Kalki' R. Krishnamurthy, one of the pioneering giants of the Tamil press in the tumultuous times of the nationalist movement, was a versatile and prolific writer, inscribing the urgencies of his time in his fiction. This collection brings together the best of Kalki's short stories, which contain some of his most colourful and enduring characters and themes of Tamil popular fiction of the nineteen thirties and forties. There is in these stories the heady urgency of the freedom struggle, the piquant humour of the parodied Tamil gothic and devastating social satire. In her sensitive translations, Gowri Ramnarayan has succeeded in capturing the nuances of the gently mordant wit that made Kalki's stories the highlight of the magazines they were originally published in, creating for themselves a dedicated following that flourishes undiminished to this day.
Coinciding with the centenary of Kalki's birth, this volume is a well-deserved tribute to a writer whose breadth of vision and genius imagined and served a new India.
'Kalki' R. Krishnamurthy was born in 1899 in Puttamangaiam village, Tamil Nadu. He was educated at the village school and at National College School, Tiruchirapalli. He was an ardent supporter of the nationalist movement, and was imprisoned several times for this cause.
Kalki was a pioneer of modern Tamil literature, and a major literary figure in his own lifetime. A prolific writer, he is best known for his historical fiction in Tamil, a genre in which he remains unsurpassed. His works include Alai Osai, Ponniyin Selvan and Sivakamiyin Sapatham. He was a journalist throughout his life and wrote for the Tamil weekly Ananda Vikatan, and later his own nationalist weekly Kalki, on a large variety of topics. He died in 1954.
Gowri Ramnarayan, Kalki's granddaughter, was educated in Hyderabad and Chennai and has been a teacher of English and music. She is currently a Special Correspondent with The Hindu. She has written several books for children including Abu's World, Abu's World Again and Past Forward. She has also published translations of plays.
She lives in Chennai with her husband and two children.
'Kalki' R. Krishnamurthy was a pioneer of modern Tamil literature. A fellow-scribe described him as a filmstar among writers, perhaps not in unmixed praise, and certainly with some envy. Today, Kalki is best known for his historical fiction in Tamil, a genre in which he remains unsurpassed. His Sivakamiyin Sapatham, Partiban Kanavu, and the mammoth Ponniyin Selvan recreate for the reader the glorious eras of the Pallavas and the imperial Cholas with their magnificent tradition of art and culture, which are brought to bear on contemporary Tamil self-fashioning. Alai Osai, which the author deemed his best work, documents the turbulent decades just before India achieved independence, seen through the eyes of ordinary people who are inevitably affected by the socio-political changes.
Through these novels, serialized in weekly magazines, Kalki captured the hearts of thousands of Tamils who eagerly awaited the latest installments. Old-timers recall reading the copies they secured on the street on their way home, before they could be grabbed by equally eager members of their families. Many others will tell you that the reading aloud of Kalki's serials by some family elder is an abiding memory of their teenage years.
Kalki was a versatile and prolific writer. He used his writing talent to crusade for several causes, his canvas accommodating a broad, eclectic sweep. He was editor of the Tamil weekly Ananda Vikatan, and later of his own eponymous nationalist weekly Kalki. In addition, he turned out political essays, reformist propaganda, travelogues, music and dance critiques, film reviews, biographies, scathing satire, humorous essays, songs, poems, a film script or two, and translations, including Mahatma Gandhi's The Story of My Experiments With Truth. All his work was characterized by the distinctive stamp of his flowing style, sense of humour and felicitous use of language which enabled him to get his messages across in a striking and original manner without being didactic. His work demonstrates that any theme from economic policy to experiments in education could be explained in clear terms and in easy Tamil. He revelled in polemical and controversial debates on issues political, aesthetic and ideological.
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