Guardian of Tamil oral tradition falls silent May 19, 2021, 1:05 PM IST
“I know only about my land and my people. The only purpose behind my writing is to penpicture them to the Tamil world. I take all efforts to do it meticulously with no exaggeration. That is because I love my land and my people more than myself. They are the heroes of my works,” Ki Rajanarayanan had told me when I interviewed him for the final issue of the ‘Gentleman’ magazine in January 1995.
It is the Karisal (black soil) region he has celebrated in his works. What Wessex was to Thomas Hardy, the Karisal was to Ki Ra. At the southernmost corner of India lies Idai Seval in Tuticorin district, an obscure hamlet comprising just 250 houses. Since the land around is arid and infertile the inhabitants, most of them descendants of Telugu and Kannadiga immigrants, tend to cattle and grow cotton, ragi, and maize for a living. Branded “black desert”, the district is said to register the lo