Joy J. Kaimaparamban is the author of

Being a native of India, Ayurveda has the smell and taste of the country. In ancient days only a minority used to study and practice Sanskrit language.  And they could only follow the path of Ayurveda.  Because, all the text of Indian Theology and Ayurveda were written in Sanskrit.

So the Allopathic Treatment system could drive its roots into the majority easily, many people were attracted with this medical science and they wished to become their younger generation Allopathic doctors.  They sent them to England for acquiring medical degrees.  When Allopathic medical colleges were established widely in India, the boys and girls who belonged in major community too could enter the field.  The common people who were following the Ayurvedic System turned towards allopathy. Allopathy was becoming a social status symbol.  Even common people began to think that only by the treatment of allopathy, ailments could be cured completely.  The persons who had been handling allopthy were known as doctors.  At the same time the people who handled Ayurveda were ‘Vaidyans’.  ‘Doctor’ is an English word and ‘Vaidyan’ is a word equal to the same English word, which is used in almost all Indian regional languages.  The strong effort of English loving persons stood behind the declination of Ayurvedic Medical Science.  Many of the common people began to get away from the system.  They depended allopathy medicine for curing all their diseases.  Despite all medicines of allopathy are made using chemicals they could cure every diseases quick.  Nobody thought about the reactions of the allopathy medicines.  And surgery was a great asset of the system.  An efficient allopathy doctor was able to get enough fame and wealth.  Brilliant boys and were going after allopathy.  Ayurveda was totally ignored by learned and rich Indian people.

In urgent contexts the relatives of serious and chronic patients rarely thought about the expense of treatments.  In fact allopathic treatment needs heavy expenditure.  Due to the treatment of their relatives amny people have fallen into great miseries.

Long-standing treatments sometimes become fruitless.  People turn their minds toward other systems.  Ayurveda could have rescued many patients who had been declared incurable by allopathy doctors.  And the Ayurvedic medicines are made out of herbal plants and minerals.  They are harmless. Its main defect is that it takes long time to cure ailments.  Seekers of sudden recovery of diseases go after Allopathy.  In contrast Ayurvedic treatment is good for the body and mind.  It makes no reactions.

After India got independence form the foreigners Ayurvedic Medical Science began to flourish.  Common people have deep belief in the power of Ayurvedic medicines.  It is the result of the deliberate work of Ayurvedic physicians.

Joy J. Kaimaparamban is the author of

When I was studying in high school classes I started writing poems.  As I felt no satisfaction in my poems, I wanted to correct them with the help of some talented persons. I could get acquaintance with celebrated poet Vayalar Rama Varma.  He was a friend of my father. I went to his house with one of my poems.  With reluctance I showed I showed the matter to him. He was pleased knowing that I was writing poems.  He made some corrections in it and returned it back.

I had gone to the tip of joy.  After it I used to write poems and got corrected them by the celebrated poet.  I supposed him as my preceptor or Gurunadhan writing.
One evening, while I was coming back from school, I happened to see a boy in the middle of a small crowd.  He had worn only a knicker and he had been singing a film song with the help of the orchestra, which he himself had adjusted by beating the both sides of his stomach with his hands.

For me it was a heartbreaking event. Despite the crowd was giving him small coins I had nothing to give him.  I walked home with a heavy heart.  In my heart the black scars of the singing boy’s stomach were remaining.

I tried for writing a poem on the subject.  Unfortunately I could not.  But I had to write something about the boy.  So I wrote a short story under the title ‘Paattukaaran Cherukkan’, (The Singer Boy).  Several times I rewrote it.  At last I showed it to my father.  I got appreciation from him.

On a Saturday I went 
to the house of my preceptor.  Reading the short story he opined that I had 
chosen the correct way.

I stopped writing poems and wrote stories in both languages, Malayalam and English.  I sent Malayalam stores to several periodicals and some of them were published.  I did not dare sending English stories to any publication, because I was not enough courageous.

I concentrated on publishing my Malayalam works, but I had not stopped writing in English.  Being an undergraduate I was rather inferior to take out my English works in sunlight.

But still I was writing in English.  I was unable to come out from the charming beauty of English language.


