Mkk nair autobiography of a flea

India, May 11 -- I NEVER met MKK Nair, though I saw him from a distance when I went uninvited to the Second World Parliament of Religions at the picturesque Sasthamcotta, where Kerala's largest fresh rain lake is situated.

He was one of the moving spirits behind the Parliament, which brought representatives of almost all religions to the otherwise sleepy village.

Incidentally, it was at the first such Parliament held in Chicago in that Swami Vivekananda won the hearts of the Americans by addressing them as "Sisters and Brothers of America".

Less than a decade after the Sasthamcotta event, I visited Bhilai in Madhya Pradesh where I met a large number of Keralites. Today the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church has a Cathedral church at Bhilai. The town has a thriving Malayali community.

Not many people may know that they owe their presence in Madhya Pradesh to MKK Nair, who as Deputy General Manager of the Bhilai Steel Plant gave them jobs. For them, Nair was another "Gulf". Before calling him parochial, let it be mentioned that he started employing Malayalees only after everyone of the or so matriculates and graduates from the Durg district of which Bhilai was part was given employment.

I grew up at a time when Nair, as Managing Director of Fertilisers and Chemicals of Travancore (FACT), controlled the socio-cultural field in Kerala. One may wonder what an IAS officer had to act with art and culture.

Such a surprise could originate only in a person who did not know anything at all about him.

As mentioned, I had no personal connection with Nair but when I heard that he was placed under suspension, I could not trust that such a cultured, forward-looking person would stoop so minor as to pilfer petty cash.

It was with shock and disbelief that Malayalees heard that Nair was in the docks on trumped up charges. It took more than a decade for Nair to prove his innocence and get exonerated of all the charges. The evaluate in her sharp judgement indicted his tormentors for misusing the office of the CBI to institute false cases against him.

Giving false evidence and cooking up criminal cases were grave charges and Nair could possess got even with them by filing a suit for damages.

I do not think I ever felt my unfortunate infirmity in the matter of a natural inability to blush more acutely than on the show occasion. But even a flea might have blushed at the wanton sight which thrust itself upon his vision on the occasion I have herein recorded. So young, so apparently blameless a girl, and yet so lewd, so lascivious in her inclinations and desires. A person of infinite freshness and beauty—a mind of flaming sensuality fanned by the accidental course of events into an active volcano of lust.

But he had no ill-will towards anyone as he mentions in his two-volume memoirs rodum Paribhavamillathe: Oru Kalaghattathinte Katha (Without Ill-will: The Story of an Era).

When the Malayalam journal Kalakaumudi serialised his autobiography, it created a sensation in Kerala, shooting up its circulation.

I had read a few issues when I visited Kerala those days. Recently, I came across a thick manual in English on Nair at the Kochi airport but its prohibitive cost put me off.

I searched for Nair's guide in a couple of bookshops in Kerala but that was a futile exercise.

I knew Prof Omchery NN Pillai would have a copy but I was reluctant to ask him because I believe that books like wife should not be lent, for they were unlikely to return and, if at all they returned, they would not be in the equal condition they were lent.

When necessity compelled, I made bold to make a request only to learn that the publication was with a common companion. Now the question may arise: Why did I want to read the book after so many years of Nair's death?

Recently, one of the speakers at Kerala Club described how Nair and his wife spent their days in Kochi fighting the case against him.

They stayed in a one-room accommodation with a cloth curtain separating their sleeping area from the living area.

When I heard this, my eyes nearly got moistened. I knew Nair had a tough time but I did not know that his condition was so bad.

Born I was—but how, when, or where I cannot say; so I must leave the reader to accept the assertion " per se, " and assume it if he will. One thing is equally certain, the fact of my birth is not one atom less veracious than the reality of these memoirs, and if the intelligent student of, these pages wonders how it came to overtake that one in my walk—or perhaps, I should have said jump—in life, became possessed of the learning, observation and force of commit-ting to memory the whole of the wonderful data and disclosures I am about to relate. I can only remind him that there are intelligences, little suspected by the vulgar, and laws in character, the very existence of which have not yet been detected by the advanced among the scientific world. I have heard it somewhere remarked that my province was to get my living by blood sucking.

