Imayam (writer)

Imayam (pen name of V. Annamalai) is an Indian Tamil-language novelist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, He has seven novels, seven short story collections and a novella to his credit. He is closely associated with the Dravidian Movement and its politics and considered as one of the leading writers from South India. He is the recipient of the honorary Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Selladha Panam in 2020. He is also the first Tamil writer to receive the Kuvempu Rashtriya Puraskar National Award (2022) for bringing new sensibilites to Tamil literature through his writings. Noting the writer's proclivity to Dravidian ideals, the Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K.Stalin called him "an ideologue donned in black and red". He lauded Imayam calling him a "proactive writer" in the Dravidian movement.

Imayam becomes important in the Tamil literary scene as he documents the folk dialects, folk idioms and registers of various sects of people. This is evident in all of his short stories, which stands as a storehouse of the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu. He was honoured with Sahitya Akademi for his 2018 novel Selladha Panam, which presents the case of a burnt woman, a victim of the political economy of the institution of marriage. His recent novel 'Vazhga Vazhga' (2020) deals with the plight of the commoners in huge political gatherings. He turns the limelight upon how the crowd is pulled to the meeting, the role played by caste in seating arrangements, the politics of those who have 'Power' and many more. Imayam executes Michel Foucault's statement 'Power is omnipresent' in this novel. This is the underlying element which holds the narrative of the novel together. There is a demarcation between those who have the power and those who are powerless in the novel. The novel is full of dichotomies - Powerful / powerless, Men / women, high caste / low caste. Imayam plays with these dichotomies through his dialogic form thereby bringing up the brutal hierarchical system of the society.

Selladha Panam is his fifth novel published in 2018. It is essentially about a woman facing violence at the hands of the man she had fallen in love with and married. “They have two children but the woman sets herself on fire over a family dispute,” he says. The story does not stop with talking about the incompatibility in their marriage, it goes on to capture life at a fire ward in a hospital like Pondicherry's JIPMER, about how flesh falls in pieces from burnt bodies, about staff carefully dressing the wounds, about outpouring of emotions, about the different kinds of stories behind the decisions... “Why is it that we hardly come across a man who sets himself on fire even if he chooses to die by suicide? Why is it always a woman? Sometimes, I am stunned by the decisions women take. In this novel, Revathi, the protagonist, has no explanation for why she is in love with this man,” Imayam says.

Imayam's novella 'Pethavan' was first published in September 2012 in Uyirmai. In November 2012, it was published as a book through Oviya Publications TVS, Villupuram, being reprinted it five times in three months. Bharati Publications published the novella in February 2013 and has since sold more than 1,00,000 copies, reprinting it ten times. It has been translated into Malayalam and Telugu.

Pethavan preceded a similar real event that occurred in 2012 in Dharmapuri.

Sedal, a novel published in 2006, deals with a Dalit community whose women are designated as oracles. These women, appointed during droughts, fix the date for village festivals, perform koothu, participate in death rituals, and are not allowed a marital relationship. The novel tracts the life of Sedal, given over to the temple during the 1945-46 drought in Tamil Nadu, whose family leaves her behind and migrates to Sri Lanka. This novel is also translated into English.

The English translation of Koveru Kazhudaigal. appeared as 'Beasts of Burden' in 2001. It was translated into English again in 2006, and was also translated into Malayalam. In an introduction to Beasts of Burden, Imayam writes that

Imayam's second novel, Arumugam, appeared in 1999 and was translated into French. Talking about this novel, noted writer Jeyamohan identifies the "folk poet" in Imayam. The folk narravtives in the novels of Imayam make him a master of realism, he said. It is a tale of emotional bond between a child and his mother woven together with strings of love. It is the story of Arumugam, the little boy who grows up before his time, whose innocence is snatched away from him with his experiences. Originally written in Tamil, it has been translated into English by D Krishna Ayyar and published by Katha publishers. Manbaram, a collection of short stories, was published in 2002.

Koveru Kazhudhaigal is about a family of Dalit launderers who wash the clothes of other Dalit people, receiving grain and other food in return. The novel is constructed between two journeys: a pilgrimage of hope at the beginning; a routine trip to the washing pool in drudgery and despair in the end. Imayam invents for the protagonist Arokkyam a particular spoken style; often relying on a string of related exclamations, it is very similar to a formal lament. He presents an ebullient mix of the past, present and future in his works. He was barely 18 when he finished the first draft of the novel. About Koveru Kazhudaigal. the writer Sundara Ramasamy wrote "There is no novel that equals this one in the last 100 years of Tamil writing." Koveru Kazhudhaigal won the Agni Aksara Award from the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers' Forum (1994), the Amudhan Adigal Ilakkiya Award for Literature (1998) and was honored with a state award.

The indomitable but suffering mother figure is a repeated image in Marathi dalit writing. She is often the sole breadwinner, sacrificing everything for the family. Namdeo Dhasal, Vaman Nimbalkar and Jyoti Lanjeswar have all written poems entitled, `Mother'. Gail Omvedt in her article in Nirappirikai (Nov. 1994) points to the mother figure in the poetry of dalit men as a continuing symbol of oppression, and also of struggle, sacrifice and sense of duty. But she adds that in all such portraits, 'These women did not challenge nor change greatly the nature of the functions and duties that were traditionally theirs.' The portrait of Arokkyam is in that tradition, but at the same time different from the symbolic archetype. She is not described objectively, but from within; from the perspective of her own dilemma, within the terms of her own anguish.

Through a literary career that spans over three decades, his writings capture the stories of the unnoticed people often drawn from the marginalized lower strata of the society. He holds a mirror up to society and reflects every nuance of it without any intervention. His characters are no dreamers but common people rooted to the land where they live, try to escape their brutal realities, and are in need of agency to voice their opinions, and do not want tomorrow as just an extension of today. With such characters who are denied almost everything, the author's preferential absence provides them everything, particularly autonomy. This turns the limelight to those who are denied their voices and for whom the society turned its deaf ears. For instance, Koveru Kaludhaigal (1994) deals with the Puthirai Vannar community which is an untouchable community among the Dalits. Arumugam (1999) traces the life of a young man who gets stuck in the world of prostitutes. Selladha Panam (2019) presents the case of a burnt woman, a victim of the political economy of the institution of marriage. Vazhga Vazhga (2020) deals with the plight of the commoners in huge political gatherings. His novella Pethavan (2013) is exposes the cruel tentacles of the caste system. All the characters of the above works are neither great personalities nor noble ones. They are labourers, masons, farmers, prostitutes, sweepers and many other such unnoticed people whom the society has inflicted injustice upon.

Born in 1964 into a peasant family, Imayam had his college education at Periyar E.V.R. College. Tiruchirappalli. It was S. Albert, a Professor from Trichy who 'opened the door to the world' for him. He later moved to Vriddhachalam and continued his writing. He is married to Pushpavalli and has two sons - Kathiravan Annamalai and Tamilselvan Annamalai. He is the brother of Labour Welfare and Skill Development Minister of Tamil Nadu