The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : “Sujatha drew young people towards Tamil ”

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Tuesday, Mar 04, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

“Sujatha drew young people towards Tamil ”

Staff Reporter

Rich tributes paid at a memorial meeting in Chennai

— PHOTO: S.R.RAGHUNATHAN

Accolade: Actor Kamal Haasan hands over a portrait of writer Sujatha by artist Shridhar to the writer’s sons at a memorial meeting for Sujatha on Sunday.

CHENNAI: Writer Sujatha shaped contemporary Tamil through his writing for diverse media and drew young people towards Tamil with his fresh and energetic style, speakers at a memorial meeting for the writer said on Sunday. The leading lights of the film and literary world were present to pay tributes to the writer who passed away on Wednesday.

A portion of the Vijay TV show ‘Sigaram Thotta Manithargal’ featuring Sujatha was screened. While his real name was S. Rangarajan, the writer had adopted the name of his wife for a pen name in the popular media and wrote under the name S. R. Rajan in the literary magazines. “I have made fun of Sujatha as S. R. Rajan,” he had said in the interview for the show. He had discussed his contribution to the film world and his contribution to the Tamil scientific vocabulary. “I would like to continue writing about science. Sometimes, you feel like all fiction has been already written. Science remains new,” he had said.

Speakers listed out his contributions to various fields including literature, journalism, theatre and film. Several of them remarked that he was able to keep his writing contemporary by using the idiom and language of the current generation.

Kanimozhi, MP, said that he had laid out the principles of literary appreciation through the popular media. Actor Sathyaraj recalled the pride he would feel on acquiring new knowledge from Sujatha’s columns in Tamil magazines. Actor Kamal Haasan said his life represented an important chapter in Tamil literature.

Manushyaputhiran of Uyirmai Publications said the publishing house, which brought out several of the writer’s works, would institute an award for young writers in Sujatha’s name.

Nirmala Prasad, principal, M.O.P. Vaishnav College, recalled that the writer gave valuable assistance in the setting up of a media course and said that the college would provide an endowment for the best student of media in his name.

Lyricist Vairamuthu, playwright ‘Crazy’ Mohan, writers Jayakantan, Shivashankari, Charu. Nivedita and Indira Parthasarathy spoke. The founder of the ‘Kanaiyaazhi’ magazine that featured Sujatha’s work, Kasturi Rangan, said that they would bring out a compilation of the best of Sujatha’s work.

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