KALKI - THE MAN BEHIND THE LEGEND

Work habits

He did not have any specific time for writing. He used to write whenever he had an idea. Suddenly he would wake up in the middle of the night and start writing. Since he was running a weekly magazine, he had to meet deadlines. In those days, you did not have modern printing techniques. So, if he had to bring out the magazine on Friday, he had to write the lead lines on Thursday. There were no two ways about it. Even now there are deadlines for daily publications, but printing techniques are far advanced now. It used to be more tedious then, due to technical limitations. So he used to be writing all the time. When ‘Kalki’ (the magazine) was first started, he had to write the lead lines, the sub-lead lines, one short story, one children’s story. Apart from these, he had to write essays, a few humorous snippets, an episode from a novel.

After a time, when a lot of sub-editors joined Kalki, he used to encourage a lot of people to write. He was not content being a writer. He helped create many writers by giving them a lot of encouragement. For example, Devan, Saavi, Bharatan, Vindhan and Vasanthan.

Kalki - the story teller

He used to tell us a lot of stories. There used to be group of children at home pestering him to tell stories. He used to tell very interesting stories. He would not think that children have to be told only a particular kind of stories. He would incorporate songs between the stories. My sister-in-law once said, “Uncle, you are always telling us historical stories. You are supposed to be a great writer (she was just 10 years young then), why don’t you tell us something new”. He wrote a book called Mohinideevu (Mystery Island). He told us the entire story before it was written. When it got published finally, we were very excited and wanted to know whether he had written exactly the way he had narrated it to us, or he had changed something somewhere.

He used to discuss some of his stories with us. In the book ‘Sivagamiyin Sabatham’ (Sivagami’s oath), he had written the song 'Maraven…maravenendru…'. He read out this song to me and asked me for my opinion, I really liked it a lot - "Maraven, maravenendru velinmel aaneiitta mannarum marapparo vannamayile…" (The heroine of this novel sings this song addressing a peacock, wondering if the king who swore on his weapon, would forget). It is an ahaturai (internal process) song. One more thing is he never felt that he should not talk to us about ahaturrai or puratturai (external process) songs. All that was only literature for him. Even without realising what it was, we learned to experience these songs at a very young age. When I was only 13 or 14 years old, T K Chidambaranar Mudaliar would tell me these ahaturrai songs from Andaal Pashuram. We used to really enjoy them. Even now I remember one song…"Kannal enum karunkuruvi gagana mazhai kaatradhu minnal ennum  puzhu eduthu velakketrum karkaalam"…(Description of night during the rainy season: The sparrow, which is as black as the night, unable to bear the heavy rain, takes 'lightning', which is the glow worm, and lights a lamp in its nest, during the rainy season).

Kalki's inspiration for his novels

Even when he was very young, he used to read a lot of novels. There used to be one Ayyasamy Iyer, who was a teacher at a school. Kalki learned a lot from him, he even learnt English from him. Mr.Ayyasamy used to give him a lot of books to read. He was the one who introduced Bharatiyar’s poems to my father. He also used to give him English novels. At that time, he used to read a lot of Vaduvur Doraisamy Iyengar’s books. And my father used to say, "No! This ending does nor gel, it should be different, and he would give his own version". So even at the age of 12 or 13 he was able to evaluate and critique novels.

He liked Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Alexander Dumas, Jerome K Jerome, Dickens…. In Tamil Nadu we always had the tradition of story telling, but it was all in the oral tradition. There was not much of the written tradition. The novel as a genre had not developed back then. After the coming of the Maratha Kings came the tradition of Harikatha. He used to be very interested in Harikatha. That was the only source of entertainment at that time. He would go for these Harikathas and come back home and narrate, imitating the Bagavathar. And of course everybody used to listen to him and encourage him, as he was only seven years young. If he forgot some line, he would just make it up. People thought he was going to become a great exponent of the Harikatha.

He used to read a lot of novels like 'Padmavati Charitram' and wanted to write like that. But the most special thing about his writing is the way the he would develop the plot. ‘Sivagamiyin Sabatham’ was first written as a one-hour drama for the radio. He had the plot in his mind and later on, after 12 years, he wrote it into a novel. The first historical novel to be serialised in Kalki was ‘Parthiban Kanavu’ (Parthiban’s dream). He was the first one to bring in this trend of serialising novels in a magazine. Every week he would stop at an interesting point, so that readers would be anxious to know what happened next. He used to write the episodes as and when it was published. He did not have the practice of writing the whole novel first and then serialising it.

Kalki's favourite

He liked ‘Allaiosai’ the best among all his works, because the setting of this book extends from a small village in Tamil Nadu right upto the Jhelam and Chenab in Punjab. It is set against the backdrop of the freedom struggle. He himself said once that this story would remain popular for a very long time.

Kalki’s fascination with royalty

In our country, the historical genre was the most popular. Novels with social themes came in only at a later stage. Secondly, when my father was writing the novel ‘Parthiban Kanavu’, at that time the freedom movement was on in our country. In this novel the Chola kingdom is slave to the Pallava kingdom, Parthiban the Chola king, wants to be the king of a free country, and wants to his son to grow to be a brave man. He refuses to pay tax to the Pallava king and dies in the war that ensues. He gives up his life, trying to win freedom for his country. His son then becomes the King of the free Chola kingdom. The reason for him choosing this theme was that our country needed to become free soon. People had to become aware of this cause. Even in that story which deals mostly with royalty, the commoners are depicted to be very brave people. In the war that is depicted in the novel, he says, not a single soldier ran away from the battle, every single one of them gave away his life, so that the Chola kingdom could be free. The Chola kingdom in essence meant India.

Anandi on Kalki's works - The concluding part of the Interview