In writer Poomani’s novels, the bird calls are loud. The warm earth too, you can feel beneath your feet. You can hear the sound of streams, sense the smooth swaying of crops tickled by the breeze and feel the heat rising from bare rocks. It is a world teeming with sights, sounds and smells, a vivid picture that he paints within the pages of his novels. To experience it, to see the world as Poomani sees it, is a pleasure impregnated by the pauses a reader takes to ingest the beauty and make it his/her own. But Poomani’s novels don’t just give us idyllic, rustic images. The stories are spun with threads of culture, history, traditions, folklore and familial bonds.
37 years after Vekkai was first published, Poomani’s second novel that came out when he was 35-years-old, the book is being translated into English by writer N Kalyan Raman and will be published as Heat by Juggernaut Publishers this May. Vekkai will also be reimagined into a feature length film by director Vetrimaaran starring Dhanush in the lead. Titled Asuran, the film went into production earlier this year. "Vetrimaaran visited me to request for permission. I was happy that they wanted to make a film out of it," he says.
Will he be contributing to its screenplay, we ask, given that he's already directed a film in 1998, Karuvelam Pookkal, for National Film Development Corporation of India? "Oh no, I don't want to. It's an ugly business," he says before moving on to talk more about his books.
His first, Piragu, too will be translated into English by Dr Marx, English Professor at Pondicherry University, and published by Chennai-based Emerald Publishers around the same time as Heat. Although Poomani expresses his excitement to see two of his books presented to non-Tamil readers for the first time, he adds that it's a "curse" that there aren't enough translators who take interest in doing such work.
Now at 72, Poomani will be introduced to a whole new generation and his world will open up to many outside Tamil Nadu and even India. Vekkai (Heat), is a coming-of-age novel set in the fertile karisal bhoomi (rain-fed lands) of Tamil Nadu and follows the story of Chidambaram, our 15-year-old protagonist whom circumstances render a killer. In many ways, Vekkai’s Chidambaram can be compared to Scout from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird and Huck from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
We see the world through his eyes, understand its many layers from the perspective of a young adult and pick up on life skills that can only come from being pushed into a fight for survival. There’s knowledge to remember and sights that linger between the real and the imagined, at the end of Vekkai.
Chidambaram rages through the croplands and graveyards of the karisal bhoomi, wanders through thorn forests and steep slopes but this journey is a meticulously planned life primer for the young boy by his family, his father in particular. In travelling with him, the vekkai (heat) inside Chidambaram’s heart ignites the reader as well.
The novel is split into eight chapters for all the 8 days that Chidambaram is on the run with his father after an unintended murder. The narrative’s gradient is from a burning passion for revenge to an unsettling heaviness that comes from being on the constant run and finally it quivers with a heartache for all that has been lost but ends with hope.
In his Author’s Note, Poomani writes, “He was the killer; I was the one who went into hiding and roamed the forests”. Now, seated in front of us in his living room with its orange walls, he chuckles when we recall the line. “I wrote from my own personal experiences. I’ve roamed the forests in my childhood, I’ve herded cattle, I’ve raised dogs, cats and birds. I have a fondness, vaanjaiana anbu (a passionate love) for animals,” he says.
And this love for animals and nature in general is seen in his writing, a rare emotion that hasn’t been captured to its fullest by many writers, rues Poomani. “Writer Janakiraman did that so well. There’s a portion in one of his books where two men sit on the banks of Cauvery, munching on betel leaves and talking about life. You’d feel like you sat there along with them, rolling betel leaves for them,” he shares with a fondness for the craft.
Vekkai/Heat is a truly gripping novel that grabs your attention right from the first chapter, and you can almost hear the building tempo of drum beats in between the lines. While the book does not openly discuss caste, told as it is from the perspective of a young boy, it makes it apparent that authority favours the one with power. The plight of the working class and those without land in the hands of the wealthy and the landed.
“This novel is not about caste. Because Chidambaram’s mind is beyond all that. He only knows and cares about his family and he is forced into picking up a weapon for the love of his family. He need not know the land owner’s name. He’s only Vaddakuran (the northerner) and the goon in his house is only Thadiyan (fat guy),” says Poomani.
In that sense, Poomani has only cared about writing stories that have never been told, overthrowing stereotypes, treading the craggy divide that splits people - religion, caste, class, gender, etc . “My first, Piragu, is on the lives of the Arunthathiyars. No one before me had written about it. It was called a pioneering work. The novel’s very first - ‘adai chakilithayeli’ line shocked many at that time,” he laughs.
His next after Vekkai was Neivethiyam (1985) which told the story of a Brahmin widow, after which came Vaaikkal and then Varappugal, both in 1995, that told the story of school children and teachers respectively.
Poomani’s biggest work, Agnaadi, came out in 2012 and won him several awards including the Sahitya Akademi. The novel that explored the 'Sivakasi Kalavaram' (Sivakasi riots) and chronicled the lives of the Nadar community was the result of a back-breaking two-year research. “I started writing it soon after my retirement in 2005 and it took me seven years in total. There were written documents that told a story and I’ve heard of unwritten history from many. I wanted to write a story based on facts and so I spent several months combing through government archives for it. I read several religious texts to understand the happenings over 200 years ago,” he says.
In 2018 came Kombai, a retelling of the Mahabaratha which focuses on its women. “The story that Krishna protected Draupadi is false. She was a brave woman who was capable of protecting herself. I wanted this story to be told, of the strong women from the epic who were far more interesting than its men.” This book, he tells us, was written with the help of a typist. “After Agnaadi, my nerves got worse and I wasn’t able to write as well as I did. So Kombai, I wrote with my tongue,” he chuckles.
With his fountain of words still gurgling and vibrant, Poomani is now writing the story of Andal, the 7th century poet and saint. “Her Nachiyar Tirumozhi is so full of passion and beauty. They have suppressed it. No one talks about it, about Andal’s desires. My book will.” The writer also shares that this book will feature a myraid of characters like Ashwathaman from Mahabaratha, Buddha, Periazhvar, Ashoka, Kannagi and even Alexander the Great!
He puts in six hours every day, 11.00 am to 2.00 pm and then from 5.00 to 8.00 pm, writing with his tongue, as he puts it, from a small room with lavender coloured walls above his house in Kovilpatti.
On days when he’s under the weather, he cuts his work time by half, his wife tells us. Rosy, his tenant and typist, is seated next to him, her hands busy over the keyboard, digiitising the archives Poomani used for Agnaadi’s research. “It should be made available for everyone. We will make it into an e-book,” he explains.
And it is evident that this vigorous passion for writing, for telling untold stories, will not diminish in Poomani. In his own words, “The sound of a bell tied around with flowers, poomani, may not be loud. But it will ring nonetheless.”