KMB Honours Writer Anand with Seminar and Sculpture Exhibition in his Hometown

THRISSUR:

A two-day seminar exploring the literary world of veteran Malayalam writer Anand, along with a sculpture exhibition inspired by his creative legacy, commenced in his hometown of Irinjalakuda on Saturday as part of the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

Titled “Anandinte Rachanalokam” (Anand’s Creative World), this seminar is part of the Biennale’s outreach program and its thematic series, “Art, Time, Conflict.”

The initiative aims to extend the Biennale’s curatorial conversations beyond Kochi to regions that have influenced India’s modern intellectual and artistic landscape.

The program is being organised in collaboration with the Peruvanam International Village Festival. The seminar has been curated by cultural activist and documentary filmmaker Keli Ramachandran, with an introductory note by Prof P Pavithran.

According to the organisers, the event aims to revisit Anand’s writings not just as literary texts but as philosophical interventions that continue to resonate in a time marked by political turbulence, ethical uncertainty, and cultural flux.

In his inaugural address, noted writer M Mukundan described Anand as a writer whose relevance extends far beyond linguistic and regional boundaries.

“Anand is not merely the writer of Malayalis,” Mukundan said. “He is a writer of the world.”

Recalling his years in Delhi alongside Anand, Mukundan emphasised the writer’s deep engagement with ideas rather than literary trends.

He noted that Anand’s fiction and essays resist easy categorisation, saying, “Anand is fundamentally a writer of ideas,” and that his works challenge readers to rethink the relationship between history and time.

Mukundan also highlighted one of Anand’s enduring philosophical positions: that history should not be viewed as a closed account of the past but as a force that shapes the future.

“For Anand, history is not about what has already happened,” he explained. “It is about what is yet to come. His writing insists that the present carries an ethical responsibility for the future.”

The seminar will feature sessions that examine Anand’s novels, short stories, and essays in relation to themes such as existential freedom, political violence, modernity, ecological anxiety, and the moral dilemmas of postcolonial society.

Scholars, writers, and artists will engage in discussions that contextualise Anand’s work both within Malayalam literary history and broader global philosophical traditions.

Running parallel to the seminar is a sculpture exhibition inspired by Anand’s literary imagination. The exhibition, part of the Biennale’s outreach framework, was unveiled by MR Raju, a senior sculptor from Peruvanam village.

The exhibition aims to translate the abstract and often unsettling worlds of Anand’s fiction into visual and spatial forms. Curators note that the sculptures are not literal representations of characters or narratives but artistic responses to the ethical and existential questions raised by his writing.

Literary critic V Rajakrishnan delivered the keynote address on “Anand and Modernity,” describing him as an iconoclastic writer who has dedicated himself to writing while detaching from everything around him.

KC Narayanan delivered an address on “Environmental Philosophy.”