Literature : Faces of the Millennium

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Dec 13, 1999

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Imayam, 33
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The name Imayam meant little until 1994, when Tamil literati sat up as he won the respected Agni Trust and Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers awards for Koveru Kazhudaiga, a sensitive portrayal of the sufferings of a washerwoman.

A Dalit schoolteacher in Vridhachalam, Imayam lets ideology emerge from life. Like the boy who runs away from home when he sees his widowed mother sleeping with a white man in his second novel Arumugam, released in August this year. "A writer cannot work within the confines of a slogan," he says. He doesn't rant. And he doesn't believe a Dalit alone can empathise with another. Different? Sure.

-Vaasanthi

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