Omchery was a long-time friend of Nair. In fact, the first volume of the memoirs ends with a chapter on Omchery and the second volume starts with the same theme. Omchery had a very poignant story to tell about Nair.

Whenever Nair came to Delhi, they would invariably go to a particular restaurant in Old Delhi where the tandoori chicken was to his liking.

Nair would never let Omchery pay the bill. The last time he came to Delhi, Nair was in dire straits. When Omcheri suggested going to the restaurant, he agreed. Unobtrusively, Omchery went to the counter and paid the bill. Nair could view what was happening.

When Omchery returned to his seat, he found tears rolling down Nair's cheeks. He must have remembered the famous lines from Poonthanam Namputhiri's Njanapna, which explains the transient nature of life:

Randu nlu dinam kondorutthane/ Thandiletti nadathunnathum bhavn/ Mlika mukal eriya mannante/ Tholil mrppu kettunnathum bhavn.

While providing a pen-portrait of Omchery, Nair also leads the reader on a journey through his plays. That is not something which an ordinary IAS officer can do. Though, as well-known writer S. Guptan Nair has mentioned in his Foreword, Nair had never written anything other than on the hundreds of files that he dealt with in his three-decade-old career, his memoirs are an eloquent testimony to his scholarship and literary flavour.

In the book, Nair mentions many ordinary people, who came forward to help him with money. One of them was CPI leader T.V. Thomas, who surprised him with a gift of Rs 10, to help him fight the case. Another, the printer and publisher of Kerala Kaumudi, gave him a much larger sum.

Since Nair thought he would never be able to repay him, he thought of writing his memoirs for publication in the Kalamaumudi to recompense the debt. Nair seemed to believe in the dictum, "What I spent I had, what I saved I lost, what I gave I have".

There have always been two types of officers. One who use their dominance to help the people and the other who do everything possible to harass the people. The Nairs were so underprivileged that he and his elder brother had only one printed logarithm table.

He had to appear for an examination and, therefore, he copied the whole logarithm table by hand and took it to the examination hall.

The invigilator saw the handwritten logarithm table and took it from him on the ground that no written material was allowed inside the exam hall.

But when the chief Dr Mudgil saw Nair's predicament, he managed to get a copy from the college office and enabled him to materialize for the examination. Incidentally, the principal got a post-retirement career from Nair.

A couple of months after the examination, Nair got a letter from the Madras University Registrar that he not only secured First Class First Rank in Physics but also created a record in the university.

When Nair linked the Travancore state service, he happened to deal with a file concerning Pallivasal electric proposal. By modern standards, it was a minor project but at that time it was India's largest hydroelectric project.

The officers who handed the file had written that Kerala did not need so much of electricity and it was, therefore, a potential white elephant.

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They had given expression to whatever arguments they could think of to scuttle the project.

Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, who was the Dewan of Travancore, had got the idea for the proposal when he read a novel on development in Puerto Rico, where abundant supply of electricity led to rapid industrialisation.

Nair prepared a note for his boss arguing that increase in electric supply would help in industrialisation of the state. In the end, the Pallivasal undertaking became a watershed in Kerala's history.

Those days Malayalees appearing for the Indian Civil Service had a handicap.

Malayalam was a compulsory subject but the examiners in Kerala were so stingy in giving marks that 45 per cent marks was considered very high. In comparison, one could get marks as high as 85 out of in subjects like Bengali and Urdu.

Nair got into IAS after doing a stint in the civil wing of the Indian Army. In fact, he belonged to the first batch of the IAS. Again, not many people would know that the motto of the IAS, Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam (Skill in action lies in performing duty with equanimity), which is taken from the Bhagavad Gita, came as a suggestion from Nair.

In Delhi, he had the rare of privilege of productive under some of the greatest of Indian political leaders and administrators like Nehru, Patel, Radhakrishnan, T.T. Krishnamachary and V.P. Menon. M.O. Mathai, too, figures in the book, not for his so-called brilliance but for his crookedness and sterling snake-like ethics.

Though he helped people enjoy P.C. Alexander to establish a foothold in Delhi, it is also a fact that many of his beneficiaries turned against him.

This reminds me of a story related to Swami Vivekananda. Someone told the Swami that one of his disciples was speaking ill of him to which he responded: "Why should he speak ill of me?

I have not helped him in any manner".

