Kottayam Pushpanath, the popular detective novelist who took the imagination of hundreds of thousands of his avid readers to dizzy heights and played a crucial role in making reading a national past time of Malayalis, is no more.
The 80-year-old litterateur, who has penned more than 300 popular volumes of cliffhangers, has been keeping indifferent health for the past few years. His end came at his residence on Wednesday morning.
Pushpanath had suffered a personal loss when his son Salim Pushpanath died of cardiac arrest.
Pushpanath had started writing even as a school student and continued his writing career even after he joined the Education Department as teacher. His breakthrough came in the late 1960s when his detective novel Chuvanna Manushyan got serialised in the popular Malayalam weekly Manorajyam, which was published form Kottayam.
That was only the beginning. Soon Pushpanath became a household name, with the author penning up to 11 serials at a time in popular publications of Kottayam. Along with his popularity, two of his protagonists too became household names - private detectives Marxin, who usually handled crimes outside India, and Pushparaj, who was one of the most sought after private detectives in India. He also created another popular character in detective Sudheer.
While the 1960s and 70s were dominated by detective and horror novels penned by him, by mid-seventies and eighties Pushpanath moved towards magical novels. Many of his novels had been translated to Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu. He had also translated Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Two of his novels Chuvanna Anki and Raktharakshass had been made into movies.
Pushpanath leaves behind his wife and two children. His funeral will be held on Friday at the CSI Cathedral cemetery at Chalukunnu.
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