Imayam: Scaling literary heights

In the small hours of the night, somewhere in the South Arcot region of Tamil Nadu, an aspiring 20-year-old writer heard Arokkyam’s wail and translated her lament into his debut novel, Koveru Kazhudhaigal (Beasts of Burden, trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom). More than a quarter of a century later, with four novels and over 60 short stories under his belt, Imayam has won the Sahitya Akademi award. That two splendid writers from marginalised backgrounds have received this honour in successive years is heart-warming.

When Koveru Kazhudhaigal was first published in 1994, the sailing was not smooth. The prevailing literary mood lionised experimental writing, metafiction, magic realism and the like. Realism was a bad word. An independent Dalit movement was gaining strength, and this novel struck a discordant note with its realistic depiction of a Christian family that provided laundry and other services for a Dalit ‘colony’, which was in turn exploited by the dominant caste in the ooru. Ergo, the novel was considered a betrayal, exposing the inner contradictions of depressed communities. That it was splendidly produced by an elite, niche publishing house only exacerbated the political incorrectness. When veteran writer Sundara Ramaswamy reviewed it in the first issue of the revived literary review, Kalachuvadu, he declared, “In artistically depicting in an uninhibited manner the full range of meanness created by human divisions, gathering the resulting sorrow and conveying it in writing, there is no Tamil work that equals this novel.” This uncharacteristically unqualified praise was dismissed as an overstatement by many. Imayam refused to be intimidated. In boldly rejecting the Dalit tag, he spurned the patronising advantages flowing from a guilty literary world. Imayam has kept to his commitment of writing of what he believes in.