Only for the die-hard Tams!

Have been vela and been visiting some good blogs...For a change this time visited many in Tam and was surprised to find a thriving net community which analyses every issue of Kumudam/ vikatan...'mella thamizhini vaazhum - in blogs & web archives' is what I wanted to retort to Bharathi...

As a very active Tam reader - I really feel that what Today's Tam literature lacks is a strong writer - while Old hand sujatha is still around, endearing himself to the software junta, by his brahminic musings and rajini-Kamal connections, I do think that there is noone today in Tam - literature who makes the gap between mainstream kumudam & the elite kanaiyazhi's & kurumpathirigaigal disappear.. There are some very good attempts in trying to take elite Tam writing to the masses - there is one Mr. Ramakrishnan's column in Vikatan, which talks about one best tam writing every week, but such stuff is sporadic and it is still 'bridging' gaps instead of eliminating them...

People might disagree, but I believe that may be the first (and to me the last) person who broke the difference between mass and class writing in Tamil (only next to Bharathiyar!) is Jeyakanthan - in fact he chose to write about the masses, in the most classy way possible!He recently won a gnanpeeth and I was amazed to see the lacklustre response it generated amongst Tam Junta - Tamilians have a terrible taste when it comes to appreciating writing - while the women are happy reading M&B re-hashes, the men are happier reading pseudo intellectual writings like Balakumaran's or 'oru pakka chirukathaigal' which are a miniature version of megaserials - wife suspecting husband, mother in law fights etc., Just look at neighbourhood kerala and the respect they give to 'ezhuthachans'... I can only sigh and thank god that am not a tam writer!!

And if the reason why they ignored him is because he said 'sanskrit is better than tamil', too bad !- Isnt intellectualism the ability to have an opinion and stand by it?? - he has oodles of it & thats what matters!

If good literature is something which acts as a chronicle of its time - than Jeyakanthan's stuff does even more than that - more than the fact that his plots & subjects are as contemporary (for the 1950s-1970s TN that they portray) as they can get, his ability to etch out his characters, to be singleminded about the plotline, and his amazing amazing knack of picking the most mundane of plots and settings to say something radical (read his short stories, you will know what I mean!) is what makes him my pick amongst Tam writers! no nonsense - the word is JK!

I can proudly say that I have read ALL of Jeyakanthan's works, and I think that more than just entertainment, they are a tribute to human mind, in its full glory - he does not justify his charecters for the way they are - but he just lets his reader expand his thinking and do it...

I would just to submit the plotline of his famous shortstory ' agni pravesam' and rest my case....

Agnipravesam is about a 17 year old girl, ganga who comes from a typical middle class family, we are introduced to her, as she is waiting in a bus stand on a rainy day - there is soon noone in the busstand and there is no sight of the bus either, there comes a car offering to pick her up and the innocent heroine takes it..only to be raped by the car driver in the journey.. so what - a million of stories begin like this? hold on what makes this story the best is not the subject, the event happens, and just as you expect its after effects to be revolting, we see the girl walking in to the house and crying out to her mother...the middle class mom starts crying out loud.....stops herself and just picks up some shikakai, makes the girl sit and washes away the 'paavam' - tells her 'now you are cleaned - just continue with life..' Agnipravesham means trial of fire - and indeed thats what it si for ganga...
radical??!!may be not now - but this was written in 1950s!!!!The orthodox soceity of that age almost murdered JK with its rage - propelling him to write a series of novels 'sila nerangalil sila manithargal' & 'gangai enge pogiral' here the protagonist is the same ganga, but unfortunately, her mother was not the mother of 'agni pravesham' this mother tells out the world loud about what happened to her daughter and Ganga grows up carrying the societal looking downs at her....

While the short story makes you just awestuck at its extreme audacity, the novels bring you down to earth as the writer goes on and on to what could have happened in the hypothetical ganga's life... he doesnt justify what happened to her mind you..! but as a conscious writer, he just brings in an objective view to the two sides of the same coin...

uff - just thinking abt his writings gives me goose bumps - am gonna go home now and pick up his short story collection...

Meanwhile I would like to know what readers think of JK...??