The dimple on his right cheek the sparkle in his eyes, the kind, shy smile that never seemed to fade, and that rapid, husky Thrissur Namboodiri diction—all remain etched in memory. The diminutive Marxist could embed a secret plan to change the world even in the design of a smokeless choola. His Gandhian passion, childlike innocence, simplicity and irrepressible positivity were infectious; everyone around him came to believe, at least for a while, that the revolution was just around the corner.

For me personally, MP Parameswaran, MP to everyone, was almost a family member from my childhood. He was among the stream of young, bright and radical minds who used to visit my father during the sixties to debate and dream, without end. I remember myself sitting wide-eyed and without a clue, watching their talk, arguments, gesticulations and loud laughter.

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Dr M.P. Parameswaran, who passed away in Thrissur on 11 August at the age of 91, deserves a distinct place in Malayali intellectual and socio-political history. Born into a conservative Brahmin family, the brilliant engineer went to Moscow in the 1950s and earned a PhD in the then-nascent field of nuclear technology. On returning to India, he joined BARC, the premier institution established by Homi Bhabha at Prime Minister Nehru’s initiative to drive scientific progress and nation-building.

A decade later, Parameswaran, always more passionate about working on the ground among people than in laboratories, returned to Kerala on deputation to join the newly established State Institute of Languages in Thiruvananthapuram. He was part of the project to make advanced scientific concepts accessible in Malayalam and soon became a leading figure in the Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), the country’s largest voluntary popular science movement. To give his scientific and social commitments a firmer political footing, he later joined the CPM in which he remained for over a quarter century until it expelled him in 2004. Even during his association with the party, more than power or parliamentary office,........

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