The Essay

          The developments in prose at this time were very significant. Vengayil Kunhiraman Nayanar (1861-1895), more famous under his pseudonym Kesari, was one of the first to explore the essay form in Malayalam. He was closely associated with periodicals like Kerala Chandrika (started in 1879 at Thiruvananthapuram), Kerala Patrika [started in 1884 by C.Kunhiraman Menon (1854-1936) and Appu Nedungadi (1866-1934) at Kozhikode], Kerala Sanchari (after 1898 under the editorship of Murkoth Kumaran) and the English Journal Malabar spectator. Kesari has often been compared to Mark Twain. As he was not overburdened with scholarship, he could write in a simpler, popular, informal style. He was a life-long devotee of the goddess of comedy. Here is a passage from his essay, "The Pleasures of Death".

          When you do not have to breathe any longer, you will not be troubled by the innumerable germs of disease in the air not by the insufferable smoke from other people's cigars, etc. Nothing to be anxious about even if motor cars and bicycles send up dust while driving along or if you fall or die or your nose is hurt. You don't have to endure any such grief. You don't have to put up any longer with the ringing of bells or the call of the siren or frog-tongued voice-refiners exerting their throats or reciting songs from plays even on the road.
          Kesari belongs to the comic tradition in our literature, and like Tholan, Nambiar, Chandu Menon, E.V.Krishna Pillai and Sanjayan, he was a sharp critic of social reality.

The Rise of the Novel

          An inevitable consequence of the development of prose was a creative use of this medium for imaginative literary communication. The last quarter of the 19th century saw the birth of the novel in Malayalam. It has been pointed out that the novel arose in Kerala as in other regions of India, not just because of European influence through English education nut chiefly because the condition that existed in India at this time were similar to those in England in the 17th and 18th centuries which favoured the growth of this new form of writing called the novel. It would perhaps be more correct to say that both internal socio-educational conditions and external influence combined to produce and popularize this new genre. It was perhaps not wholly transplanted as a finished product into Malayalam: the existence of the printing press, the growth of a literate reading public, the development of the habit of buying books, the increasing requirements of educational institutions and libraries, the rise in the status of women (Appu Nedungadi, the author of Kundalatha, was also the founder of the society for the promotion of the education of women; Chandu Menon also thought of women as potential readers of his works), and the gradual penetration of democratic ideas and liberalism into the social fabric: these were essential factors which by their conjunction could favour the growth of the novel in Malayalam.
          The question which is the first novel in Malayalam can be answered only if we agree on the definition of the novel. Ghataka Vadham (the slayer slain) by Mrs. Collins, Pullelikunchu by Archdeacon Koshy, his translation of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Ayilyam Tirunal's translation of Meenaketanacharitam, Kerala Varma's transalation of Akbar - these certainly have a historical importance. The use of prose for long narratives based on non-puranic themes was itself of great importance. Appu Nedungadi's Kundalata (1887) marks an important stage in the development of prose fiction in Malayalam. The events are supposed to have taken place in a far-off place and the characters bear more or less outlandish names like Kundalata, Aghoranathan, Ramakisoran and Taranatan. Pullelikunchu has greater realism as far as physical details are concerned. Parts of Kundalata read like the prose romances which in England and other countries of Europe preceded the novel. Appu Nedungadi may have been influenced by Bengali novels too, since the novel as the term is understood in the modern world appeared earlier in Bengali than in other Indian languages. The air was thick with expectations of the birth of the great novel all through the 1880's when in the last year of the decade O. Chandu Menon brought out his Indulekha.

O.Chandu Menon (1847-1900)

         In the preface to the first ediction of Indulekha (1889) Chandu Menon describes the genesis of the novel thus:
    I began to read English novels extensively after I left Calicut in the end of 1886, and I then devoted all the leisure which my official duties left me to novel reading. Thereupon I found that my circle of intimates with whom I had been accustomed to pass the time in social conversation and amusement considered itself somewhat neglected, and I accordingly endeavoured to find means by which I could conciliate its members without in any degree foregoing my novels. With this object in view, I attempted at first to convey to them in Malayalam the gist of the story contained in some of the novels I had read, but my hearers did not seem particularly interested in the version which I gave them of two or three of these books. At last it happened that one of these individuals was greatly taken with Lord Beacondfield's Henrietta Temple, and the taste then acquired for listening to novels translated orally, gradually developed into a passion. The importunity of this personage in the matter was so great that I had seldom time to read a book on my own account...........
Finally, I was urged to produce a written translation of the novel by Beaconsfield which I have mentioned, and I consented. But when I had made some little progress in the work, I thought the matter over, and decided that a translation thus made would be absolutely without value........Taking therefore, all these circumstances (the difficulties and inadequacies of translation), I determined to write a Malayalam novel more or less after the English fashion and gave my persecutor a promise to this effect..........

