Retired professor and literary critic M. Leelavathy lives with her 92-year-old aunt and innumerable books. The home-nurse who has been appointed to take care of her aunt has just stepped out and Leelavathy teacher, as she is endearingly referred to, settles down to talk at our appointed time. “All my life, I’ve had to juggle with time. The many responsibilities women have, I tell you,” she says.
Books and magazines occupy a large part of the house. They rest in bundles in the porch, in the drawing room, on the staircase, in the three rooms and the passage upstairs. “These magazines just come here. I haven’t subscribed to any. Many books I’ve given away to libraries. Many of them are mine, but I guess I can tell where to find a particular book in this apparent disarray,” she says.
The 87-year-old Padma Shri awardee has been one of Malayalam literature’s most noteworthy critics. “I didn’t intend to be one. When you are a teacher, you need to analyse literary works. I started writing as part of my profession. Long ago, much before I started teaching, I used to write poetry. If I had continued that, perhaps, I’d have become a poet,” she says. Her brand of literary criticism has often been called “soft,” she says, when some of her contemporaries were known to attack authors viciously. “I write about a work only if it has inspired me. I have written only when I felt like writing. I believe if the reader is convinced by a book, the author has succeeded.”
Until recently, she used the well-lit room upstairs for her writing. The windows open out onto the road. Surrounded by shelves full of books, the Padma Shri plaque wedged in between, Leelavathy says the silence in the room has always helped her. “Writing, especially the kind of writing I do, requires utter concentration. Oh and yes, I like to drink tea on and off while working. I have always had to make it, of course. I’d bring it with me in a flask,” she says. She is also particular about her chair—one with a slanting backrest. “That gives back support. I sit on it with a writing board,” she says.
One of the main reasons for buying the land on which her house stands, in Thrikkakkara, in 1964, was its tranquillity. “There was a beautiful field here,” she says. When the road came, some part of the land was acquired. “A large part of the courtyard went, along with the trees. Today, this is just a concrete jungle.”
She does not follow any set patterns in her work. “You know, I’ve heard about creative writers, mostly men, who have peculiar writing routines. I don’t know if women have had that luxury. I have never had such fixed working hours. I used to work at night after returning from college and after the duties at home.”
She does not get as much time for her literary pursuits now, she rues, but is up-to-date on the goings on in the literary world. “K. R. Meera’s Aarachar , is a brilliant work,” she says. The novel on the life of a hangwoman was in the news recently for alleged plagiarism. “A work is not only about the theme. The quality of the novel depends on the way the theme has been developed. Because that requires skill.”
Leelavathy’s first article appeared in the Mathrubhumi weekly in 1951. Since then, she has been writing, leaving behind her a phenomenal body of work. Even as familial responsibilities demanded most of her time, Leelavathy continued writing whenever she could. “Writing requires reading too. If you ask me, 24 hours is hugely insufficient for reading.”
Her academic credentials were always a notch above. Having passed High School (Kunnamkulam) as State first, she joined Maharajas College Ernakulam, where she did her Intermediate in science. She came out first among the women in the University. “Those days, I was fascinated by science. I wanted to learn and I loved it. It was not ordinary love. I shed copious tears when the college principal forced me to take BA Malayalam. He saw my proficiency in the language, but it was agonising,” she says.
During her BA, she also mastered English. Soon after her MA, which she passed with a rank, Leelavathy joined as Malayalam lecturer at Victoria College, Palakkad. A teaching career that began thus went on till her retirement in 1983. The years after were devoted to reading and writing. She has won countless awards for her contribution to literary criticism, the Kendra Sahitya Akademi and Kerala Sahitya Akademi awards among them. “Today, criticism seems to be restricted to certain aspects of a work. Not holistic, like it was in my days.”
