How Imayam redefined realism in Tamil literature and proved his critics wrong

These critics argued that the dominant realistic style of writing in Tamil literature had become obsolete. They used various literary terms and concepts, such as myths, fantasy, magical realism, non-linear narratives, narratives without a central theme, formless forms, and deconstruction. According to them, realistic writing was flat and outdated. These debates created a stir in the Tamil literary landscape. Tamil writers felt compelled — or were at least expected — to reconsider their writing styles.

Questions arose about whether realistic writing still had relevance or value in contemporary literature. Despite this, senior writers like Sundara Ramaswamy, Ashokamitran, Sa. Kandasamy, and Ambai (the pseudonym of C.S. Lakshmi) continued to write in their distinctive styles, unaffected by this wave. Their works often faced criticism, were deconstructed, and subjected to reinterpretation. Critics even questioned the authors’ authority over their own creations.

How he proved critics wrong with his debut novel

Around the same time, Dalit literature and women’s writing began to rise in Tamil. While Dalits and women had written before, it was during this period that Dalits started writing in large numbers. Moreover, the influence of Marathi and Kannada Dalit literature encouraged Tamil Dalit writers to develop a literary consciousness rooted in Dalit experiences. Similarly, more women from various sections of society started writing. Until then, women belonging to the middle-class and upper-caste dominated the field. As a result, Tamil literature began to reflect new realities of life, introducing fresh styles, dialects, and perspectives.

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It was in this environment that Imayam published his first novel, Koveru Kazhudaigal (Beasts of Burden, 1994), which adhered to a starkly realistic style of writing. Imayam chose to write in a style that many considered obsolete. His approach focused on portraying life as he saw it, within a logical and aesthetic framework of reality. He avoided innovation or experimenting with form or technique, and there was not even an iota of fantasy or magical realism in his writing.

As expected, Imayam’s novel received mixed reviews. Some dismissed it due to its adherence to realism, a style perceived as passé. The novel also faced severe criticism from some quarters for its content. By this time, writings about marginalised communities, particularly Dalits, were gaining prominence. Against this backdrop, Imayam’s novel about the Purthai Vannar community — one of the most oppressed sections of society — should have been well-received. However, many advocates of Dalit literature criticised the novel because they felt that the novel sought to absolve upper castes of accusations of casteism by exposing the inequalities within the depressed people. Some even labelled the novel anti-Dalit for showing internal divisions among Dalits.

Thus, Imayam’s novel faced criticism for both its style and content. At the same time, a few senior writers like Sundara Ramaswamy welcomed this novel. Ramaswamy praised this novel for its powerful narrative and thematic depth. The novel garnered wide attention and readership. Imayam, however, remained unaffected by the criticism. Without responding to detractors, he continued to write in the same vein. He made no compromises in his approach and the subject he chose to write about, and continued to write what felt right to him, unaffected by the commotion of the surrounding debates.

Thirty years on, the criticisms Imayam faced in his early days, along with the views that fuelled them, have become obsolete. Imayam’s writing has only grown stronger over time. He has creatively responded to critics through his writing. Time has proved him right; not those critiques. It is widely accepted today that the quality of writing is what truly matters, regardless of the style.

The insider’s perspective

An important concept in literary concepts presented in the 1990s is that the author is dead. According to this theory, the text is important and alive and not the writer. After writing, the writer disappears. So, they said that the creator cannot own the writing. It is not my intention to discuss this point here. I would like to point out the similarity between the author’s death and the writing of Imayam.

There are two angles to declare the death of the author. We should look at the copy, not the writer. That copy takes its own shape depending on the reader. It takes different forms and meanings according to the reading. Any meaning the writer tries to give is invalid. What matters is the reader or the reading. Accordingly, a copy can take many different forms and can be given many meanings. The author has no role in this. His role ends with writing. He disappears. It is the creation that remains alive.

This can apply to any text. But Imayam establishes the death or the absence of the author in a different way. From his first work, Beasts of Burden to a recent short story, he has never revealed himself in any story. Each story unfolds as a spontaneous expression of its respective characters and plots.

Imayam achieves this in three ways. First, he presents everything he writes from an insider’s perspective rather than an outsider’s. Although the lives of marginalised communities had been depicted in Tamil literature before him, these portrayals were often from an external point of view. Writers would sympathetically depict the lives of the poor, the downtrodden, the economically exploited, and the oppressed, but as observers rather than participants. In these works, the oppressors were taken to task, and solutions to end oppression and exploitation were proposed. However, these narratives remained external. This trend in Tamil literature began to shift when marginalised people started writing about their own lives, and Imayam became one of the best examples of this change.

