy continued for a time, this tirade against the "tyranny" of the Catholic church. Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, quite unlike Varkey, works by suggestion. He is also a social critic (here a critic of the weakness of the Islamic society in Kerala) but he does not shout or harangue like Dev and Varkey. He is closer to Karur in this respect. The master artist in him is fully revealed in stories like Poovanpazham (Banana), Bhargavi Nilayam and Muchittukalikarante Makal ( A gambler's daughter). There is humour and pathos in several of his best stories.
S.K. Pottekkat is more interested in psychology than in social reality. His stories like "Stri" (Woman), "Vadhu" (The Bride) and "Nisagandhi" (Flower of the night) reveal this. The absence of a propagandist obsession enables him to use a poetic style. Some of the stories are laid in places outside Kerala. His romantic interests are reflected in the titles of his collection: Indraneelam, Chandrakantham, Padmaragam (names of precisous stones) Rajamally, Kanakambaram, Nisagandhi (names of flower plants): Pulliman, Himavahini, Manimalika, Vanakaumudi (all words with rich associations):
Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai started as a short story writer in the line of Guy de Maupassant who was probably introduced to him by A.Balakrishna Pillai. He has an unerring eye for the telling detail and in his best stories he make this efect by using a simple unadorned style. Compared with him Pottekat and Kuttikrishnan may be said to employ an ornate style a "precious" diction and aim at special effects. In Thakazhi, the style is not an end in itself. We do not see it, as a matter of fact; we see through it. He is capable of clinical analysis and objective reporting in a neutral style. One of his popular early stories is "Vellappokkam" (Floods). His major themes concern the life of the peasants and the have nots. But it may be said that under the influence of his French masters, there is an overdose of "naturalist" writing in the early stories, roughly in the manner of Zola.
Lalithambika Antharjanam and K.Saraswathi Amma are among the foremost women story tellers in Malayalam; they deal with the pieties of domestic life. Antharjanam's stories are marked by her innate sympathy for people in distress. She has also a great deal of variety of themes, as exemplified by Pancharayoumma (A sweet kiss) on the one hand and Sathyathinte Swaram (The Voice of Truth) on the other. The former is personal, subjective, domestic, delicate, lyrical; the other is tragic, social, public, harsh, dramatic. The problems of a Nambudiri household are also taken up at times, as in Kuttasammatham (Confession). Saraswathi Amma has a less sophisticated style. Her forthright analysis of man-woman relationship is not too common even in Western literature. The short stories of P.C.Kuttikrishnan present the interplay of the romantic and the realistic. Like Karur and Basheer, Kuttikrishnan also is capable of using humour as an undertone. It does not graduate into satire. He also reveals a unique insight into human nature. The psychology of the proletariate has seldom been portrayed better than in some of the early short stories of Ponjikkara Raphy, just as middle class life is vividly portrayed in the stories of Vettoor Raman Nair.
The development of the novel in the second quarter of the twentieth century is a close parallel to the growth of the short story as outlined above. Chandu Menon and C.V.Raman Pillai had estblished two lineages in the Malayalam novel. For a long while they were without any real following. They were imitated ad infinitum. Social and historical novels came out in large numbers. But there was no creative originality in any of them. Narayana Kurukkal (1861-1948) wrote Parappuram (during the 1890's) and Udayabhanu during the 1900's which may be regarded as setting up a new genre, viz., the political novel. Virutan Sanku (Sanku, the smart fellow) by Karatt Achutha Menon (1867-1913) was written in 1913. Rama Varma Appan Thampuran (1876-1942) was the author of, among numerous other things, the novel Bhootharayar ( 1923). Ambadi Narayana Poduval's Keralaputran also deserves mention here. These were not major achievements. Thus it might be said that the course of extended prose fiction in Malayalam appeared to have come to an end.
It was then that in 1931 a work that was unique in many ways came out; it was Aphante Makal (Uncle's Daughter) by Bhavatratan Nambudiripad. Like V.T.Bhattathiripad's play Adukkalayil Ninnu Arangathekku, produced about the same time, this novel also had a profound social relevance. But apart from that, it was a very readable story in prose, the characters were fully alive and the social situation, fuly realized in the context of the novel.
The fresh awakening of the novel in the thirties was due to various factors such as the arrival on the scene of a new generation of writers, the demand for reading material for the newly literate, the exposure of Malayalam writers to the new vistas of Russian and French fiction through the writings of Balakrishna Pillai and a genereal interest among the people in matters social, political and cultural, which is also seen in our national life at the time. The forties and the early fifties were a busy period for the novelists as the following table shows:
| 1942 |
Odayil Ninnu (Out of the Gutter: Kesava Dev) |
| 1944 |
Balyakala Sakhi (Childhoold friend: Basheer) |
| 1946 |
Nati (Actress : Dev) |
| 1947 |
Nati (Actress : Dev) |
| 1947 |
Sabdangal (Voices: Basheer),Thottiyude Makan (Scavenger's Son: Thakazhy) |
| 1948 |
Vishakanyaka (Poison Maid: Pottekkat) |
| 1949 |
Randidangazhi ( Two Measures: Thakazhi),Bhrantalayam (Mad House: Dev) |
| 1950 |
Arkuvendi (For Whose Sake: Dev) |
| 1951 |
Ntuppuppakkoranendarnnu (My Grandpa had an Elephant:Basheer) |
| 1955 |
Ummachu (Kuttykrishnan) |
| 1956 |
Chemmeen (Prawns: Thakazhi) |
| 1957 |
Pathummayude Adu (Pattumma's Goat: Basheer) |
| 1958 |
Sundarikalum Sundaranmarum ( Women and Men of Charm: Kuttikrishnan) |
It is clear from the above list that most of the time the same people wrote short stories and novels. Thus the early modern novel is no more than an extended short story: if the novelist does not appear on the stage and add his own comments and explanations, the novel would be still shorter. Thakazhi's early work Patita Pankajam (Fallen Lotus), Dev's Odayil Ninnu, Pottekkat's Nadan Premam (Country Love) and Basheer's Balyakala Sakhi are novels of this kind. Dev's Nati and Pottekkat;s Vishakanyaka have graduated into what may be called the novel proper. Thus the modern novel in Malayalam is mostly a post-war-phenomenon. What is important here is that aspects of life which had never entered into literature before with sufficient force or depth, swept into it now, through these novels. The novel as a genre in the hands of these writers is purely a western transplantation; none of them has tried to evolve an indigenous form of prose naration. The influence of Chekhov, Maupssant, Gorky, Hugo, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Knut Hamsun and perhaps Dostoievsky; the list can be lengthened. But it must however be granted that these novelists widened the range of our readers' interests and thus provided a much needed education in literary sensibility. Pappu, Chanthan, Koran, Ummachu, Karuthamma, Majid, Suhra, Ouseph: they were all granted entry into the temple of Saraswathi. The Pariah and the Nambudiri jostled shoulders in claiming the compassion and consideration of the reading public. And what is more, the novel was no more a mere means of entertainment, a decoration or an outgrowth. It was like life itself, was life itself as created by the artist's vision. In the fifties the novel became the most productive literary form; but sceptics continued to feel there was not yet any one to chllange Chandu Menon nor any novel yet to stand comparison with Ramaraja Bahadur.
