Book Review - 'KalliKattu Idhigasam' by Vairamuthu

This is a tamil novel I read recently. Vairamuthu is well known lyricist in tamil film music. He has written golden lines for the best days of Ilayaraja and AR Rahman. He has won Sahithya Academy Award for 2003 for this novel, which came in Anandha Vikatan a tamil weekly.

It was about the same time Congress, ally of DMK, came into power. I was in the opinion, since Karunanidhi was an admirer and close friend of vairamuthu, the award fell for him this time. And I laugh at my stupid opinion after reading the novel.

The novel is about, as the writer himself points out in foreward, "In our literature we have idhihasams on gods, and this is my attempt to tell the story of a kudiyanavan (peasant) instead."

I have never read a novel of such a fluid narration with completely village slang. The typical tamil nadu southern village, its people, their lives, culture, etc., are passionately packaged by the author. The deep sensing 'solavadai's in their casual talks are astounding. The novel never at any stage feels exaggerating any situation. I can go on, but I could never oversay it.

'KalliKattu Idhigasam' is probably the best literature I read so far. As a fan of serious literature, I usually had a bit of low opinion about Vairamuthu being not-so-serious 'janaranjaga' writer. If u also had a similar opinion, I am afraid u have to change it.

I urge u book lovers, to throw away ur 'uppu sappillaadha' american novels. By that I didn't mean to be against 'english' novels, but they can basically never come close enough to our heart (except for how u hold the book :). To justify my statement, I request u give this one a read.

Costs Rs. 110/- as of 2004 edition, but surely worth millions!

I have added one another reason to be proud knowing to read tamil. Esp because it can never possibly be translated in any language, except tamil! (though I meant it to be funny, we never know. We have more 'villakka urai's for thirukkural than the number of kurals valluvar wrote. -latest being the urai written by sujatha which is as usual simple and unique-. So the same thing can happen to this novel also someday :)