Vaikom Muhammad Basheer: A Master of Malayalam Short Stories
Vaikom Muhammad Basheer (1908-1994) was one of the most prominent and influential writers of Malayalam literature, the language spoken in the southern Indian state of Kerala. He is widely regarded as the pioneer of modernism and social realism in Malayalam fiction, and as a writer who captured the essence of the common people and their lives with humor, compassion and insight.
Born into a Muslim family in Vaikom, a town near Kochi, Basheer had a restless and adventurous life that provided him with rich material for his stories. He ran away from home at the age of 15 to join the freedom struggle against British colonial rule, and was imprisoned several times. He travelled extensively across India and abroad, living with Sufis, ascetics, revolutionaries and vagabonds. He worked as a loom fitter, a cook, a newspaper vendor, a tutor, a caretaker and a sports writer. He also suffered from mental illness and spent some time in an asylum.
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Basheer started writing stories in the 1930s, and published his first collection in 1942. He wrote more than 50 short stories and 15 novels, as well as essays, memoirs, letters and poems. His stories are marked by his distinctive style of simple and colloquial language, blending realism and fantasy, humor and pathos, satire and sympathy. He wrote about a wide range of topics and characters, such as love, poverty, madness, violence, politics, religion, animals, plants and ghosts. He drew inspiration from his own experiences as well as from folklore, history and mythology.
Some of his most famous stories include Second Hand, Poovan Banana, The Tiger, The Blue Light, The Snake and the Mirror and A Small Old Love Story. His stories have been translated into many languages, including English, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali and French. He has also been adapted into films, plays, radio dramas and comics. He received many awards and honors for his literary achievements, such as the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Shri.
Vaikom Muhammad Basheer's stories are available in PDF format online for free download. Here are some links to access them:
Short Stories by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer (Google Books)
Short Stories of Vaikom Muhammad Basheer by Rekhta (Hindi and Urdu)
Vaikom Muhammad Basheer: Poovan Banana and other stories by V. Abdulla (Cambridge Core)
I hope you enjoy reading these stories by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer.
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