C. P. Surendran

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C. P. Surendran is an acclaimed Indian poet, novelist, senior journalist, columnist and a screenplay writer. He writes in English and is based out of New Delhi, India.

Early life and education[edit]

Surendran was born on 9 June 1958 in Ottapalam, Kerala. His father, Pavanan (a.k.a Puthanveettil Narayanan Nair) was a pioneering rationalist, a leftist Malayalam writer and an activist. His mother, Parvathy Pavanan, is an acclaimed author and a winner of the Kerala Sahitya Academy Award. After schooling in Trivandrum and Chennai, Surendran graduated from a college in Thrissur, and went on to receive his Master's in English Literature from Delhi University, New Delhi. Surendran, in his own words, says he grew up in a Kerala where, “Literature, politics and culture had clear directions to go. The place and its people had a certain rooted identity.”

Career in journalism[edit]

Surendran had a brief stint as a teacher of English Literature at Calicut University in Kerala before moving to Mumbai in 1986 to find his calling as a journalist, in the footsteps of his illustrious uncle and veteran journalist and activist, the late C.P. Ramachandran.

Surendran started his career in print media as a journalist with leading English newspapers including The Times of India, Times Sunday Review and Bombay Times. He was a resident editor of The Times of India in Pune for three years from 2003 to 2006. He was the editor of Open Magazine in New Delhi from 2009 to 2012. He went on to serve as the senior editor with The Times of India in Delhi and later, as the chief editor of Daily News and Analysis (a.k.a DNA). He is currently a contributing editor, columnist and media consultant with Khaleej Times. He is a columnist for Indian and international papers like The Hindu, The Hindustan Times, Outlook, Khaleej Times, and Gulf News.

Poetry[edit]

Surendran's poems have been internationally anthologized, and he has received several recognitions for writing and journalism including Reuters International Fellowship at Oxford, Wolfson Press Fellowship at Cambridge and British Council Literature Fellowship at Cambridge. A selection of his poems was included in Gemini II (1994) and received a stunning opening. He was immediately hailed as a real discovery. His first independent collection, "Posthumous Poems" announced the advent of a gifted anglophone poet. His other volumes of poetry include "Canaries on the Moon" (2002), "Portraits of the Space We Occupy" (2007) and "Available Light: New and Collected Poems"(2017). "Available Light" is a collection of 360 poems written over 25 years and includes new poems appended with those from his previous 4 volumes in poetry.

Stark and often caustic, his poems reflect his preoccupation with love, death and loneliness. Surendran shows himself in his poems as a bruised self, torn in love and relationships. A sense of heightened awareness especially in retrospect, marks his poems. Often there is an attempt at self-annihilation, or of past memory. 

                          Home, I tell the man turning away in the mirror,
                          My captive. Let him go?
                          Cut my wrist and set off a little sunset.
                          Let him go.

Boyhood, a sense of failure in emotional bonding, are strong undercurrents in his poetry. There is often an acute awareness of alienation and his poems are imbued with a rare intensity and integrity.

Fiction[edit]

His books of fiction include "An Iron Harvest" (2006), "Lost and Found" (2010) and "Hadal" (2015). His latest novel, "One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B", was released in July 2021.

An Iron Harvest, published by Penguin Viking in 2006, is based on the naxal uprising in Kerala in the 70s and tackled the dreams of the rebellious youth during Emergency. It involves the custodial death of a young engineering student Rajan in 1976 and the long and lonely one-man war that his father, Echara Warrier, waged against the state to wrest justice and restore honor to his son. It is one of the very few fictional works based on the Naxalite uprising in the 70s and the machinery's stifling of it.

His second novel, Lost and Found, was published in 2010 by Harper Collins. Hailed as a major work by a writer from the post-Rushdie era of Indian English fiction, it is set in the back drop of a high-voltage drama that resembles the Mumbai terror attack. Through unrelated characters and constantly shifting perspectives, mixing prose and poetry, Lost and Found provides a kaleidoscopic view of the present reality and contextualizes the absurdity of religious and political faith and elaborates the truth governing our time — the violence of irrationality.

Hadal, his third novel, was published by HarperCollins in 2015 and is a fictionalized account of the incidents that conspired around the 1994 ISRO spy debacle in Kerala.

Screenplay[edit]

Surendran has juggled effortlessly between different genres in the world of letters. Besides poetry and fiction, he is also a successful screenplay writer, having written scripts for critically acclaimed movies.

Gour Hari Dastaan, which was released in 2014, depicts a brutally honest mirror to Indian society by portraying the story of an ageing freedom fighter running from pillar to post trying to prove that he participated in the freedom struggle. The movie received wide critical acclaim.

Surendran also wrote the screenplay for "Mai Ghat" (2019) which went on to be nominated for online screening at the 73rd Festival de Cannes. ‘Mai Ghat’ tells real-life story of Kerala woman who won 13-year legal battle for the custodial death of her son.

Surendran currently lives in Gurgaon, New Delhi.

Bibliography[edit]

Novels

  • An Iron Harvest (Indiaink)[1]
  • Lost And Found ( HarperCollins, 2010)[2]
  • Hadal (HarperCollins 2015)[3]
  • One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B (Niyogi Books)

Poetry

  • Gemini II (Penguin Viking)
  • Posthumous Poems (Penguin Viking)
  • Canaries On The Moon (Yeti Press)
  • Portraits Of The Space We Occupy (Harper Collins)
  • Available Light: New and Collected Poems (Harper Collins)[4]

Screenplay

  • Gour Hari Dastaan (2014)Mahadevan, Anant (14 August 2015), Gour Hari Dastaan: The Freedom File (Biography, Drama), Siddhivinayak CineVision, retrieved 26 October 2021</ref>
  • Mai Ghat (2019)[5]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ "An Iron Harvest: Hard and Bound". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  2. ↑ Naim, Faisal M. (10 December 2010). "Lost in the muddle". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  3. ↑ Padmanabhan, Geeta (25 May 2015). "A tale of intrigue". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  4. ↑ "Available Light: Single Malt experience in desi literary cocktail party". OnManorama. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  5. ↑ Joshi, Namrata (30 August 2019). "Ananth Mahadevan's 'Mai Ghat' is a moving film based on a mother's real-life fight for justice". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 26 October 2021.

External links[edit]



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