Biography

Malayattoor Ramakrishan was a renowned Indian writer of Malayalam literature. He is also well known for his cartoons and paintings. K.V. Ramakrishna Iyer, popurarly known as Malayattoor Ramakrishnan was born on 30 May 1927 at Kalpathi in Palakkad district of Kerala to K.R.Viswanatha Iyer and Janaki Ammal, as one of their six children. Later the family settled down at Thottuva in Ernakulam district. He studied in various schools in Kerala as per the change of work places of his father. He started his college life at Union Christian College, Aluva near the banks of River Periyar. After he graduated from the University College, Thiruvananthapuram he got a chance to work as a tutor in the Union Christian College, Aluva. After acquiring the B.L.Degree he started his career as an Advocate. Then he joined as an Assistant Editor in the Free Press Journal, Mumbai for a short while and returned to Kerala for resuming practice as Advocate. In 1954 he contested from Perumbavoor constituency for the Kerala Legislative Assembly, but lost. Then he went to Mumbai again and worked as Sub Editor of Free Press Journal for a short period. He started writing articles for their evening bulletin. While working there, he was also a contributing cartoonist to Shankar’s Weekly. His literary career had already started in 1948 with a detective novel ‘Raathri’. He also translated detective fictions of Sir Arthur Conal Doyle (Sherlock Homes novels) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula into Malayalam.

He passed the examination for the selection of Sub Magistrates with first rank and joined the Legal services. While working as Judicial First Class Magistrate at Karunagappally, he passed the Civil Services Examinations and entered the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1957. He served successfully in various important positions during his 24year long IAS career. But in the year 1981, he resigned from IAS in order to spend more time for writing. He wrote several outstanding novels, short stories, biographical sketches etc. Malayattoor Ramakrishnan married Krishnaveni in the year 1954 and the couple had two children, Mr. Viswanathan and Smt. Sobha. They lived at ‘Vaidehi’ in Sastrinagar of Thiruvananthapuram city for 27 years from 1970. Malayattoor Ramakrishnan who was the Patron of Sastrinagar Association passed away on 27th December 1997 at the age of 70.