I believed that one day my English books too will come out.  After retirement from service, I began trying to enter into the vast world of English literature.

 At last, my first English novel, ‘The Azure of Solicitude’ was published in 
2009, the second novel ‘The Ayurvedic Healer’ was published in 2010.

Joy J. Kaimaparamban is the author of

The world of literature is a wonderful one.  If you refer its history you can convince the fact. From my childhood I read fiction and non-fiction aw well.  I was interested to know the lifestyles of ancient and modern writers.  I am having a special interest in reading the biographies of Artists too.  Many Artists as Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael and Rubens and the like are shining in my memory.  Several novelists have written fiction based on the lives great artists and writers.

A novel about the colossus fictionist Dostoyevsky has been published in Malayalam language under the title ‘Oru Samkeerthanam Pole’ (Like a Hymn).  It has been written by Perumbadavam Sreedharan, a celebrated 
novelist. I have read numerous works of old and new writers.  I could not have seen such a genius writer as Dostoyevsky who had brought out the pearls from the very depth of minds.

Kerala is a small land.  But many talented writers and artists had born here.  You cannot forget the of Raja Ravi Varma the celebrated artist of Kerala.  I could have befriended with efficient artists.  Many of them had disappeared behind the curtain of death.

When I think about the writers of Malayalam language, Muttathu Varkey comes into my mind first.  He was the Thomas Hardy in Malayalam language.  He wrote a lot of novels in Malayalam and he had translated the outstanding Russian novel ‘Doctor Zhivago’ into the language.

There were several talented writers in Malayalam as P Bhaskaran, Uroob (P.C.Kuttikrishnan), S.K. Pottakkat, Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, and the like.  Many writers and artists are still active with their works.

When I think about Indian writes Rabindra Nath Tagore comes first.  Despite a Bengali he wrote in English.  For his work ‘Gitanjali’ he received the Nobel Prize.  He was the only Indian writer who had won the Nobel Prize.

There lived in India, several great writers who wrote in their won languages.  Some of them are Munshi Prem Chand, Dr. Mulk Raj Anand, Kishen Chandar, K.A.  Abbas, Yashpal, and the like.  Still there are active writers and artists in 
the Indian Art world.


There are few English writers from Kerala.  The name of Arundhathi Roy stands first in the line.  She brought a Booker Prize for Kerala.
 I wish to be one of the English writers in India.

My father had been a votary of Ayurveda. He had told me the reason for it.

When he was a boy, he was attacked by some ailment, which caused him lie on bed unconscious. His father and mother became anxious about it. In that time, physicians were rare.  In my hometown there was an Ayurvedic Healer who belonged to a traditional Ayurvedic medical practitioner’s family.

As my father was unconscious, my grandfather was not interested to take him to the infirmary. And the physician was an acquaintance of my grandfather. So he went quickly to the infirmary to bring the physician home. By this time half part of my father’s body became frozen. Seeing the condition, my grandmother and other female members of the family began to cry aloud.

Within minutes grandfather and the physician came to the house. The bewailing of the family members was greeting them. They might have thought the boy had expired. With giving that comment my father was laughing.  He had never feared death. The physician entered into the room where the patient had been lying.

The physician examined my father well. Then he took out some medicinal leaves and a tablet from his box. The leaves were squeezed and the juice was taken into a small vessel. He put the tablet into the juice and dissolved it. Somehow, he could exert the medical liquid into the mouth of the patient. Very slowly it flowed into his stomach. The physician sat in a chair looking at his chain-watch, which he had brought. In that time wristwatches had not come into use.

The females stopped their bewailing. As the physician was famous for his medicinal treatment, they believed in him.

Frequently he examined the pulse rate and general body condition. His face showed the sign of expectation.

Within some minutes the frozen state of the half body seemed to have ended. The patient became conscious. The physician looked at each member of the family with a fully bloomed face. The boy had come out of his dangerous condition. But he had to take medicine for some days. Then the physician departed from the house.

My father had told me the story several times. And he had become the admirer of Ayurveda.

