V. Madhusoodanan Nair is searching for a book when I meet him at his house, Narayaneeyam, near Devaswam Board Junction. “It is not easy to find the one I need from the piles of books in the upstairs room that is my writing space, my ezhuthidam ,” he says with a genial smile.
Indeed. The room is overflowing with books on shelves, in cupboards, on the floor.... In the midst of it all is his custom-made armchair. “It was made by one of my students, Prajin Babu. It is very comfortable,” he says, as he jots down a few lines on the paper.
Completely shut off from the world outside, it is where he creates “his sky”. He goes back to his childhood to explain the concept. “Growing up in Kunnathukal in Neyyatinkara, I used to enjoy writing, while sitting on the banks of the river. With the sky, the birds, the gurgle of running water and nature for company, I found my comfort zone. Since then I have always needed the sky to write, only the concept of the sky has changed since then. These days, instead of the actual sky, I create one in my mind. You know, a sky encompasses many things…,” his voice trails off.
It wasn’t easy to find one inside the cramped room in a lodge in the city where he used to stay as a student, he says. “The room smelt of kerosene, because I used to cook rice gruel on a stove. I tried hard to concentrate with lot of noise all around. This was the phase when I wrote very little. After that I started working as a journalist and my writing went on the back burner,” he says.
Writing picked up steam once again when he was staying in a rented house in Kesavadasapuram, while teaching at St Xavier’s College. “And that was mainly because the house had an open verandah, from where I could see the sky and lot of trees. On the nights it rained, it was the perfect ambience for my creativity. It was on one such rainy night that I wrote Naranathubranthan ,” he says.
However, when he started living at Narayaneeyam 15 years ago, he had to adapt himself to a new creative space. Thanks to the dust and noise from the road, he had to opt for a closed space. And it is in this closed room that he “creates the sky.”
Also, once he decides to write, especially a poem, he switches over to a totally different schedule. “I need complete silence; no phone calls, no noise and therefore I write only after midnight, especially between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. It is the time when I connect with my inner self. I spend the whole day relaxing and avoid all sorts of solid food. I take only tea, black tea with ginger or lime juice or warm kanji vellam with salt and a pinch of tamarind extract. I can’t bring myself to eat anything else. It is a habit I developed, perhaps because I have lived through lean days when I didn’t have enough to eat,” he says.
He writes at a stretch and once the work is ready, he makes four or five copies, editing or deleting certain parts.
“I publish it only when I am fully satisfied. Otherwise, I don’t show it to anybody! I am not that prolific a poet. The best comes out when there is a perfect blend of time, place and mind. It is a sublime feeling and I don’t feel alone in this room, solitude brings everything close to me here where I create my own world…” he says.
(A series that explores the workspaces of creative people in the city and its suburbs)
