Chennai: Auditor S Sundar Rajan wrote one book and now he is going places. Or at least his writing is going places. When the auditor-poet-writer penned his short stories book Eternal Art, he could not have known that it would reach various parts of India.
Now, some of his stories in Tamil are going to be part of the Madras University textbooks.
Eternal Art was first translated into Tamil and Malayalam. Now comes the translation in Hindi and Telugu.
The Hindi and Telugu translations, called Nithya Kala, were released Sunday at the Odyssey book store in Adyar.
Kamala Viswanathan, who has been an educationist for two decades and has to her credit translating Sivasankari’s writing into Hindi, said as a Hindi translator, she wanted to retain the spirit of the original English version. She said a couple of stories had been taken up for textbooks in the Madras University.
This book was released by Srabani Bhattacharyya, Asst Prof of Hindi, Stella Maris College, and the first copy was received by Rajni, vice-principal, Stella Maris College.
The Telugu translation was done by Jayashree, and Dr Sree T Sucharitha, Prof, Dept of Community Medicine, Tagore Medical College Hospital, who released the book, said she found the stories contemporary and refreshing. Lakshmi Venkatasubramanian, Department of Economics, Stella Maris College, received the first copy of the Telugu book.
Guest speaker at the function, Tamil scholar and retired Prof of Tamil, Stella Maris College, Ulaganayaki Palani, found the short stories of excellent quality and as an emeritus prof of Madras University Tamil Department, she said she would ensure some of the stories formed part of the textbooks.
Sundar Rajan said it was after he started writing that he understood the might of the pen and was now pleased that his short story book is available in five languages.
An interesting aspect of the evening was that there was a live relay of the rendering of a short story – in Tamil – from Sundar Rajan’s collection, called Sundara Kadaigal (this one was titled Kodugalukku Appal), on Kalpakkam Community Radio. S Joseph Winston, the officer in-charge of this initiative of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, explained that the relay was made possible through Internet.
S V Varadarajan, an avid listener of the stories that are read out on radio, and S Varadarajan, brother of Sundar Rajan, spoke. Hema Ravi compered the show with aplomb, while Vidya Shankar proposed the vote of thanks.