The auto driver who shared his dreams

There was once an auto-rickshaw driver in Vadapalani, Madras, who had completed a hand-written novel in Tamil. He grew up in a small town and moved to Madras after his marriage. When I met him about 15 years ago, he appeared to be in his thirties.

He knew my mother as she often came to the rickshaw stand where he was parked, along with his fellow drivers, waiting for fare-paying passengers. He had driven my mother on her many trips to buy material for her clothing boutique and make occasional deliveries to her customers all over Madras. He knew that my mother lived in the big white house and that I was the daughter "from America." That I was well-known in my neighbourhood was a given in the 1980s, but it was now the late '90s and I was touched that I was not yet forgotten.

His questions about my life in America started even before he turned the auto onto 100ft. road (I had hailed his auto just near Kamala Theatre). What I had to say about my student lifestyle, how I compared America with Russia (having previously lived there), what I had in mind for my future -- all such topics interested him. I answered politely without a hint of the impatience and reticence my own family members were guaranteed to receive when they posed similar questions to me. When we arrived in Adyar, he wanted to know if he should wait to take me to my next destination. "OK," I said and promised not to keep him waiting too long. In less than half-an-hour, we set off to Saidapet. By the time we arrived at my next destination, I was tired from all the questioning. I paid my fare and was eager to take leave.

A couple of days later, my grandmother announced, with enough of a critical note infused into her voice, that an auto-rickshaw driver was asking for me at our gate. I was getting ready to go out for the evening with some new and old friends. I recognized the driver right away. "I wanted to show you something," he said. "OK," I said trying not to show I was distracted. My friends were probably already on their way to pick me up and I still wanted to gather a few things. From inside a plastic bag, he pulled out two thick, dog-eared student notebooks.

"I wrote a book," he said. "Here, take a look."

I took the notebooks in complete politeness and flipped quickly through the pages. The writing in Tamil was neat and appeared easy to read to anyone with an interest in reading it. I am embarrassed now to recall that I was somewhat restless on the inside and lacked exuberance about this novel he must have written with such sincerity and dedication. Perhaps he had always felt the urge to write but apparently, one fine day, he had been inspired enough to stop, buy a notebook and write down a story based on a couple of passengers he had driven that day. After that, his book grew, absorbing the collective experiences of the auto-driving community. He also had with him a hand-written manifesto on Indian development in a third, ruled notebook. This manifesto, he said, contained all his visions, objectives, policies and procedures for India's future and development.

I was, then, too young, somewhat indifferent, and clearly unimaginative to absorb how unique a person he happened to be, with his not-so-common dedication to pen his thoughts, observations and feelings. Not yet curious about the world of writers, I was just another middle-class kid looking forward to meeting up with friends and having 'a good time.'  So I hardly did justice to the first page of his hand-written book and, although he must have valued me enough to share his passion and likely hoped to spend some time talking about his book, I don't remember an animated conversation. Now years later, I cannot remember the faces I met at the evening's party, the conversations that I must have had, the inevitable cute guy in the room that I must have glanced at shyly and surreptitiously. But I remember that unpublished Tamil writer's pride and eagerness well, and often regret not paying more attention to his interest. Maybe I could have asked him to lend me his books to read them at my own pace.  Maybe I would have been one of his first readers, if not his very first reader.  I would have come to know what hopes and dreams an auto-driver had for his country.  Now, belatedly, I want to know the names of his characters, the languages they spoke, and the reasons they captured his attention. And I want to ask him the all-important question: does he know how to get his books published?

If only I can go back in time.  If only I had bothered to remember his name.

Sujatha, R.I.P.

S. Rangarajan, a prolific and popular writer in Tamil who adopted the pen name Sujatha, died in Chennai on February 27, 2008. He was 72.

I am not as well-read in Tamil as I ought to be but if any one writer deserves to get credit for opening my eyes early to the pleasures of reading in Tamil, it will be none other than Sujatha. I was a pre-teen when I discovered his serial novels in the pages of Tamil weeklies, Kumudam and Ananda Viketan , in the early 80s. The sketched illustrations that accompanied his stories and novels were strikingly different from those that accompanied other stories and features printed in the same weeklies. His Tamil women characters were often depicted wearing jeans (or skirts) and T-shirts and I paid attention to this tiny detail. Instead of slice-of-life stories about madisaaru-clad conventional middle-class Brahmin women and their maids with their nool podavai hitched up for easy mobility (people that I mistakenly assumed I was quite familiar with and, therefore, had no intention of reading about), the illustrator hinted at a world of stories intriguing enough for me to put down my Louis L'Amours. The illustrator was right.

Two decades have rolled by since those early years in Chennai, and I cannot recall the exact titles of the novels I eagerly waited for and read in weekly instalments. But I remember how often Sujatha surprised me with story-lines and genres that I, in my English language-informed ignorance, didn't expect to find in Tamil. There were mystery novels, detective series, perhaps too, some science fiction. There were charming, young, Tamil male characters more real and relevant to the local context than any that populated the books revolving around Jeeves; yet the young Tamil women characters often led lives and harboured interests quite independent of the conniving male charmers. Perhaps they ended up together occassionally but whether that happened or not did not seem to matter to the main plot of the story, I think. And always, always there was plenty of witty, sharp dialogue--the type of crisp humor you often see in Tamil stage comedies--that easily incorporated some English words written in Tamil script (just as any self-respecting Chennai-ite would do without thinking twice).

I loved Sujatha's style and stories (and his unconventional women and men) so much that I eventually explored other writers in Tamil--whether they glorified the Tamil woman's garpu and honour and frustrated me or whether they explored class/caste consciousness and moved me--during much of my teen years. I have not read a single novel or even a periodical in Tamil for several years now (in fact since I left India to study abroad at 19 years of age) but if it weren't for Sujatha's works I would not have entered the rich world of contemporary Tamil literature even for those few, brief formative years.

A tribute to Sujatha by Prema Srinivasan appears in The Hindu. [Link]