TAMIL
A writer's writer
NEELA PADMANABHAN
NAKULAN KATHAIKAL: Nakulan; Kaavya, 16, Second Cross Street, Trustpuram, Kodambakkam, Chennai-600024. Rs. 175.
THIS COLLECTION comprises five novelettes, 32 short stories and two stories translated from English by Nakulan (1922-2007) spanning over three decades. Nakulan is known as a writer’s writer in the serious Tamil literary circle because of his experimental writings in poetry as well as fiction. Though his writings are considered experimental, they are readable and seem simple at first reading.
On going through these stories one can find that he has never compromised with the contemporary popular literary field till his last breath. He never went after the stereotyped plots to spin his work of art. Consciously avoiding the attractive storylines, he simply and straightforwardly narrates everyday events of his own life as an outsider without any commitments or justifications with minimum words. He never wilfully segregates the narrator, Naveenan or Nakulan, in his creative world. For instance, in “Yaathirai” (journey, novelette written in 1963) the life of the protagonist Naveenan is artistically narrated with humour as well as with a shadow of melancholy. Two peculiar stories with Nakulan’s seal are “Oru Theru Sonna Kathai” (story said by the street) and “Asuwatham Endru Oru Maram” (a tree named as Asuwatham). The first story about a street and shops where coffins are for sale will haunt the reader’s mind too as the author’s. The human mind’s strange working which leads to a state of mental imbalance comes out naturally through a disquieting portrait of a man in the second story.
On the whole, though no conscious effort is made to generalise personal experiences, these stories will give a higher valuable literary experience.
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