aligarh age is just a number when it comes to pursuit of excellence academician vellayani arjunan who at 82 received his third dlitt doctor of literature doctor of letters this time from aligarh muslim university amu tells us how there is no age for pursuing your academic interest and quest for knowledge and desire to learn new things is what keeps me going he says the keralabased scholar from 1961 to 1970 has worked as the first malayalam lecturer in amu after he completed his phd in 1984 he joined as the director of institute of encyclopedic publication in kerala and continued with research work his first two dlitt degrees were on the influence of hindi vocabulary on the south indian languages a linguistic study from jabalpur university and a comparative study of the mutual relations and uniformity of hindi and malayalam languages from agra university arjunan has published more than 40 books which include his works on poetry criticism linguistics and comparative literature his books have been used as textbooks in schools and colleges for many years he was awarded padma shri in 2008 for his contributions to literature and education and suhrd samman by up government for national integration in 1993 in his recent study which is in malayalam arjunan researched the influence of social reformer sree narayana guru on malayalam poetry young researchers should work hard and bring to fore figures and reformers from history who have worked for national integration he says i was influenced by guru for his vision for the betterment of the society he mingled with people from all walks of life the low caste were not allowed in temples so he set up temple for them and fought for freedom of worship there was a time when the sanskrit was the center of learning for the upper caste brahmins he opened schools and democratized education i wanted to work on a revolutionary reformer like him he explains arjunan had submitted his thesis of over 1000 pages and in two volumes in modern indian languages department of amu tn satheesan professor of malayalam and chairman of the department said he continues to produce academic works even after retirement and is an inspiration for young researchers getting up at 300 am for academic reading is inspiring