Imayam puts the life of a Puratha Vannar into focus with an insider’s viewpoint. It is through this angle that he tells us about Vinayagam’s troubles in the story ‘En Kathe’. Similarly, in the novel Sellatha Panam (A Woman Burnt), he portrays the life of Revathi, an upper caste woman married to a Burmese refugee, who is on her deathbed, through the lens of those intimately connected to her reality. In the novel, I Am Still Alive, he tells the story of a 14-year-old boy battling for his life, from his point of view.

Watch: Imayam interview: ‘My politics is centred on what I write’

The boy, unaware of the severity of his illness or its complications, does not comprehend the emotional, financial, and mental strain his condition imposes on his family. Imayam deliberately chooses to tell the story from the boy’s perspective, as he is committed to presenting life authentically from within. He does not like to interfere in the story. Whether it’s a first-person or third-person narrative, Imayam always ensures the story remains grounded in an insider’s experience. I Am Still Alive is an excellent example of this approach.

This novel explores various aspects of kidney disorders, including medical complications, treatment protocols, financial struggles, and the legal formalities required for kidney transplantation. The parents’ anguish, both emotional and financial, is palpable. Telling such a complex story through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy is a daunting task. Taking up the challenge, Imayam conveys the boy’s reality through his senses — his eyes, ears, and feelings — without imposing any knowledge or awareness that goes beyond the boy’s age, experience, or understanding. As the story unfolds through the boy’s eyes, it enables readers to grasp his pain, struggles, and the emotions of those around him without any overt intervention from the author.

The absence of the author

The perspective of how a work is told primarily determines the presence of the author. Secondly, the transformation the author takes determines this. The author has to make some effort to portray any character with its true identity. One’s field of experience is limited. One cannot write much if one writes only what comes to one's direct experiences. Also, when there are various characters in a story, the storyteller must approach them from the point of view of their respective characters if the writer wants to do justice to each character. One must become many. One has to transform. Only then each character will fully manifest himself. He should change his perspective and look at himself and the environment around him by becoming that character. The author’s self-identity has to dissolve.

Approaching others from their point of view is simply called empathy. Empathy is something most people can have in general. Modern science places it among the components of multiple intelligence. So seeing them from someone else’s perspective is not a rare trait. But a great writer goes beyond this stage. He takes seeing others from their point of view to its extreme. That means she or he becomes that character.

We can accurately understand this trait of Imayam through the story of ‘Aaladi Bus’. It is a story about a girl who travels in a crowded bus in a huge traffic jam. She suddenly gets her period after working hard all day and boarding the bus. At the same time, her seat is in danger. It was a seat reserved by another person. She wants to get away from the seat as she is afraid of a fight, but her condition does not allow this. The battle for the seat intensifies. This story is about her painful dilemma over the seat and the act of sitting. Imayam is a male. He is obviously unlikely to have direct experience of menstruation.

But he accurately describes the embarrassment and mental distress that a woman can experience in public when menstruating without any equipment to manage. Here he goes beyond seeing her from her point of view and becomes herself and narrates her feelings. There is no gap between the character and the reader. There is no author. His feelings and voice are not there. The postmodern literary view proclaims death of the author in a certain sense, while the author Imayam brings about his death in the text. He removes himself completely from the context and places the plot and the characters in front of us. Through this, he establishes the absence of the author.

Imayam establishes the absence of the author in other ways, too. He writes stories on different subjects with different characters. In six novels, over 100 short stories and two novellas, he shows a lot of characters and deals with countless issues. But we cannot know the viewpoint, the identity, and the politics of Imayam. In that plot, we can only know what the characters are thinking and feeling. Through this, he constructs his reality. So that reality unfolds before our eyes with great credibility and liveliness.

We know that Imayam belongs to a party. However, his story about the party does not reveal his opinion or sense of belongingness towards the party. The story vividly presents the reality of the state of the party today. The story, which emerges as a sharp criticism of the party, arises from a position beyond the political positions of the individual called Imayam. If you interview Imayam now, he will speak in support of that party. He will support even the things that cannot be supported. It is his duty as a party member. But as a writer, he does not feel obliged to such duties. He tells the reality of how the party stands today in terms of its values. In other words, the creator called Imayam betrays the man called Imayam.

Similarly, when he writes a story about the opposition party, he does not spin the whip of criticism. By giving importance to the reality of that field, he excludes the individual called Imayam from that field. So, we are not able to see the author’s identity in terms of perspective or as a personality. The plot, the characters, and the events of the story come to life in front of us. By this, Imayam’s writing tells us that a creation transcends the creator. These stories thereby demonstrate that creativity is beyond the individual and that whatever opinion we may have on an individual’s ideological positions need not be a barrier to reading his work.

Rooted in social realism

A reader can see Imayam’s wide range of concerns and the nuances of the issues he deals with in his writings while looking at the spaces in which his stories operate. One can feel the lively connection of a creator with contemporary times and his ability to reflect upon them through his work without putting himself forward.

