However, in 2003, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award. Vijayan was unlucky not to win India's principal literary prize, the Jnanpith, possibly because he did not endear himself to the political powers-that-be through his trenchant cartoons (Shankar's Weekly, The Far Eastern Economic Review, The Hindu, The Statesman). His Vijayan-land, a state of mind, is portrayed vividly in his work. He created a magical Malabar in his works, one where the mundane and the inspired lived side-by-side. While he lived outside Kerala for most of his adult life, spending time in Delhi and in Hyderabad (where his wife Teresa was from), he never forgot his beloved Palakkad, where the 'wind whistles through the passes and the clattering black palms'. He graduated from Victoria College in Palakkad and obtained a masters degree in English literature from Presidency College. The following year, Velukkutty was transferred and Vijayan joined the school at Koduvayur in Palakkad. Velukkutty was an officer in Malabar Special Police of the erstwhile Madras Province in British India.Formal schooling began at the age of twelve, when he joined Raja’s High School, Kottakkal in Malabar, directly in to sixth grade. Vijayan was born in Palakkad on July 2, 1930.
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