The World Renowned Nose

Vaikom Muhammed Basheer is placed in the high altar of Malayalam literature as his literary creations are marked by the down to earth narration and sheer verities of the lives of common folk. This titan of Malayalam literature affectionately addressed as ‘Beypore Sultan’ has earned a distinctive mark of his own in Kerala as a humanist, writer, freedom fighter, and novelist. Along with him, P. Keshava Dev, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, S.K. Pottekkatt and P.C. Kuttikrishnan constituted the Pentagon that inaugurated the Renaissance novel in Malayalam. Basheer wrote 13 novels and 13 collections of short stories apart from several articles, essays, and plays. Balyakalasakhi (Childhood Friend), the most enduring romantic tragedy novel penned by Basheer in 1944 has been translated into various Indian and global languages. 

The critic, M.P. Paul in his foreword to the novel opines that “it is a page torn from the life, bleeding at its edges”. This epitomizes the fact that his fictional and factual world remains inseparable and we come across an autobiographical sort of subtext in his creative landscape. By taking the readers through the dark corridors of human life, Basheer portrays the life of humble and ordinary folks. His literary oeuvre represents the real episodes from his life and they are suffused with humor and pathos. His adoration for his brother man, concern for his society, the warmth of the colloquial language, satire, and suggestiveness elevate him to the stature of the sultan of story. We can never trace any kind of artistic embellishment, parading of verbosity, and scholarship in the writings of Basheer. He wrote for the common people in a language easily comprehensible to them and the words flowed out of his realistic impressions. His rich and varied experience of life across various parts of the world have the undercurrents of real lifeblood and flesh.

According to the eminent Indian poet and critic, K. Satchidanandan, “Basheer used to say he was never sure about the Malayalam alphabet; this apparent inadequacy compelled him to invent an idiom that is closest to the everyday life of Malayalis that revolutionized the art of storytelling in the language. He could make his fictional world possible only by radically altering the status quo vocabulary. Ordinary words picked up from the streets and the inner courtyards of Malabar homes gained a new vibrancy and artistic aura when Basheer employed them in his fresh narrative contexts. His seemingly artless manner had behind it an unarticulated yet profound theory about the use of language in contemporary fiction that taught different lessons to future writers.” I have recently come across the short story entitled “The World Renowned Nose” (Vishwavikhyathamaya Mookku) which in fact did put me in knots. This short story, in reality, exemplifies the unarticulated and the profound psychology embedded in the human chromosome. The story delineates the life of an ordinary cook and how he as well as his life becomes an extraordinary one just because of the elongation of his nose. The story with a touch of black humor and satire unravels the true countenance of the present-day society and the partisan instances behind it.

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