Translations

  Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/193158/ Date: 9-Nov-2023   "What use are the travels that a writer undertakes? Shouldn't he be writing about the people and the places that he knows quite well? How can the lands, places that he skims about and the passing acquaintances that he makes help him? Wouldn't he be able to write in detail only about those that he knows?". Several years back, a senior Tamil writer asked me this. This is the reply that I gave him. Writers are of 2 kinds. The first kind are those who write about things that they know pretty well or about things that they have experienced with a direct narration and with correct details. These are the majority. A few among them have some significance in literature. But they are not artists. Because, literature is a quest undertaken with imagination as the tool. These authors are against imagination and are incapable of understanding imagination. They will be labelled as "biographers of life" ...

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/133260/ 22-Jun-2020 What really is Gandhi's contribution; Is Gandhism merely just a belief like that of religion? This conversation has been going on among friends for the past few days. In fact, this discussion had been going on from Gandhi's living days. Occasionally, a notable person from another domain would mount a vicious denunciation. Osho or V.S.Naipaul or Sudhir Kakar. Marxists and Hindutvas had similar - mostly in similar wordings - antagonism on Gandhi. It would just keep coming. Marxists have conversed with me like that. I would retort, "Aside Gandhi, who has had real influence on the world? Whose words does the world follow sincerely?". They would hesitate a little and would say "Marx". "Apart from being a pioneer of an intelligentsia, where is Marxism existing now? It is just a political action plan. In the past century, where has this plan succeeded?", I would ask. With some difficulty, they ...