Shocking, to say the least. He was (is?) one of the most influential writers for me personally, across languages. He was solely responsible for me to start thinking in Tamil – though it is getting increasingly difficult. His Tamil usage is inimitable and some of his short stories are way way way ahead of time. For instance, one of his short stories had an accident narrated from 3 different view points – all three had a person directly involved in the accident. Sounds familiar? Yes, Amores Perros! The only hitch – Sujatha wrote his short story in the 70s!
I can easily say that Sujatha, along with Douglas Adams, are my two favorite writers. Ever.
Sujatha…you’ll be missed.
View Comments to "Tamil writer Sujatha no more!"
1 | Tamil writer Sujatha no more : NAACHGAANA
February 28th, 2008 at 11:10 am
[...] LINK [...]
2 | mumbaiRamki
February 28th, 2008 at 11:46 am
He came in at a time where the language was used heavily with Metaphors and Uvamais – he completely broke the rules of commercial Story writing .
My interest in Tamizh writing and reading blossomed by reading works of Kalki and sujatha !!
It is definetly agreat loss for us !! We are going to miss him !
3 | arun_verma
February 28th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
funny that you say Amores Perros but not Yuva! Yuva clealy inspired from both Sujatha’s work and amores perros
4 | Karthik
February 28th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I knew someone’s going to pull Yuva in
Yes, the structure is largely the same, but the individual stories aren’t. Sujatha’s original story has 3 completely different stories too – that makes it 9 stories among the 3 works, but in one unique structure!
By the way, quite a few folks wrote in asking me for the name of Sujatha’s short story – its called ‘Sendra Vaaram’ (Last week), written in 1972. I read it first in the first part of Sujatha’s short stories compilation – very recently.
The story uses a newspaper report about an accident ‘last week’ and reveals the accident report in the penultimate paragraph. The last line of the story is, ‘Now, read the story from the beginning’!
Very unique and I recalled Amores Perros instantly. The chances of Mani Ratnam seeking inspiration from Sujatha is pretty strong, since Mani is a Tamilian too. I really cannot fathom the Amores Perros connection, though! Coincidence?
Kurosawa’s Roshomon is a possible source too, but that is rather different and is more about multiple points of view and letting the viewer seek the truth. ‘Sendra Vaaram’ is more of a narrative gimmick that simply works – incredibly well!
5 | Milliblog! » Blog Archive » Pirivom…Sandhippom (Tamil novel by Writer Sujatha Rangarajan)
November 30th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
[...] a long time fan of Tamil writer Sujatha, I occasionally kick myself for not having read some of his famous novels, though I may have read [...]
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