Benyamin

Benyamin is the pen name of Benny Daniel, an Indian story writer and a novelist, who writes in Malayalam, the regional language of Kerela, his native state. Born in a poor household in the Kulanada district of Kerela, Benyamin lived in the United Kingdom of Bahrain with his wife Asha Mathew and his children Kezia and Rohan since 1992, only to leave the Gulf and come back to the lap of his motherland in 2013. Benyamin's father was a taxi-driver.

Once he was waiting with his father for his employer to return from a drama, where he overheard just three words from the play, "I killed him!" And strangely, these words captured his imagination and made him long for creativity and the art of expressions later on. Just like any other Christian child, the only book he read in his childhood was the Bible, and that was the only book he read till he left for Bahrain as an engineer at the age of 21.

He loved studying mathematicsand holds a diploma in mechanical engineering from Coimbatore. However, in the Gulf, he had plenty of free time. Thus, reading books became his favorite pass time. And what started out as an attempt to kill time, eventually took a serious turn and at that time, he read more than a hundred books a year. Reading ignited the passion of creativity in the young man, away from his luscious, green homeland, amidst a sandy land full of strangers.

Thus, Benyamin began writing. In 2008, Benyamin wrote his much-acclaimed book, AaduJeevitham (Goat days), which portrayed the struggles of an immigrant in the forlorn, deserted land. He won the KerelaSahitya Academy Award for this painfully beautiful book in 2009. It was only after the prize he began to take his writings seriously. Goat days was translated into seven languages, made its way to the nominations of DSC Prize for South Indian literature in 2013.It was alsolonglisted for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize.

In 2011, he came up with another novel ManjaveyilMaranangal (Yellow Lights of Death) which is a murder mystery, written in the styles of Dan Brown, with the backdrop of the history of Syrian Christians in Kerela, which is not known to many. Some of his other prominent works include compilations of short stories in works like Euthanasia (Mercy killing) andPenmarattam (translated as Ladies Sex), novels likeAkkapporinteIrupatuNasraniVarshangal (which is translated into English as Twenty Years of Christian Quarrels),and travelogues like IrattamukhamullaNagaram, among many others. In 2015, he received the Padmaprabha Literary Award for enriching the Malayalam literature with his contributions. Today, his works are a part of the literature syllabus of various Universities in Kerela.