Journo awarded posthumously for his fiction ‘The Misfit’

Hyderabad: Late Payam Sudhakaran, a senior journalist and writer, received the Arts Icon Award of the Golden Cat Literary Award-23 on Sunday. The award is sponsored by Alphabets Realistic Thought Society (ARTS).

The Misfit is a thrilling saga of love, loss, friendship, deceit, and hope. Payam Sudhakaran has managed to capture the pulse of Indian villages and cities, from the South to the Northeast, with relative ease, always keeping the reader at the edge of his seat. The story revolves around Jagadeesh, a Kerala youth who runs away from home after discovering a ghastly reality about his father and his lover. In an attempt to leave his sordid past behind, Jagadesh travels to the farthest corner of India, the Northeast. Dramatic events take him to Nagaland, a state boiling in separatist crisis. As he attempts to build a life in the land of the Nagas, working as a teacher and falling in love with a Naga beauty, fate strikes again, this time in the form of betrayal from a close friend.

Escaping the blood-thirsty tribals, he flees the hills only to befriend a Naxal leader, Venkanna, on a train journey. Jagadeesh accompanies Venkanna to Andhra Pradesh, to the heartlands of the red revolution, determined to join the movement. But Venkanna has other plans for him. Jagadeesh is dispatched to Hyderabad, to start his life over.