Imayam follows individual people with their backgrounds in novels like Beasts of Burden, Arumugam and Sedal, and travels on different paths in his subsequent novels. Although En Kathe has a one-dimensional scope, it reveals the psychological crisis of an individual and the mental anguish caused by extreme love and possessiveness. He does not take social realities into account in this story. There are two people in the story, which revolves around the emotional struggle and the tug-of-war between them. He conveys the story without any interference and tells the storyteller Vinayakam’s anxiety, deep anguish and heartbreak strongly and forcefully. This novel can be described as an art form of distress.

Although social realities have a place in the novel Sellatha Panam, the author gives importance to family relationships and the feelings related to those relationships. Describing a woman’s painful struggle after a horrific fire accident, the story delves into the agony of her relatives, their guilt, the reasons behind their guilt, and the factors contributing to those reasons, before progressing to deeper layers. There is no explicit reference to caste. Financial differences emerge at the forefront. However, the reader can make out that the marriage in the story is not only an inter-class marriage but also an inter-caste marriage.

Also read: If you reject politics, you distance yourself from society: Writer Imayam

The reader can also feel that the caste did stand in the way of that marriage and that was the main cause of post-marriage problems. The author doesn’t say any of these explicitly anywhere. The story does not mention the word caste or the name of any caste. However, it has been implied that marriage takes place between the castes belonging to different hierarchies. In a way, it can be said that this novel underlines the other side of love marriages across caste and class. One does not need to be a social scientist to know that the negative elements of that other side are not due to love but to the social realities of today. In this sense, it can be said that this novel has a strong background of a social reality.

An artist who doesn’t show his face

It may be asked, what is the issue with explicitly stating the role of caste? By doing so, events appear coloured by the writer’s opinions. On the contrary, by presenting only what is there —what happens, what is said, and what is felt — the underlying reality becomes perceptible without any stain of bias. The story’s power remains undiminished even without explicitly addressing caste. However, it gains a deeper dimension when we recognise the hidden caste dynamics. Ultimately, whether one perceives the caste angle depends on the eye of the beholder. Above all, Imayam subtly conveys how, in certain moments, money becomes nothing more than a worthless bundle of paper. This greater reality transcends the realities of caste, religion, and class.

Caste is directly addressed in Pethavan: The Begetter. At the same time, it’s is not the sole focus. Imayam shows how a family, unable to break caste restrictions, gets stuck in the emotional binding of affection even as it is prepared to commit a cruel act due to caste dictates. Caste-based superiority perpetrates atrocities. At the same time, Imayam does not imagine that all members of the same caste are equally ruthless. Because he knows the reality. If one commits brutal murder under the influence of caste, if that is the reality, then there is nothing wrong in writing that reality. But there is also a parallel reality: the psychological turmoil of people torn between affection and caste obligations.

Imayam, in this story, shows the other side of a brutal act that later came to be known as “honour killing”. At the time this story was written, these types of murders were not exposed. But everyone knows that casteism can be the factor behind these murders. Imayam perfectly captures another side that many people do not know. And yet, as many have perceived, this is not just a story of “honour killing”. It is also about the mental struggle of the perpetrators of “honour killings”. Imayam gives importance to that struggle in this story. Through it, he tells the reality of different dimensions of human beings. He goes beyond political correctness. Everyone knows that casteism makes “honour killing” possible. Not many people know the emotional struggle of the family involved in it. Imayam directs his attention to this lesser-known aspect. He also brings it to our attention by portraying it realistically.

I Am Still Alive is a story that has no political, social, or caste dimensions. Imayam chronicles the disease and the struggles related to it through the eyes of the boy, who is stricken with a terrible disease. It does not contain any criticism or exposure of the caste-ridden community. A critical view of the medical system emerges throughout the story, but it is not the central or important aspect of the story. Imayam portrays this in a way that evokes feelings and thoughts about how unpredictable life and death are, and how uncertain life is. He also shows that other realities pale before the reality of the perpetual struggle for life.

We know that misery is experienced differently depending on one’s caste, class, and social status. In that sense, caste and class are the background of all kinds of miseries. However, in the most intense stages of life’s struggles, these differences often fade, and human emotions converge. In the novel, the protagonist’s father is wealthy and respected, but he cannot ensure his son’s survival. Money and social status fail to alleviate his grief, echoing a theme from Sellatha Panam, where wealth is rendered meaningless in moments of utter distress.

Imayam is a rare writer who brings places, people, and issues vividly to life without projecting his identity or opinions onto his work. He cannot be confined to a single category, such as a writer of the oppressed. His body of work spans such a wide range of stories that no single label suffices. Few contemporary writers can match Imayam’s ability to explore the nuanced, layered realities of modern life. He is an artist who does not show his face but reveals the many faces and truths of some important dimensions of our time.