Imayam (pen name of V. Annamalai) is an Indian Tamil-language novelist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He has ten novels, nine short story collections and a novella to his credit. Widely acknowledged for his realist mode of writing, his stories are known for their incisive exploration of societal intricacies. Closely associated with the Dravidian Movement and its politics, he is 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.
Agni Aksra Award, the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers Association Award, the N.L.C. Award, and the Thamizh Thendral Thiru.V.Ka. Award from the state government of Tamil Nadu are bestowed upon him for his literary contributions that captures the realities around him, about Dalits, caste, patriarchy, women, injustice and oppression. He has been honored by the governments of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and India for his literary legacy that spans around almost three decades.
Early life and family He was born on 10 March 1964 into a peasant family in Kazhudur, a village in Tittakudi taluk of present-day Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu. He 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 younger brother of Labour Welfare and Skill Development Minister of Tamil Nadu.
Works Rooted in the Dravidian literary tradition, Imayam's works frequently highlight the challenges and negative influence of caste in the lives of everyday people living in the northern coastal districts of Tamil Nadu. Imayam says that he draws his stories from his life. “I write the stories of those who live with me in my family, my neighbourhood, my street, my village. I write the stories they told me, the stories I see, the stories I have heard, the stories I live. I write my life; I write how I live.”
Koveru Kazhudaigal 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 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"The world is an ocean, in which concepts and theories are like ships which appear and disappear. My works were not composed with the comfort offered by these ships, but written from within the sea and by looking at its vastness." The result is that this story, rooted in specificities of a certain experience, has a resounding universality: it is simply about how life goes on. Koveru Kazhuthaigal gives us a detailed picture of a lifestyle that has now passed: that there is no supposition that the lifestyles of the upper castes (vegetarianism, Brahminic rituals, etc.) are, or ought to be, the norm. Yet it is not even the rich ethnographic detail that makes the book so valuable, but the insight it gives us into the life of the woman, Arokkyam, on the margins of society and poised between Hindu ritual and Christian devotion. Arokkyam means 'good health', 'well-being'; Savuri is the Tamil version of Xavier.
The novel is constructed on two journeys: a pilgrimage of hope at the beginning; a routine trip to the washing pool in drudgery and despair at the end. Between these, it is signposted by rites of passage which give a sense of cyclical time, but also by landmarks of historical, linear time. This climate of time and change is important to the novel whose primary theme is Arokkyam's dilemma within changing systems of belief about the self and society. First, there is the gradual commercialization of traditionally caste-linked functions. The village acquires a regular tailor and a laundryman with a box-iron, both of whom serve not only the village people, but the colony dwellers too, taking away the custom from the traditional washerman. Changing styles of dress contribute to this too, as men begin to wear shirts and trousers that need pressing rather than the traditional veshti wrapped about the waist. Both Arokkyam's sons move into more liberated worlds: her elder son, Josep, is persuaded by his wife to leave home and go into partnership with his brother-in-law to start a laundry business in town, while the younger, Peter, cannot understand why they do not go in for coolie work that would be paid in daily cash wages. At the same time as this loss in main livelihood, there is a steady decline and breakdown in the old caste prerogatives: the amount of grain that Arokkyam and Savuri were allocated by right at each household where they winnowed, dwindles to no more than a single scant tray; the head and intestines of the sacrificial twat which was traditionally the vannaan's by right begins to be auctioned. And the payment for all ritual services grows less and less; is often no more than a token.
Arokkyam has one main hope in coping with change: that the church will intervene in support of the old order, and appeal to the elders of the colony to keep up their caste obligations to their vannaan. The novel begins with a pilgrimage to the Church of Saint Anthony, which is a journey of hope. In fact when the church intervenes much later, it is with an offer which is totally unexpected: to take the youngest son Peter away, and train him to become a priest. In a beautifully developed central chapter, Arokkyam struggles with the anguish of her choices. The novel turns on this central dilemma.
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.
Other works 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 narratives 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.
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.
Pethavan 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.
Set in rural Tamil Nadu, Pethavan is about a father, Pazhani, who has been ordered by the village panchayat to murder his daughter Bhakkiyam because she wants to marry a Dalit boy. The narrative is an unflinching account of the stress and ugliness that await those who dare to transcend caste borders. The animals in Pethavan stand apart from humans who seem to exist with no humanity. The bullock licks Pazhani's face and calms him down. He allows his face to be licked by the bullock, and slowly, his trembling stops. His dog hovers around Pazhani, concerned and unwilling to leave him in this trying moment.
About Pethavan, Ambai wrote "I have cried when the father feeds his daughter, places her head on his chest, and hugs her. His language is abusive and abrasive throughout, but his words, when he bids Bhakkiyam goodbye and tells her to go live with her life, make not only his daughter and his future son in law, who speaks to him on the mobile, cry, but also the readers. When a story rises above the public image of the writer, it has truly succeeded in having an existence of its own that goes beyond the writer."
In an interview to Mint Lounge, Imayam opens up what forced him to write the story. He says “A friend introduced this person to me, casually remarking how he had sent his daughter with ‘our’ person. It sank in, slowly. I cannot stop thinking of the consequences, of what he had to face in the family, in the village. I was haunted by the thought. I had to write this story.”
Saavu Soru The title story, Saavu Soru (Funeral Food), has a woman, whose daughter has eloped with a lower caste man, earning the wrath of the community. Though the men in the family have written her off by observing funeral rites for the girl and have even got their heads tonsured, the mother is looking for the girl. She wants to meet her and hand over the jewellery and other articles of the daughter.
In the story titled Varam, the girl elopes with a cousin – seen as a brother and hence an inappropriate match. The distressed mother gives vent to her feeling before the village god, saying that instead of committing such a “shameful” act, the daughter could have eloped with a lower caste man. She wants god to punish the girl who has married a ‘brother’. Most of the stories have female characters, who are harassed and distressed in a male-dominated subaltern society. The story Thirutupona Ponnu (Stolen Girl) is about an elderly spinster, who was kidnapped mistakenly soon after she attained puberty.