Oru Professorude Maranam - 'death of a Professor' (in Malayalam)
P A Menon
Synopsis "Oru Professorude Maranam - 'death of a Professor' (in Malayalam)"
'Oru Professarude Maranam' (The Death of a Professor) is a semi-autobiographical novel, and tells the story of a young boy in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala in the early part of the 20th century. It was a time of social turmoil, when feudal society was breaking up along with the hallowed joint family system. The years just before and after India's independence in 1947, also heralded the great exodus of youngsters from Kerala, first to Bombay and other cities in search of jobs-similar to the big movement into the Gulf countries in the 1970s and 1980s. The book, written in a lyrical and narrative style, throws up evacuative images of the ancient rituals and festivals of rural Kerala, including beautiful descriptions of a temple oracle, the 'Vishu (Kerala New Year), and its associated folk dances. The protagonist, a young lad named Appu, tells his story of growing up without his biological mother, who passed away when he was just a years old, the struggle with loneliness inside a big home, studies in a primary school, the funeral of his beloved grandmother and the division of the family properties among his many relatives. The young boy also is shocked when his disciplinarian father takes him to his ancestral house where he is introduced to his stepmother and three children. He spends his time, immersed in books from the school library. His dream is to become a professor, and he gets high marks in both primary and secondary schools. However, his stepmother - who now has eight children of her own and with one more on the way puts her foot down - shattering his hopes of getting a university education. Instead, his father asks him to look after one of the family's retail shops. He then takes permission from his father and at the age of 18 takes a train to Bombay, a whole new world, where he begins a new life from scratch. The professor in him slowly dies a silent death.
