198 books, and far from putting the pen down: Goa’s writer-Governor
These lines from a poem titled ‘Oh, Mizoram’ were penned by P S Sreedharan Pillai — in a collection of poems — the night he landed in Mizoram after being sworn in as the Governor of the state in 2019. Pillai says he wrote the poem as an ode to the scenic beauty of the Northeast state.
And, if that sounds prolific, you don’t know Pillai, now the Governor of Goa. On May 2, a collection of his short stories, Ente Priya Kadhakal, is scheduled to be released by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Thiruvananthapuram. It would be his “198th book”.
Sitting amidst his office in Raj Bhavan that has stacks of books piled up on chairs and in corners along the floor, the 68-year-old says: “My ambition is to write till my last breath.”
In a career spanning over five decades, Pillai has been many things — lawyer, student leader, an active BJP politician in his native Kerala, orator — and lately, a Governor blossoming as an author and a poet.
In the last four years, he has authored at least 60 books on subjects ranging from politics, law, economy and social issues to nature and travelogues. The Covid pandemic, with its empty hours to fill, certainly helped, Pillai says. “Public visits were prohibited and travel was suspended… It was a blessing in disguise.”
Life has since fallen into a more gubernatorial routine, and Pillai says he manages by waking up at 4 am and spending over an hour voraciously reading or writing. He is never to be seen without a book on his travels, he says.
The love for reading started young for Pillai, who would frequent the village library at his native Venmony in Alappuzha district to devour anything he could lay his lands on — Malayalam dailies, classics, folklore, and political books. He lists the writings of Ram Manohar Lohia, Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya as among his favourites; and the English T S Eliot and William Shakespeare, Malayalam poet Ayyappa Paniker and Malayalam writer S K Pottekkatt as among his early literary influences.
