Hi its a matter of pride that venkat ram diwaker has had a personal touch with sujatha.I am sure he wouldnt take much time before writing about his experiences. but before that i wish members could contribute information and trivia on sujatha.
rangarajan was from srirangam ( he immortalised the town in his srirangaththu thevathaikal.) another rangarajan from srirangam is poet vaali.
rangarajan was a classmate of apj abdul kalam
rangarajan, was an employee of public sector companies. he headed the team which invented the automatic voting machine.
received an award from Govt of India's National Council for Science and Technology in 1993 for making Science accessible to the public through his books
had his way of getting into contreversies. one was a in a novel in the 80's when his books were burnt by one community
recently his dialougue for the movie 'boys' also got him some ill fame.
In the death of Sujatha we have lost a very fine multi-faceted writer who had enthralled the readers since the 1960s. If I am not wrong he started with a bang with his first novel itself in Kumduam, 'Nylon Kayiru', a murder mystery which is totally different from those written in that genre in those days. There was no Ganesh and Vasant (they came in later) and the entire novel revolves around a diary written by the murdered girl. Significantly it's set in Bombay, a city which he did not bring into his later novels to a large extent.
Like Kalki before him Sujatha also developed a unique style and he was helped by the magazine Kumudam. He once wrote Iranginan as if it was a straircase and the mag accepted it. He also used words such "Taktakkinaan" instead of "tak tak endru kadavai idithan", somewhat akin to limited overs cricket.
Though he wrote quite a no of novels, including historicals, I feel he was outstanding in his short stories written in the 1970s. One of his most memorable short stories was about the state of our municipal hospitals and the callous way the poor are treated there finally leaving the mother of a sick young girl to take her back to her village to be treated by traditional medicine.
Some of his dramas are also memorable and I particularly will mention "Kadavul Vandhirundhar". He was indeed the pioneer of sci-fi in Tamil, like Kalki was for historical romances.
hi an aspect of sujatha that everyone liked was his practicality
recently a reader had quoted an abirami anthathi ondraai arumbi palavaai virinthu ivulengumaay ninraal
and asked sujatha if he thought abirama bhattar kbnew about the big bang theory 250 years ahead of the west
sujaaatha answered with more such poems from prabantham, devaram, thiru manthiram tha t could be interpretted as modern scientific theories. he said in his opinion these are all selective interpretations and everything has its own time line.
Another sad news is the sucide of "Stella Bruce" a Tamil writer of the 80's. His novels portraited a new way of story telling and characterization in the 80's.
My visit to Naradhagana sabha for attending the 'tribute to Sujatha' - just recorded the happenings and posted in my blog: http://maraboorjc.blogspot.com
Dear Mr. Chadra sekar, Read your article posted in your blog.I think it will take a long time for the fans of Sujatha to come to terms that he is no more among us. Thank you for the coverage, with regards, shanthi.