Here I am telling you about the third novel ‘The Wildfire’.  I have completed the work. While writing a fiction, you are in deep pain. Irving Stone, the famous novelist had written a novel under the title ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ basing the life of the great sculptor and artist Michelangelo. At the time of carving a sculpture, the sculptor is in extreme mental pain. When it is finished the sculptor falls into an ecstasy. The novelist draws the two conditions of an artist beautifully. All sculptors are not equal to Michelangelo and no writers are equal to Dostoyvski.  But each artist and writer has to pass these two states, in the second stage he metamorphoses into a critic. He can easily find out the deformations of his creation. He can easily correct them.

When I look at my work ‘The Wildfire’ I must say that I am viewing at it with a critic’s eyes.

The backdrop of ‘The Wildfire’ is a historic one. But the stories of the novel are not based on reality. Those are subjective ones. When writing any kind of novels I can only be subjective. I believe that all creative works born like that.

The events of ‘The Wildfire’ take place in 1921. That time the British were ruling India. Malabar was included in the Madras Presidency and it was under the direct ruling of the British. In Malabar, the majority was Muslims and their mother tongue being Malayalam. There were another two more countries with Malayalam as their mother tongue, Cochin and Travancore. These countries were ruled by native Kings. But they, too, were under the supervision of the British Kingdom.

‘The Wildfire’ narrates the stories of Malabar only. Following the First World War there happen worldwide disasters.  And they were concentrated in Malabar.  With the view of a novelist I narrate the frightful occurrences that happened in the land.

I think that the novel ‘The Wildfire’ will give the readers a new feel.

I started writing a novel about a seashore village and it has not been completed yet.  No title has been put for it.  I am in search of a title that will suit the creation even while I am writing it.  I know a title will come to my mind with the completion of this work.

The novel describes the lives of the fishermen living in an Arabian seashore village. The story is a subjective one. Reality and fantasy are mixed. The events take place before India received freedom from the British.

Several years ago I had worked in a school, which was in a village on a seashore. Almost all the students of the school were the children of fishermen.

I stayed in a house of a relative of a teacher, who worked in the same school.

In the evenings of the summer I used to go to the seashore. Being a teacher I could mingle with the parents of my students. I could grasp many things from them. I was eagerly going through the lives of fishermen. Rich people were very rare and their children did not come to the seashore school. The parents sent their children to other schools. They believed that the standard of the study was low in the seashore school.

Some teachers who came from outside viewed the people and their children with contempt.

In fact the seashore dwellers are straightforward and innocent. If you love them they would love you, unless you cannot get away from the flames of their rage.

I was greatly attracted to the people of the seashore. Despite the fact that I went to government service, I frequently used to remember the place and the people. Their lifestyle and their strange beliefs haunted me.

Then after several years I began to write the novel based on an Arabian seashore village.

Still I am in the continuation of the novel.  I am in the agony of writing the work. I do not know when I fall into ecstasy.

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About the Book

Set in the intriguing atmosphere of India in the early 20th century, full of mysticism, love, compassion, and political drama, The Ayurvedic Healer tells the story of Madhavan Namboodiri, a physician practicing an ancient medical science, and his enduring love for Rosalie. By healing the underprivileged, regardless of their status, touching the untouchables, he follows his beliefs and disobeys the rules of his society. His life story is set in the background of India’s struggle for freedom, the communist revolt in the Southern State of Kerala, social advancement, and the emergence of new societies. The Ayurvedic Healer sweeps the reader into an exotic place and time, rendering an intimate experience through sharing Madhavan Namboodiri’s life and love.

About the Author

Joy J. Kaimaparamban has written 18 novels in his native Malayalam language, four of them are children’s literature. His first novel in Malayalam received the Tagore award, named after Rabindranath Tagore, a famous poet, novelist, musician, playwright, and Nobel Price winner.

Joy J. Kaimaparamban was born in October 1939 to a middle class family in the Southern state of Kerala in India. After finishing his education he became a schoolmaster and worked in several Kerala government schools teaching English. He retired in 1995. Currently he lives in Vayalar, a beautiful village in the Alappuzha (Alleppey) district with his wife and two children.

His first novel written in English, The Azure of Solicitude, was published in 2009. His second novel, The Ayurvedic Healer, was published by Copperhill Media in July of 2010.

