It was a sad evening for me yesterday, when I learnt that Writer Sujatha passed away. One of my all-time favourite writers in Tamil after Kalki and Devan, Sujatha was one of the few writers who respected the intelligence of his readers. He was the first tamil writer to successfully introduce us to the world of science fiction in tamil. He popularized the Haiku form of poetry and wrote articles on science in tamil magazines.
A writer with a great sense of humour, he created some really memorable characters like Ganesh, Vasanth, the robot dog Jeno and so on. He did not restrict himself to any genre of writing and his works range from science fiction to history, from vaishnavite literature to paperback mysteries. Whatever the genre, his writing sparkled with humour and intelligence. He was one of the few writers who could make science seem interesting yet simple.
One of my earliest memories of reading Sujatha’s works, was the semi-autobiographical ‘Srirangathau Devathaigal’ and it was an amazing book. I recently read ‘En Iniya Iyandira’. One of my favourite science fiction novel by Sujatha is ‘Sorga Theevu’. Even in works of fiction, he treated his read as intelligent people and left a lot of things to imagination. He never hesitated to present any subject to the readers fearing that they would not understand the subject. He seemed to treat them as equals.
I will miss Sujatha and his works. I feel like I have lost a friend who I have not seen or spoken to. His works will remain with us for years to come.
2 comments:
I had this name on GDs FB status yesterday. Looks like the really good one. Is the name pen name? because it sounds like a female name.
Yeah Veena. His real name was Rangarajan. Sujatha was his wife's name which he used as his pen name.
Post a Comment