TAMIL
Literary miscellany
PREMA NANDAKUMAR
KANAVU (Dream): Compiled by Suprabharatimaniyan; Kavya, 16, 2nd Cross Street, Trustpuram, Kodambakkam, Chennai-600024. Rs. 350.
DO THE little magazines have the strength to sustain themselves for decades? They do, provided the founder has a keenness to fight to the finish. Suprabharatimaniyan has sustained his dream for two decades, and that is saying a good deal. He has kept faith in his magazine, Kanavu, in spite of a host of personal problems, and has never pandered to the popularity-mix perfected by some editors. The result is a selection that contains highly educative reviews, impassioned articles, revelatory interviews, intense short stories, forceful poems, and satisfactory translations.
The canvas is vast. From Sundara Ramaswamy to Atrur Ravivarma. A variety of styles: poetic, symbolic, conversational, Tamil-English mix, Sri Lankan, and NRI. An extensive array of subjects: the Janus-faced Indian intellectual, the political culture of self-deception, parading several wives to indicate temporal power, the need for a proper approach to the term ‘Dalit’.
This grand variety served by Suprabharatimaniyan is like the Gomti river in floods perfectly visualised in the story, ‘Pavazhamalli.’ There is terror, there is grandeur, there is beauty, and occasionally a gentle heart too as that of Revati. The one mood missing in the volume is laughter. Have we then made today’s world so grim like the city in ‘Ekanti’ by Sudesamithran? Kanavu is indeed a revelation that makes us reflect seriously on the state of Tamil literature in the present century.
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