ON Tamil Writer Balakumaran - The man who knew too much on spirituality

 

This write-up on writer Balakumar, veteran of tamil fiction credited to have 200 plus book titles. Balakumaran writing got into me when i watched the Tamil movie Gentleman(1993) as a

kid. Even though dialogue is small part of movie, managed to take away his name in the movie titles which we hardly care to see. Then i managed to see some of his works in movie and always

been great fan like for a hero in the movie. Later i used to see his name was always there in tamil novel section in book shops which i often used to visit. I turned pages there and got into his

novel writing a bit. One of my non conformist friend suggested couple of his novels which i tried and started liking his flavor of writing. He shines like a hero in a movie after reading through it.

Amazing technique of domain exploration, philosophical musings on life and people, adulation of feminine side. The novel like "Irumbu kudhiraigal" flashes a bit of movie "Polladavan" and drives into a subject, opening all windows of domain (some of his domain example: mechanical Engineering, Civil, Aviation like author Arthur Hailey). In fact he says only less percent of info gathered

his shared in novel. His novel Udayar brings in other side of Kalki's "Ponniyin selvan", the origin plus process of building the great big temple in Tanjore. The amount of research he has done is

evident. His novel dominated by his strong influence of spirituality, and the ones like "kasum pirapum" is also out of box. He is equivalent or more of Brazilian writer Paulo Coehlo when it comes

to philosopical genres. His musings on self development is another dimension of his writing. His content deserves to be translated into English and others. Eventhough he was in times of

contemporary writers like Sujatha and Jeyakanthan, he dares to say that Sujatha taught him on how to write short story and he always made a place for himself.

He is a autodidact. If you want to know what kind of writer he is this is the catch.. "If Sujatha is maniratnam of tamil fiction then Balakumaran is k.balachander of it (Indeed Jeyakanthan is shankar of it -just the hardcore social themes and showing brahmins to be role model and not hate them etc). How communism intertwined in Jeyakanthan writing, science in Sujatha here Balakumarans writing

intertwined with hindu philosophy or spirituality.

I happened to see him only once which i always cherish and i can say his humanity is not only in writing but also in real. He gave me a piece of advise which even my father failed. It will remain with me for ever to develop as a person. The picture i shared here is his autograph with his musings on my thoughts i wrote there in the page. To me Jeyakanthan writing is a mature woman, Sujatha writing is beautiful girl and Balakumarn writing is new born girl full of life (since it surrounds spirituality -a no die subject in

humanity) which is capable of giving lineage, i mean ink age.