Tamil Nadu walked away with two top literary honours awarded by Sahitya Akademi in 2018 which was announced on Wednesday. While Sancharam, the novel authored by S Ramakrishnan, bagged the Akademi award for the best Tamil literary work in 2018, Tamil Nadu born S Rameshan Nair was honoured by the Akademi for Gurupournami, his Malayalam poetry based on the life of Sree Narayana Guru, South India’s greatest social reformer in the 20th century.
Rameshan Nair, equally at home both in Malayalam and Tamil, has translated some of the great Tamil epics to Malayalam. Keralaites read Chilappathikaram, Thirukural and the poems of Subramania Bharathi through Rameshan Nair who translated them all into Malayalam.
“This award comes as a surprise because I have never been considered by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi though I have been writing in Mayalam for more than five decades,” Nair told The Pioneer over phone from Kochi. He said he is dedicating this award to the people of Nanchinadu (as Kanyakumari is known in the local parlance). Though Kerala Sahitya Akademi had honoured him in 2010 with an award for his contributions to Malayalam literature, this is the first time he was getting government honours for poetry, said Nair.
Gurupournami, first published in 2012, has been acclaimed widely by literary critics and great masters. Akkitham Achuthan Nampoothiri, Malayalam’s one and only Mahakavi (great poet) had described Gurupournami as a great poem which would be enthralling readers even in centuries to come.