          I do not know how my contrymen will be disposed to regard a work of this description. those who do not understand English have had no opportunity of reading stories cast in this mould; and I doubt if they will relish their first experience of this kind of literature.

         This prefatory note, which itself reads like a passage in a novel highlights the twin sources of inspiration for the novel in Malayalam: the influence of the English model and the pressure of a readership. His last sentence also makes it clear that at the time of writing, he thought of his work as the first novel in Malayalam, which incidentally is a possible answer to the question we posed at the beginning of our discussion on the novel.
          Chandu Menon started as a writer rather late in his life. He wrote Indulekha his first work and a novel of no mean length in just about two months. It is easily seen that plot is not his strong point. But Indulekha is a ;work which Malayalis cam always hold up aloft as an excellent specimen of what a novel should aim to be. The dramatic unfolding of the tale, the perfect balance between narration and dialogue, the magnificent characterization, the splendid direct and indirect criticism of manners and morals, the all-pervasive humour and irony, the vitality of every scene fully visualized-these are among the many virtues of this pioneering work of exceptional maturity. Chandu Menon started writing his second novel Sarada, but he could not finish it. The first part - about one third of the proposed work - was published in 1892. The author reveals here a firmer grip over the novel form: his speculations during the four - year interval between the two works, as P.K. Balakrishnan has pointed out, have taken him to a far more serious conception of the nature and function of the novel as a work of art.
          The interview between Indulekha and Nambudiripad may be quoted to illustrate Chandu Menon's art at its ironic best:

"Are you made about play, Indulekha?" inquired the
Nambudiripad.
"Mad about what?" asked Indulekha.
"About the play-the Kathakali".
"I have never yet been mad about anything", answered Indulekha.
"Oh I'am very mad about it, I'am as mad as I can be".
"I can quite believe that; there is no doubt about it", responded
Indulekha with a smile.
"How do you know, Indulekha? Did any one tell
you about it before?"
"No, I knew if only now"
"You know it from what I said, did'nt you?"
"Exactly; I felt certain of it from your own words".
"I had a piece acted at your place yesterday", said the Nambudiripad. "That fellow Raman acts beautifully on the stage. Have you ever heard of Raman, Indulekha? Raman, Raman, I mean: the Sudras call him Rama Panikkar: he is immensely clever, such a splendid actor and so handsome. Hereafter, Indulekha, you shall see play every day. I am quite mad on it. I have a play on most nights of the week, and yesterday I saw a male impersonating a female character. You have never seen anything like it. It was Raghavan, a boy they call Raghavan. Do you know Raghavan, Indulekha? If his face were smooth, it would be just like yours, just like it; there wouldn't be the slightest difference".

A Religious Awakening

         The impact of Western education was the great reality in Indian national life in the 19th century. The Renaissance in Bengal was its most direct consequence. Exposure to western culture made Indians look at their culture with a certain detachment. This led on the one had to increased political awareness and consequently the struggle against foreign domination; on the other hand, it provoked the Indians to set about modernizing the Indian social structure which was still steeped in medievalism.
         A new understanding India culture, especially Hindu philosophy, was thus called for; and the efforts of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sree Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Vivekandanda and others had their impact on Bengali literature. In Kerala too, there was a similar religious awakening. Sri Chattampi Swamikal (1854-1924) and Sree Narayana Guru (1857-1929), close companions often engaged in long wanderings as mendicants from place to place, were the harbingers of this new spirituality, a new moral idealism which was deeply rooted in both the wisdom of the past and the reality of the present.
         Through their revolutionary reinterpretation of the philosophy of the Vedas and the Upanishads, they brought about a massive transformation in the basic moorings of our people. Both were gifted with a linguistic insight and had a Dravidian orientation in the expression of their thought. Both used their writings - Chattampi Swamikal in prose and Narayana Guru in verse-to effect fundamental changes. Both achieved a fusion of intuition and reason, and co-ordinate the metaphysical with the mundane. Narayana Guru's poetic instinct found a supplementary fulfillment in the works of his disciple Kumaran Asan.