CHENNAI:
Writer Konangi
likes to wander, traversing nooks and corners of the state as well as his mind. Following the stream of consciousness style of writing, he has over the years explored surrealistic and magical dreamscapes in his stories.
His works are often mind-teasers and have won him the Ki Ra award, instituted by Vijaya Pathippagam’s Readers Circle and
Sakthi Masala
, for the year 2021. In his writings, there isn’t much of the story as such, only a string of incidents. Thus, the reader feels a sense of enigma, whose thinking is abstract and sometimes even inscrutable.
S Ramakrishnan, who has known Konangi for more than 30 years, likens the writer's works to that of raga alapana, for which the reader has to be prepared for an intellectual ride.
Son Tamil
writer
Shanmugam
, and grandson of playwright and freedom fighter Madurakavi Baskaradoss, Konangi was named Illangovan. His pen-name Konangi has two explanatory notes: First, the concept and visualization of Bharathiar’s Puthiya Konangi with the word Puthiya omitted and the second would be from a story narrated by poet Gnanakoothan, about a mythological story of
Vishnu seeking a boon from Siva, when Siva orders Vishnu to perform a “konangi koothu” (dance-drama).
Konangi hails from literary doyen Ki Ra’s native of the karisal region, but his similes and metaphors are after a different style approaching post-modernism in their idiom. They follow a motif that is oriented with the images he visualises. Konangi confesses that writers like Poomani, Pa Jeyapragasam, So Dharman, and Suyambulingam, reflected the culture and practices prevailing in their native land. He on the other hand traveled further beyond choosing to be a dreamer too. The main inspiring influence on him has been that of Na Muthusamy followed by Nagulan,
Mouni
and Rajendra Chozan.
The many paths he has thus travelled feature in his works. His new work ‘Neer Valari’ (Water Boomerang) has come to be known as an objectbased novel. It is an age -old concept used by fishermen to catch fish.
Conscious of the environment and the changes to the natural world, the writer has highlighted the relationship of man and nature through his work. Scholar François Édouard Stéphane Gros has translated
Konagai
’s ‘Paazh’ to French. It is part of ‘Nagalinga Maram’ or ‘Sama Kalath
Tamil Kathaigal
’. In its last two paragraphs it takes on man for his inhumanity unto nature. It tells poignantly how he destroys forest wealth and audible to us is the voice of the burning wood’s murmurs in protest.
Konangi has been instrumental in bringing out the magazine ‘Kalkuthirai’, since 1989, which had issues with special focus on international authors like Fyodor Dostoevsky and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Through him Tamil readers also had the benefit of reading translated works of Raymond Carver, Octavio Paz, Haruki Murakami, Italo Calvino and
Vladimir Nabokov
.
The writer however, invites polar opposite views. For instance, Bava Chelladurai, one of his longstanding friends, says. “When Konangi made his debut with ‘Mathinimargal Kathai’ (1987), he seemed to be his true self, a storyteller of the future. But his subsequent works had a tendency to needlessly capture isms, taking him away from Tamil readers.”
As for Konangi himself, he understands the language of the mountains and even empty space has something to convey to him and get lovably close.
(The writer Aarvalan is a literary enthusiast)
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