Sukumar Azheekkode alleged that it was Sudheesh and other friends who were
responsible for the last press meet and death of M. N. Vijayan.
A peculiar Kerala logic that is. Even a 'respectable' man like MNVijayan
is denied of his agency in what he did .
That reminded me of the way in which Kerala 'public'
generally behaved to Nalini Jameela. Also, the way in which agency was
denied to Rajeena,
victim in Vithura case ...
Below I am pasting a small descriptive portion of a paper presented at
Hyderabad Central university
on October 4th [ in a seminar on 'Translation and Transformation"] this
month by me.
The paper was titled " Who is a writer? On Writings of Nalini Jameela and C.
ayyappan".
Nalini Jameela came to the public attention in Kerala when her
autobiography became a best seller.There was an uproar as DCBooks , the
major mainstream publishing house in malayalam published it. Incidentally ,
I was working as editor in DCBooks then though not directly involved in
that project.Nalin was a friend much before I joined DCBooks.
Everybody, [ rightists and feminists alike ] thought that her story
was fiction and the real 'author' was the person who transcribed it.
Surprisingly, Nalini hereself came to my home one day and complained that
she was completely upset to see the published version.She wanted to revise
it thouroughly.
Both of us went and spoke with Ravi DC [ incidentally that was her
'first' encounter with the publisher!!] . The actual situation was more
complicated than we expected it to be.According to the agreement signed, the
rights of her autobiography was with the person who transcribed it! Ravi DC
agreed to bring out the revised version and Nalini got the rights back after
paying 25,000 rupees out of her royalty to I. Gopinath, the transcriber.
One wonders whether any other 'author' will be treated in a similar
manner.In public's view, she can't have any political or heoretical
dilemmas.
After reclaiming the right, we ie; five of us worked as a group and
prepared the new version out of fresh interviews within one month. Her
decision to rewrite the autobiography also created much controversy.
She mentions in her introduction to the revised versionn that she
did try to write it herself, but couldn't move beyond a few sentences. She
wrote this much in a notebook. ' I am Nalini. Was born at Kalloor near
Amballoor. I am fourty-nine years old." This ended in her losing a client as
he learned her real age after accidenatlly reading it! Thgus lack of 'a
room of one's own without cliends' foiled her attempt at becoming an author.
Couple of weeks ago, when the English translation was released in
Delhi, Nalini respnded to questions about authorship in an interesting way.
most of the reporters refused to accept somebody who gets her autobiography
written by others as an authentic author.Answering questions about her next
literary venture Nalini sarcastically replied: You just mentioned how can I
be an author. Therefore ,it will take time for me to write the next book.
Let me become an author first!!"
--
Dileep R I thuravoor
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