Joy J. Kaimaparamban is not only a passionate storyteller. He envisions people and events, past or present, in his native India as material for unwritten works. These visions and the ability to transform them into fascinating stories is a trademark of his novels.

From an extraordinary new voice in fiction comes a haunting, powerful novel about mothers and daughters, choice and regret, the mistakes we make and the ones we hope we can correct before it’s too late.

Nothing much ever happens in Falling Rock, Kentucky. So when Virginia Lemmons’ husband takes off in his Trans Am to take up with a beautician, there’s not much to do but what people in rural Kentucky have always done–get on with it. Now, overwhelmed and unsure, Virginia’s got her hands full trying to keep it together, body and soul, while raising her two teenage kids–eighteen-year-old son, Will, and her spirited fourteen-year-old daughter, Shannon.

But Shannon has her own ideas for breaking free of Falling Rock, and in her reckless, wild-child daughter, Virginia sees echoes of herself and her own painful past. She’ll do whatever it takes to keep her daughter from making the same tragic mistakes, and saving what’s left of her fragile family just may be the biggest fight of Virginia’s life.

In this compelling, heartbreaking first novel, Janna McMahan brings to authentic life the dreams, passions, and troubles of one southern town, where choice isn’t always easy to come by, and living the hand you’re dealt with is a grace all its own.

“A beautifully wrought novel populated by a vivid cast of characters…Janna McMahan takes us completely into the lives of these people and their small town, presenting this world with authenticity and dignity. I absolutely loved this book and will carry it with me for a long time.” –Silas House

Sixteen-year-old Nathan Shepherd has a great life traveling where the careers of his father, an investigator, and mother, a renowned violinist, take him … until his parents are found murdered.

Left with only a mirror and notes from his father’s last case, Nathan goes into hiding at the remote country home of Tony, his father’s college buddy, and Tony’s teenage daughter, Kelly.

The mysterious mirror must be a clue to what happened to his parents, and when images appear in it—people and things that don’t exist—Nathan and Kelly painstakingly gather evidence. But the killers want the mirror too, and danger threatens the teens at every turn. As it becomes evident that Nathan’s father had stumbled upon dark forces at work in the world, several questions arise.

Could it be that the mirror is a portal to a parallel world? Could this technology be used for evil purposes? And could his parents still be alive, trapped in another dimension? Nathan and Kelly struggle to solve the mystery before they too become victims.

This chilling, hair-raising adventure is jam-packed with action in a fantastical world where nothing is as it seems, and even mirrors tell lies.

In The Azure of Solicitude I am trying to outline the lives of two villages situating on the bank of Lake Vembanadu, one of the big watercourses of Kerala State, India.  It is mixed with reality and fantasy. That novel is being praised by readers and critics.

My second novel, The Ayurvedic Healer, is entirely a different one.  It is about the life of an Ayurvedic Healer, who lived for the well-being of others.  Despite he was a native of a Northern part of Kerala, he was forced to live in the middle of the State.

I have no direct connections with any Ayurvedic Physicians.  By reading several fiction and non-fiction works, I could go through the lives of persons who sacrificed for the people suffered from serious ailments. Sometimes they might have failed in some cases.  But yet they did not have taken back from their efforts. The protagonist of my novel Julian Thirumeni is the kind.

I have several times wondered about the decision of writing a novel on an Ayurvedic Healer.  Fact is that the founder of our family was an Ayurvedic Physician.  He was a Brahmin. Due to some external pressures, he was forced to convert in to Christianity. I had several times heard this occurrence from my father John Kaimaparamban.  He was like a friend of me. Being is first son, he had had more affection to me. His father might have fold him the old history.  I could understand that it was not connected with a female.

My first attempt of writing the story was in Malayalam, my mother tongue. Despite I wrote it completely it did not give me enough satisfaction. After several years I was writing it in English.

After finishing the first script, I several times have rewritten it. Sometimes I corrected some chapters, which I felt unsatisfactory.  At last it took an end.  I wish to submit this work as a tribute to my late parents John Kaimaparamban and Rosamma John.

Joy J. Kaimaparamban is the author of The Ayurvedic Healer, a novel published by Copperhill Media. For further information log on to his blog at http://www.kaimaparamban.com.