Translations

  Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/211809/ Date: 7-Feb-2025   Dear J, Whom would you profess as the sculptor of modern Tamil milieu? Raj Adhiyamaan   Dear Raj, I have taken just this sentence from your long question. I have answered this myriad times. But this must be repeated constantly.  I function only within the domain of Tamil culture and so I shall attempt to identify the prime contributors to the renaissance of modern Tamil culture. Identifying a singular person will be a grave injustice to all those great pioneers. An intellectual will never commit such belittlement. History is a torrent. It flows out of the numerous contributions by myriad personalities in their respective domains. It progresses through dialectics. Therefore, opponents in cultural perspectives too contribute to the progress of that culture.  The renaissance and the evolution of a culture would always entail web of complex undercurrents. To comprehend it completely and in detail...

Original Source: https://stage.jeyamohan.in/197339/ Date: 25-Mar-2024   In some form or other, there is a history in every fiction and a fiction in every history. The history in a fiction is not really a history in a strict sense, whereas the fiction in historiography is certainly history. We always call as historical fiction only those stories that tell a slightly older history. i.e. If the imagination is let to elaborate the history that we had developed with minimal proof, we call that a historical fiction. When contemporary history is fictionalized, we do not see the history in it. We consider it 'realism'. We have defined a boundary for 'contemporaneous'. For us, the period before independence is historical period. Post that, it's contemporary period. That is why novels like Suthanthira Thagam (Si.Su.Chellappa), Anbe Aaramudhe (Thi. Janakiraman) that have as their background Indian independence movement, do not seem like historical fictions. Whereas, the fictio...

  Original Source: https://stage.jeyamohan.in/197258/ Date: 24-Mar-2024   As soon as the modern historiography began in India, so did modern historical fiction. In fact, both evolved hand in hand. Even in case of European history, it can be understood that the situation was the same - that is modern historiography and modern historical fiction evolved together. What's more surprising is the fact that in 16th century AD, even as the ancient historiography was making way for the modern one, the trend of fictionalizing the early set of history books had begun. Shakespeare arranged his plays inspired by the books on Ireland and Scotland by Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall. Alexander Dumas fictionalized the writings of French Historical author Pierre de L'Estoile. In Europe, modern historiography could be seen twinned with fictional literature.  India's modern historiography started in 18th century. Even as the history of Bengal was getting written, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee...

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/200919/ Date: 21-May-2024   Dear J, To what extent is the premise of 'Padukalam' realistic? You write this as a thriller. Generally, thrillers take place in a context we hardly know - like Underworld, Police etc. When it is set in a known context, question arises over its credibility. I am asking this because I too hail from Tirunelveli. Krishnamurthy   Dear Krishnamurthy, In Tamil milieu, those who have written something are usually the ones that are required to explain it. I have been keenly watching the fiction space from world over; not sure whether anyone else has that interest. Most of them have formed an opinion through the residual information available here and there. It can also be said that most of them are deprived of a lifestyle amenable for constant reading. Even in Europe, reading literature is drifting away from being a social event. It is the self help books which reign both in readership and sales. Literature is reduc...