TAMIL
Classic novellas
PREMA NANDAKUMAR
THIRAIGAL AAYIRAM: Sundara Ramasaami; Kalachuvadu Pathippagam, 669, K.P. Road, Nagercoil-629001. Rs. 75.
THREE NOVELLAS of Sundara Ramasaami that go back by four decades, of which the title story is located in the early 1940s. Who is the corrupter in our society? Mariamma used by the ‘pillars of the society’ or Kurian George, the rich womaniser? Did she use them or was she used?
The writer spreads chunks of conversation in his inimitable Tamil style, recording the sound-patterns of the language as it is spoken in Kerala.
Shudderingly close to a detective novel, the silencing of Isakki-Annamalai’s righteous anger at the misdeeds of moneybags with the same cash is the novelist’s indictment of the writer’s profession as well.
Is investigative journalism then no more than a kind of blackmail and so a black profession? One cannot but remember the ‘Lakshmikanthan murder case’ which blasted the career of M.K. Tyagaraja Bhagavathar belonging to the same time-span.
Bitterness spouts in the observations of the creative artist in ‘Illaatha Onru’. Of the stories here, it is the masterly realism of ‘Thayakkam’ that holds one in thrall. The actual life of the common man in the low income group is filmed with an attention to detail lacing the tragic truths of everyday life with the comic methodology of linguistic communication.
Shall we ever forget the hapless Velu with his maternal heart gashed permanently when he buries the tiny babe in the backyard, the motherless children Valli and Subash, the father intent on destroying bugs with hot water and the bundle of emotion, Umaithanu? For such is the human substance with which the classic, Thiraigal Aayiram has been woven by a creative thinker.
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