With all the reality shows ruling the primetime waves, television channels were not ready for something like this. MN Vijayan, the professor who healed madness and Marxist deviation, died in front of reporters and cameramen at Thrissur Press Club on October 3. “Everybody is objecting to the language of Padhom. Our political debates are language debates. It was (Bernard) Shaw who said we need that language to be heard. First…,” the 77-year-old philosopher leaned against the chair, eyes rolled over and words unfinished. Minutes later, he was pronounced dead at a hospital. Cause: cardiac arrest.
Vijayan died in the line of duty, like Kenji Nagai, the 50-year-old Japanese photographer killed by the military junta in Yangon on September 27. Unlike Nagai, Vijayan didn’t leave behind any cruel killers. His was the most unnatural natural death in recent times. Like Nagai, whose untiring professional commitment was captured by another photographer, Vijayan was busy with his mission till the end. How would have the cultural critic reacted to his televised death?
Reactions to the demise were spontaneous. Hundreds of students and admirers poured in to his house in Kodungallur. Estranged comrades joined the mourning, but insisted the professor’s fights had been quixotic. But the words still echoed: “To say let’s all join and agitate is to say not to agitate. Nowhere in the world has such an agitation happened.” The razor-sharp eyes and the sharper brain were always on the lookout for aggressors. The life of MN Viayan was called resistance.
When he resigned as the editor of Deshabhimani weekly, a CPI(M) organ, Vijayan said resignation too was a political activity. Because he believed in his political visions with painful consistency throughout the 77 years, he died a happy man. Even minutes before he collapsed, he was smiling and putting together words to mount a fresh bout of attack on Kerala’s lauded decentralization regime, People’s Plan. The grass-roots experiment had an imperialist agenda, he believed.
Vijayan’s paths were unpredictable, but his reasoning was never uncertain. He defended the political killings in Kannur as resistance. He lambasted the official communist leadership for its neoliberal compromises. The magazine he edited, Paadhom, saw an imperialist agenda in the grouping of prostitutes and the writings of Arundhati Roy. Every time, he was surprisingly convincing in his arguments though his critics tried to portray him as a shadow fighter.
The man who overpowered cancer continued learning and teaching till the last breath. The young man with the silver mane stood out in a crowd of aged adolescents. Neither fear nor favour, guns nor roses can hamper the progress of will. As long as the gray matter lives, some people are invincible. Only death – as a pot of hemlock, a wooden cross, a speeding bullet or a contracted cardiac muscle – does part these prophets from their experiments with truth.
Vijayan died in the line of duty, like Kenji Nagai, the 50-year-old Japanese photographer killed by the military junta in Yangon on September 27. Unlike Nagai, Vijayan didn’t leave behind any cruel killers. His was the most unnatural natural death in recent times. Like Nagai, whose untiring professional commitment was captured by another photographer, Vijayan was busy with his mission till the end. How would have the cultural critic reacted to his televised death?
Reactions to the demise were spontaneous. Hundreds of students and admirers poured in to his house in Kodungallur. Estranged comrades joined the mourning, but insisted the professor’s fights had been quixotic. But the words still echoed: “To say let’s all join and agitate is to say not to agitate. Nowhere in the world has such an agitation happened.” The razor-sharp eyes and the sharper brain were always on the lookout for aggressors. The life of MN Viayan was called resistance.
When he resigned as the editor of Deshabhimani weekly, a CPI(M) organ, Vijayan said resignation too was a political activity. Because he believed in his political visions with painful consistency throughout the 77 years, he died a happy man. Even minutes before he collapsed, he was smiling and putting together words to mount a fresh bout of attack on Kerala’s lauded decentralization regime, People’s Plan. The grass-roots experiment had an imperialist agenda, he believed.
Vijayan’s paths were unpredictable, but his reasoning was never uncertain. He defended the political killings in Kannur as resistance. He lambasted the official communist leadership for its neoliberal compromises. The magazine he edited, Paadhom, saw an imperialist agenda in the grouping of prostitutes and the writings of Arundhati Roy. Every time, he was surprisingly convincing in his arguments though his critics tried to portray him as a shadow fighter.
The man who overpowered cancer continued learning and teaching till the last breath. The young man with the silver mane stood out in a crowd of aged adolescents. Neither fear nor favour, guns nor roses can hamper the progress of will. As long as the gray matter lives, some people are invincible. Only death – as a pot of hemlock, a wooden cross, a speeding bullet or a contracted cardiac muscle – does part these prophets from their experiments with truth.
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