Thanthira boomi

I am curious about Tamil writing, especially because my parents and my grandmother are Tamil book hoarders. I made some feeble attempts to read Devan and found that Tamil writing is a world in itself - the puns, the metaphors, the humdrum, are all rooted in Tamil; the jokes change from what English speaking Tamils make to witty repartee that's only possible in Tamil - in all it's a vastly different world from a translation. Yet, when I found this beautiful copy, old but new, in Select Bookstore, I bought it simply because it was a written by a Tamil author and was a translation, even though there is no mention of the translator. It is quite a good translation, as compared to the translations of Tagore's works by Rupa books. The book has Kasturi, a perceptive and contemplative small-town chap, who has all the street smartness to take on the babus of Delhi. Somewhere along the way he starts to wonder about the point of life, and the direction he's subconsciously moving in. As a victim of rationalising, what I really enjoyed in the book was Kasturi's soliloquies - his endless debate on the pointlessness of things vs the importance of a career, particularly the confusion that spirituality brings to his debates. I relate to his choice in the end, as someone who saw the value in that very same choice after dismissing it in my late adolescence.

A meaningless, directionless story of a South Indian's materialistic adventure in Delhi. Poorly written.

"நீங்கள் பாதுகாப்பை நாடும் கொள்கைப்பிடிப்பில்லாத சந்தர்பவாதி." க்ளாஸ்

A critical view of Delhi power politics combined with a self-introspection of a confused intellectual after his lover marries another guy. The whirlpool of thoughts in the mind of the protagonist is powerfully expressed.