The Hindu Business Line : Novelist nonpareil

He is no longer in our midst but his literary work, be it writing for general readers, penning punchy dialogues for movies, or giving lucid commentaries on intricate slokas, for Kalki, will live beyond time.

Silent spectator

This correspondent had the good fortune of getting acquainted with him when both of us travelled with the late Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, to Davos and Germany in January 1994. Then, he was the editor of Tamil weekly Kumudam.

Throughout our sojourn in these two countries, he was a silent spectator, observing and absorbing everything but letting slip none of his sparkle as a writer with a distinct and racy vocabulary in the vernacular.

His travelogue of his visit with the Prime Minister, in a serialised form in the Tamil magazine, was an eye-opener on the benefits of keeping eyes and ears open — and the mouth shut!

When there was no official engagement in Germany after dinner on a flinty winter night, with spirits dropping with the temperature, most of us retired to our rooms early so as not to be late for the next day’s engagement.

Sujatha, however, went with a fellow scribe to see the night life in Germany and returned to the room quite past midnight.

But next day, he was on the dot, for the morning meeting. When I asked him how he could risk a nocturnal jaunt in an alien city, in the grip of winter at that, Sujatha simply smiled — seeming to imply that a novelist’s calling calls for such experiences, be it day or night, shine or rain.

For him, capturing the right ambience was important to lend credibility to the characters he portrayed in his works — which straddled a range of subjects, from family to detective thrillers to film dialogues for lead actors in Tamil films.

International fraternity

Another incident that brought to fore his unobtrusive sense of mischief and the respect he commanded from the international fraternity was at the historic Humboldt University in Berlin where Narasimha Rao was delivering a special lecture on how India had stuck to the middle path, eschewing the extremes of liberal capitalism and the controlled economy, rooting, instead, for reforms with a humane face.

As we were all sitting in the last row of the vast auditorium, a German lady asked me ‘who’ Sujatha was! No sooner was the introduction over than the lady and Sujatha slipped out of the auditorium, leaving me a little perplexed.

When Sujatha came back after a while, I asked him what it was all about. He gave an enigmatic smile, compounding my curiosity.

Lest I should misread the situation, he told me with a straight face that the lady was doing a dissertation on his works in German and he clarified certain points!

All of us, his readers and admirers, will miss him, and the wit and wisdom that came off his pen.

More Stories on : People | Linguistics | Impressions

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Economic Survey — Upbeat, but tinged with caution

Needed: reforms 2.0

Signal service to nation

Cheer the inflation buster

Global banking — The convergence scenario

Tackling excess volatility in the stock market

Novelist nonpareil

Budget Burden