“I may not be able to answer all your questions but I can join you in searching answers for them as we talk,” said writer M.T. Vasudevan Nair before he began an interaction with select school students during the valedictory session of the Samskarikotsavam organised as part of the State School Arts Festival, which concluded here on Wednesday.
The session, which began with a brief introduction by the writer, went on for more than an hour with the students getting valuable insight into a range of things, including the fundamental philosophy of life and literature.
On why someone should write at all, MT quoted the famous Jewish American author Isaac Bashevis Singer and said, “To instruct and to entertain.”
Most of the participants asked brilliant questions, about the “absence of humour” in his works and the characteristic twists to his important characters deviating from the popular narratives, including that of Bhima in Randamuzham and Chanthu in OruVadakkan Veeragatha.
He said the life of a person could be looked from different perspectives. “I was acting as an advocate for these characters arguing the cases in their favour, because there weren’t many people to argue for them,” he said.
Disapproving the beaten notion that “everything of the past is good and the new ones bad,” MT said that even the old and new ones had its pros and cons. “Even the joint-family system once existed had its positives and negatives,” he said.
Urging the new-generation students not to turn their back on fast-changing technologies, he said they should, however, ensure that the technology did not lose its “human face.”
New forms of reading
Expressing optimism that books would live on even as newer forms of reading, including e-reading emerge, the writer said holding a book in one’s hand always created a unique sense of oneness with the person who wrote it.
He said he became a writer thanks to his early reading habit.
“As a lonely boy, reading was a game that I played alone and enjoyed the most,” he said.
Education Minister P.K. Abdu Rabb inaugurated the valedictory function. Actor Mamukkoya, orator Abdussamad Samadani, and convener of the cultural festival A.K. Abdul Hakim, among others, spoke.
