His schooling was at various schools in Kerala, traveling with his father whose work carried him to many places in the state and he started his college education at Union Christian College, Aluva where he had the opportunity to study under the known critic, Kuttipuzha Krishna Pillai.

[5][6] Besides his administrative career, Ramakrishnan's contributions cover the fields of journalism, literature, cartoons and films.

[2] While working as a sub-editor in The Free Press Journal in Mumbai, he was also a contributing cartoonist to Shankar's Weekly.

[3] Malayattoor Ramakrishnan wrote the award winning novel, Verukal (Roots) in 1965, a semi-autobiographical work which tells the story of a family of Tamil speaking Iyers who settled in Kerala.

In 1981, he resigned from the Indian Administrative Service to concentrate more on writing and it was during the period from 1981 to 1997 that his more famous works, viz.

[4] Aaraam Viral was the last of his novels, which he wrote three years before his death; the work has also been translated into English under the title The Sixth Finger by Prema Jayakumar.

[9] He also wrote Service Story – Ente IAS Dinangal, which documents his memoirs of his career as a bureaucrat.

[12] He was also the director of the 1982 movie, Odukkam Thudakkam, produced by M. O. Joseph which was based on his own story and he himself wrote the screenplay and dialogues for the film.