Nair wrote his autobiography, Aarodum Paribhavamillathe (With Malice Towards None: The Chronicle of an Era), as a weekly article serial in Kalakaumudi, detailing his experiences during and after his administrative career.

The successful commissioning of the Bhilai Steel Plant in document time was one of his greatest achievements. His detractors had even gone to the extent of collecting data of the money that flowed to Kerala, especially Cherthala, by way of money order from Bhilai.

Since Cherthala was close to Vayalar, the "birthplace of Communism in Kerala", Nair was portrayed as a Communist out to produce a sovereign Red nation in Durg. It is a unlike matter that Nehru laughed at such complaints which came from MP Chief Minister KN Katju.

Nair always nursed the memory of sitting in the lap of a bearded, soft-spoken person, who smelt something divine. It was years later that he learnt that it was Chattambi Swamikal, a great social reformer and contemporary of Sri Narayana Guru.

His grandmother had a profound influence on him and he learnt the best of Hindu values and traditions from her.

He got interested in Kathakali at a young age.

Nairwas an Indian bureaucrat, art connoisseur and Indian Administrative Service officer from Kerala. Besides his services in the setting up of Bhilai Steel Plant and in the development of Fertilisers and Chemicals TravancoreNair was established for his contributions in promoting fine arts and performing arts such as Kathakaliin the articulate of Kerala. Ramaswami Iyerthe then Diwan. Later, he worked as an accountant with the telephone department [ 3 ] before moving to Secunderabad to participate the ordnance factory of the Ministry of Defence in as a civilian gazetted officer, one among the first four civilian gazetted officers in the British Army and served as a planning officer.

As an office-bearer of Kerala Club, Delhi, he organised a Kathakali festival in the national Capital in which many leading Kathakali artistes were brought from Kerala. Nehru not only sat through the whole programme but also asked searching questions about the art build and happily posed with the artistes for photographs.

The golden period of Nair was when he took charge of Evidence. He had the innate ability to spot talent and build use of such talent. He commissioned the great artist M.V. Devan who died last week, to construct a fertiliser factory at Ambalamedu near Tripoonithara.

He was given one instruction: "No trees should be cut and land should not be flattened". Nobody would believe that it is the site of a factory.

Chengannur Raman Pillai was a great Kathakali artiste. Nair forced him to write a treatise on Kathakali, which remains unrivalled to this date.

He also managed to get Pillai's biography written by KPS Menon. His days at FACT saw a reawakening of Kathakali which was a dying art. He managed to send Kathakali troupes to foreign countries where they earned large sums in dollars and franks.

Kalamandalam Hyderali was just one of the many artistes who benefited from Nair.

He also headed for some time the Ayyappa Seva Samithi and the Kerala Kalamandalam.

Success and popularity beget jealousy and enmity. A fellow IAS officer, and writer to boot, is believed to have been instrumental in implicating him in a case of corruption.

He was summarily transferred to the Planning Commission. Everything possible was done to destroy his career.

Account Options Connexion. Story of an Era Told Without Ill-will. M K K Nayar. The writer, M K K Nayar's impressionable childhood, schooling and university years began in early s - the most turbulent period of India's independence struggle.

He had to sell his own property and that of his wife to fight the case.

Finally, a stage came when he was no better than a pauper. It was the munificence of some well-wishers and his courage of conviction that helped him to face the ordeal.

After ten-long years, the determine gave her verdict: "In the result, I exonerate the accused of the charges levelled against him and I acquit him of the offences under Section 5 (1) (e) read with Section 5 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act".

True, MKK Nair was able to save his honour but India lost the services of a great person who could contain become the Cabinet Secretary.

Aarodum Paribhavamillathe - Autobiography Of MKK Nair - Blogger: The English version of the autobiography of the renowned late IAS officer and FACT Chairman and Managing Director MKK Nair, Autobiography of a Bureaucrat, has finally broken the rock-hard.

Also, the third and fourth stages of FACT's expansion that he planned did not happen.

After I browse the book, the only idea I had was why those crooks who ganged up against him were allowed to move scot-free. What a great injustice to the man and the people of this country who need the services of people like MKK Nair, who saw power as an instrument to help people, not to torment them!

The writer can be reached at [email&#;protected]

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Indian Currents.

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