Dilip Kumar, Booksellers and Exporters, was the name of the Tamil literary bookstore he ran in Mylapore, Chennai. For over a quarter century, till 2016, research scholars and avid readers dropped in here to discuss books with the genial owner. He shipped books to the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington D.C. At 67, he is still the go-to person for anyone seeking recommendations on modern fiction in this ancient language spoken by eighty million people.
The retired bookseller is a gifted, though not prolific, Tamil writer. He has published three collections of short stories. With his appreciation for the absurd, he crafts short stories with universal appeal. They’ve have been translated into many European and Indian languages. Pavel Hons, a Tamil scholar from the Czech Academy of Sciences, said that he enjoys the author’s sense of humor, which he finds, “very peculiar sometimes, but lovely…” Hons translated some of Kumar’s work into Czech, for his compatriots to savor.
Kumar wants readers the world over to appreciate the works of serious Tamil writers. Recently, he edited The Tamil Story: Through the Times, Through the Tides, a comprehensive selection showcasing the best Tamil short stories of the 20th century. Tamil, which has a strong literary tradition is known for classics, but it has good modern literature too, Kumar has always maintained. Through his work as an editor, Kumar has tried to ensure that such quality work reaches its audience, both in the original, and through translations.
Interestingly, Kumar’s first language is not Tamil. His ancestors – traders from the arid Kutch region of Gujarat – had moved south over a century ago. His father, a businessman in Coimbatore, died young. As a teen, Kumar dropped out of school and held a string of jobs – mostly as a sales clerk – to contribute to his family’s finances.
In parallel, Kumar began his forays to Coimbatore’s Old Market, saving up money employers gave him for afternoon tea to buy popular magazines from second-hand book stores. Early on, he stumbled on the powerful writing of Tamil author Jayakanthan whose protagonists were the working poor mostly. Kumar was stunned to see people not unlike himself on the printed page.
He discovered the Russian masters through Tamil translations and read American novelists in English, along with medieval English classics and modern poetry. When his reputation as a reader grew, occasionally books found him. A friend who cleared out his brother’s collection had books to give away. “It could’ve been Harold Robbins, but it was the philosopher J Krishnamurthy’s works,” said Kumar. Such eclectic reading expanded his worldview.
One day, at the tea kiosk, Kumar found a little magazine edited by the star author Jayakanthan. This was a literary periodical, not a glossy for the masses. It was priced higher, which meant Kumar had to forgo more cups of tea than usual to buy the issue, but it introduced him to the work of other serious writers in Tamil. It helped him find his tribe. Eventually, Kumar started sending stories to little magazines himself. (When he spoke of this key episode to Jayakanthan decades later, the latter said dismissively, “You could’ve watched a movie instead.”)
On to Chennai
Back in the 1970s, for anyone with literary ambitions in Tamil, Chennai was the place to be. When Kumar visited from Coimbatore, looking for jobs, he’d stay with his maternal uncle who lived not too far from the city’s iconic Central Station. The neighborhood was called Sowcarpet, a North Indian enclave in Chennai. Kumar knew this place and its people well.
Sowcarpet, under-described in literature, was the setting for Kumar’s story “Theervu,” which won Kumar The Best Tamil Short Story of the Year award in 1977. It depicts a mini-crisis in the life of the Gujaratis in a building complex– a mouse drowns in their apartment well – and how the matter is resolved. Though Kumar presents the people from the community just as they are, warts and all, it comes across as an endearing portrayal.
The prize money of Rs.300 did nothing to improve family’s financial situation, but soon a literature-loving chemistry professor showed up at the store where Kumar worked, asking to meet the award-winning writer. He told Kumar of Cre-A, an upcoming publishing house in Chennai, whose goal was to introduce Tamil readers to books that would widen their interests and address their concerns.
A literary career
At the age of 28, Kumar moved to Chennai with a job at Cre-A. The place became an important cultural center in the city back in the 1980s. Serious writers and modern artists gravitated there, as did people from theatre and serious cinema. “You can imagine how lucky I felt interacting with some of the best minds in the city,” said Kumar. In a decade-long apprenticeship, he learned the business of publishing, the art of translation. He translated Gujarati and Hindi works into Tamil, put together anthologies of revered Tamil writers, and blossomed as a writer himself.
Kumar who burst upon the literary scene with stereotype-busting characters from Sowcarpet writes with empathy of the marginalized elsewhere as well. His simple prose draws you into the inner lives of people you’d pay little attention to in real-life. And refreshingly, his characters are unapologetic about their physical desires: a widow with grown-up children who sleeps with a relative, the college student who experiments with lesbianism, or the 70-year-old foodie who also feasts his eyes on Playboy magazines.
When Kumar started his own bookstore in Chennai in 1990, he had a niche clientele. Some of the academics, who became good friends, invited him to speak on the topic of modern Tamil literature in the language department on campus. The first invitation came in 2000 from Professor George Hart of the University of California, Berkeley, the Padma Shri winner whose research established that Tamil is a classical language.
Last fall, Kumar was at the University of Texas in Austin to speak in a seminar about the difficult work of translation. But the harder job, one would think, is that of curation. A well-read person, who cares enough about the language, must decide what is worthy of being translated, of being better known. In the blurb to the anthology, The Tamil Story, renowned linguist David Shulman reminds us that we are lucky to have such sensitive connoisseurs as our guides to short Tamil prose.
Kumar’s most recent creative work is a play denouncing the rise of fundamentalism in India, but he remains a serious writer who refuses to take himself too seriously. In the past, he has poked fun at himself through characters in his stories, including a mouse, destined for death, who asks God to take the writer’s life instead. He writes so little and his stories are read by so few, the wily creature reasons.
The author with a distinctive voice — Tamil with a Gujarati accent if one is literal about it — could be writing more.
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