It is not often that publishers these days get manuscripts from writers. New works for consideration now arrive in neatly printed form. So, the Kerala Bhasha Institute was in for a surprise when they received a thick manuscript from an 80-year old writer, a few months back. The uniformity and the beauty of the handwriting was enough to make the publisher to think out of the box – to print copies of the manuscript itself, rather than typesetting it in the press.
Thus was born ‘Nattumozhichantham’, perhaps the first instance of a Malayalam book being brought out in the manuscript format, with the first edition of 1000 copies. Written by Vattapparambil Peethambaran, a teacher, a drama artiste and a writer, the book is a dictionary of colloquial Malayalam words.
“I had sent the manuscript to the Bhasha Institute in the large A4 size sheets. The publishers went through it and asked my opinion on printing the manuscript itself. I gladly accepted. But, since the size of the paper I had written on was not fit for print, I had to write them again. I asked them for two months time, but I ended up finishing it in three weeks. The only issue now is that I can’t move my hands as I was too eager to get the work done,” says Mr.Peethambaran.
He says one of the challenges was to maintain the uniformity in shape and size of the words across the 500-odd pages of the book.
“For this, I have to thank my teachers from school. Handwriting was one of the major things they focussed on, with small punishments for not getting it right when writing in the two-line copy books. Now, the practise of writing copy books have almost ended in schools,” he says.
According to V.Karthikeyan Nair, Director of the Kerala Bhasha Institute, he did not have to think twice on what he wanted to do with the manuscript, when he received it.
“The words were so beautifully written down that we knew we had to print this as such. Also, we had to sent out a message on the importance of writing with hand. Now, hardly anyone writes with their hand, after they complete their education. We will slowly lose our ability to write properly, due to over-reliance on the keyboard. I have seen how adults struggle to hold a pen, during the Literacy Mission in the 1990s. We might bring out more such books, if we get such well-written manuscripts,” he says.
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