More than four decades after his demise, a memorial for P Keshava Dev, Malayalam literature’s eternal rebel and social reformer, is becoming a reality. V D Satheeshan, Leader of the Opposition in Kerala Legislative Assembly, who inaugurated a Cultural Yathra from the dilapidated residence of the winner of National Academy of Literature, assured the people in the constituency that their dream would soon become a reality as he himself would take the initiative to construct the memorial.
Keshav Dev (1904-1983) was born at Paravoor in Ernakulam district and remembered as the writer who portrayed the life of farm workers, head load workers, sex workers and other downtrodden sections of the society through his novels and short storied. Along with Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai and P C Kuttykrishnan, Dev formed the triumvirate of Malayalam’s modern literature. He was the one of the pioneers in Kerala to get converted to Arya Samaj and that was how Keshava Pillai became Keshava Dev.
‘Though he was attracted towards Communism, Dev was upset with the comrades who bulldozed civil rights and freedom of expression. The ire towards Communism resulted in the path breaking literary work “You turned Me Against Communism”. His novels From The Gutter (1942) and Rowdy said the stories of a rickshaw puller and a depredator respectively. The 1963 work Neighbors, an epic of a village and how the three major communities Nairs, Christians and Eezhava underwent a transformation in post-independent India, is rated as an all time great novel.
The memorial meeting at Dev’s ancestral house was held as part of Kochi Literary Festival which is getting ready to observe the 28th edition with a month long cultural events. Writers from Ernakulam district undertook a cultural yatra from Dev’s house in Paravoor to Irinjalakkuda, the cultural capital which boasts of th birth place of Samgama Grama Madhava (1340-1425) , the founder of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics.
The team of writers also called on Paliyam Palace, the headquarters of the Prim Minister and Chief of Army Staff of the Kingdom of Kochi. The gurukula launched by Padma Bhushan Ammannoor Madhava Chakyar (Chakyars are the proponents of Koothu, an art form), the palace of Kunhikuttan Thampuran and Unnayi Varrior Memorial too figured in the itinerary of the team.
