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Rajam Krishnan (RK): Simple. The author is a woman. The situation has not changed much, today. Women have to fight for their rights, a lot. Agreed that women have a to live with a lot of pressures, in everyday life. But they have to come out of them. Though I pity them, I am sometimes vexed and even angered. You have to make use of the opportunities and avenues open to you and keep fighting for your rights. Women living in the cities realise this to an extent. It is the village womanhood that is suppressed and is in a pitiable condition. COL: How come that you could pursue your passion for writing, in such a conventional framework? RK: Nobody enthused me. When I got married, my parents told me that I have to live up to the expectations of my in-laws. Give up the pen and take up the pan. That was precisely their advice. On reflection I feel that I might not have bloomed as a writer, had I come out of the joint family system. The strange situation in life around struck me. The meek daughter-in-law turns into a heartless mother-in-law. I continued to write on this. My novel, ‘Pen Kural’ is an expression of these impressions. ‘Nothing much new about it. You have expressed your ideas, as a woman’ I was told. Yes. I am a woman. I can perceive this world only from a woman’s point of view. Life is not based on maxims alone. COL: What are your views on politics and the life style of Tamils? RK: Wherever I lived, I could see Tamils living in misery. Be it Goa, Delhi or Mumbai. A Malayali or a Sardarji would come up. Tamilian would continue to live in his poverty. I went to Dharavi, when I was in Mumbai. People live in abject poverty. Violence was prevalent. It has increased in its proportion now. What did these politicians do to alleviate the condition and to bring about an improvement in their condition? Nothing. Simply nothing. Violence takes different dimensions now and thrives on castes and creeds. All the values are going down the drains. The condition of women is none too happy. COL: There is healthy growth of the Malayalam literature. What do you think, is the reason behind the stagnation in Tamil literature and why has it been recognised by anyone? RK: I have read quite a lot of Malayalam literature. They do not differentiate between their literature and others. They translate all that is good in their language, into other languages. All Tamil literature of the present day depends on magazines and other periodicals. A writer is recognised only by the serials that are published in such periodicals. Above all, there is no healthy discussion here, on any novels. If at all such a thing happens, the gathering is too happy with the trigger and they find their fulfilment in shooting down anything and everything. There is no constructive or healthy criticism. Not to mention about a work by a woman. It has a special place in the niche-of-the-ignored. COL: Which incident, do you think, brought about a change in your views and writings? RK: An Editor asked me, in my younger days, to change the names of the characters in my stories. I could not understand why. He explained that all those names were Brahminical. What folly! Do you think that everything will change, if I change the names of my characters? I come from a Brahmin family and it is quite natural that my characters carried Brahmin names. Then I decided. I will not write a single story hereafter, based on Brahmin families.
RK: I received the Sahitya Akademi award. There was another popular writer who was not given the award. No names, please. His fans could not bear the thought that he was not given the award. More over, it was a woman who received it. They therefore forwarded a novel by their favourite writer for the award. It was about a woman committing adultery. I protested against the theme, bringing disrepute to women, a slur on womanhood. Think of it. When the award was given to me, the remark was ‘it was given because we had to give it to a woman’. COL: What was your response? RK: What am I to respond? I belong to the minority. I however did not relent. I conveyed my views appropriately. I then resigned from the Akademi. I told them that I could not function in a place that thinks women are fit only for cooking. The ghost of that writer haunts me even now. I maintained my distance from the Akademi. There were repeated requests from them to be a part of the Akademi. I had no other go but to accept. But the thing is, nothing has been done to translate my novel into any other language, though it received the award, years ago. That is the present situation and that speaks volumes. (concluded) Interview in Tamil by: Kannamma & Chandra |
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ChennaiOnline
(COL): What do you think, is the reason behind such a nonchalant attitude? 
COL:
How did your contemporary male writers receive your works?