Chennai, July 13:
A forerunner of Dalit literature in Tamil and one of the most celebrated chroniclers of ‘karisal bhoomi’, the arid rain-shadow region with black cotton soil of southern Tamil Nadu, Sahitya Akademi award-winning author Poomani passed away late on Sunday night in Chennai after a prolonged illness.
He was 79. He is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay, who paid glowing tributes, also announced state honours for the funeral.
Emerging as a distinctive voice in modern Tamil creative writing, Manickavasagam, born in Andipatti near Kovilpatti in present-day Thoothukudi district, took the pen name ‘Poomani’, early in his literary career when he was an employee of the Co-operative Department.
Right from his initial writings in the CPI’s magazine ‘Taamarai’, he displayed a remarkable realism about the struggles and aspirations of the people of the karisal landscape, the vast tract from Virudhunagar to parts of the Thoothukudi district. His corpus of writing included ‘Vekkai’, which was adapted into the Vettrimaran-Dhanush combo blockbuster ‘Asuran’. The film also won the national award.
Honoured with the Akademi Award in 2014 for his magnum opus, ‘Angnaadi’, Poomani, however, detested being identified as a Dalit writer, though he was instrumental in developing Dalit writing into a distinctive genre through his works. Running into more than 1000 pages, the novel is set against the backdrop of the colonial-era riots of Kazhgumalai (1895) and Sivakasi (1899), involving the mercantile Nadar community and the Maravars, a subsect of the OBC Thevars. While the Kazhugumalai conflict was over the Nadar converts to Roman Catholicism taking a procession through the main streets, the Sivakasi one was over the temple entry of the Nadars.
Besides writing, he has also dabbled in filmmaking with his directorial venture of ‘Karuvelam Pookal’, for the National Film Development Corporation, which focused on children employed in the match factories of Sivakasi and Kovilpatti region. His TV serial ‘Penakkal’ (pen) was about workers in the pen nib manufacturing industry. Bringing in multiple voices in the narrative and giving the reader exposure to the life experience of the community is his distinctive quality.
In their condolence messages, Vijay said Poomani had enriched Tamil literature through his portrayal of the people of the karisal landscape with extraordinary realism and the many nuances of their lives. DMK president MK Stalin also paid rich tributes to Poomani, acknowledging his contribution to Tamil creative domain.