Imayam

Description In his pathbreaking fiction, the acclaimed Tamil writer Imayam has written about the brutal complexities of the caste system and patriarchy in unadorned, powerful prose. Video Mariamman is a collection of fourteen of his finest stories. Poonkothai goes looking for her daughter who has eloped with a 'low-caste' man, hoping to give the daughter her certificates and some money so that she can lead a decent life. The 'Stolen Girl', born into a family of black magicians and abducted when she had barely reached puberty, grows up to be a tough survivor who lives life entirely on her own terms. Srinivasan, a police constable, tormented after being a pallbearer for a Dalit corpse and horrified by its implications for his social status, decides to quit his job. Chandravadanam, a music prodigy, dies, and Kalaiammal, who brought her up without ever entering her house, mourns her death and curses the man for whom she gave up her youth and music. In these and ten other stories-translated by Padma Narayanan with great skill and sensitivity-Imayam proves why he has been hailed as a writer with few equals anywhere, for his deep humanism and fierce sense of justice.

VIDEO MARIAMMAN AND OTHER STORIES

Revathi, an engineer, is besotted with Ravi, an auto driver, and marries him against her family’s wishes. As her life unravels, we are brought face-to-face with the realities of narrow-minded, small lives, where it remains impossible for people to rise above the societal chains that shackle them. The novel explores one’s helplessness and vulnerability in prose that is deceptively simple, it lays bare the insidious ways in which class, caste and misogyny infiltrate our lives and eat away at our humanity. Relentless and intense, most of the story unfurls in the hospital to which Revathi is brought as a burn victim. Her father, mother, brother and sister-in-law are in turns enraged, sorrowful, aggressive; her father carries around lakhs of rupees in the hope that he can use it for his daughter’s treatment but is the money worthless now? Can it bring his daughter back to him? Imayam’s is a voice to watch out for – he writes with clinical precision, laying threadbare the hypocrisies of family life and the society at large in a manner that spares no one and offers little redemption.

A Woman Burnt

A man offering curses and prayers, gifts and threats to his favourite deity before embarking upon a day of thieving... A woman in a packed bus, desperate to get home before her clothes are soaked with menstrual blood, but also determined to save a seat for a fellow woman... A loyal, ageing party worker, hoping to finally contest an election, but discovering instead the worm in the apple of democracy... Set for the most part in the small towns and villages of present-day Tamil Nadu, these stories describe the aspirations and agonies of the men and women living and working there: what they want is to survive and thrive as human beings. Imayam - winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, and one of the most significant Tamil writers today - peers into their lives and observes them with rare empathy and attention. Written in spare, modern prose spiced with pungent regional dialect, and brought brilliantly to new life in Vasantha Surya's luminous translation, An Order from the Sky and Other Stories redefines the possibilities of Indian fiction.

An Order from the Sky and Other Stories

Vazhga Vazhga and Other Stories

These are extra-ordinary stories about ordinary people - mostly women. Women with grit and determination distilled through challenges and hardships of life. Everything is happening here and now. In a way they hold a mirror to the contemporary life lived in our villages and towns. Imayam, the writer evinces an uncanny ability to delve deep into the recesses of the subconscious. Small little details of a scene or bits of seemingly casual conversations are deftly employed to bring out a mood of ease or tension. His subaltern women characters as varied as teachers, construction workers, house-wives and grave diggers emanate a high degree of verve, dignity and forthrightness normally not associated with their class in common perception. Prabha Sridevan's faithful rendering recreates the spirit and style of the original work in Tamil giving us the impression that nothing has been lost in translation. ADOOR GOPALAKRISHNAN, Filmmaker

If There is a God and Other Stories: Short Stories

Gita Subramanian

When Bhakkiyam falls in love with a Dalit sub-inspector, death is the only punishment that will satisfy her village panchayat. Pazhani, her father, is ordered to kill her. But how can a father murder his own daughter? Imayam's powerful tale about caste bitterness - a sickness that continues toplague Indian society - eerily preceded an actual event that occurred two months later. The narrative, constructed on short, crisp dialogues, is an unflinching account of the ugliness and trauma that await those who dare to transcend caste borders.

Imayam

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