‘Mudiyanaya Puthran’ gets an English makeover

Thoppil Bhasi’s masterpiece translated by academic P.K. Janardhana Kurup

The Malayalam play Mudiyanaya Puthran written by celebrated Communist playwright Thoppil Bhasi of the Kerala People’s Arts Club (KPAC) has got its English version.

Prodigal Son is the effort of septuagenarian academic P.K.Janardhana Kurup, of Koippallikaranma, near Mavelikkara, who translated Thoppil Bhasi’s Kerala Sahitya Akademi award-winning drama into English.

Bhasi has written 19 plays, 18 of them for the KPAC, and

Mudiyanaya Puthram was the fourth in the line-up.

Dr. Kurup said he chose the play for translation as it attempted to spread the message of progressive attitude and humanism in the Indian context.

“The prodigal son, Rajan, and the transformation he is subjected to through the impact of the working class culture, deserves closer study in terms of Bhasi’s perception as to what could be a viable approach to class war in the tradition-bound, caste-ridden, and basically Indian context,” Dr. Kurup said.

A Communist Party of India fellow-traveller, Dr. Kurup too hails from rural Onattukara that formed the locale of Bhasi’s plays.

The characters drawn mostly represent the relics of the crumbling feudal order – landlords and their over-obedient stewards, suppressed womenfolk, and impoverished farmworkers.

The temporal milieu stretches over the 1950’s of central Kerala, a period that witnessed intense Left wing upheaval and dynamic social change.

Dr. Kurup, a former English professor, did not compromise on the subtleties of the play while translating it.

But for the backing of the Prabhath Book House, which offered to publish the book, his translation dream would not have been realised, he said.