His master stroke

Madurai-based poet, artist and filmmaker S. Ravikumar talks about his tryst with colours and his interest in poetry writing

April 06, 2016 04:00 pm | Updated 08:53 pm IST - MADURAI:

ENTERPRISING: S. Ravikumar, poet and artist. Photo: R. Ashok

ENTERPRISING: S. Ravikumar, poet and artist. Photo: R. Ashok

S. Ravikumar smelt art for the first time in the lumps of clay his grandfather worked with, inside a hovel in Goripalayam. Watching his potter thatha , shaping the mud into horses, elephants, Gods and humans, Ravikumar got a whiff of the artistic life early on. An established artist today, the 53-year-old gets candid on Marxism, poetry, digital art and world cinema, “I tread on both the platforms of art and literature. The creative process is same for both and people call me ‘ Oviya-Kavingar ’, which I think describes me perfectly.”

Raised in an artistic environment he did not have to learn art under any drawing master. He perfected his art in school where he used to draw pictures on blackboard with chalk. “I still remember the summer vacations I spent with my grandfather. I gained the knowledge of colour and the art of proportion and perspective from him,” he says.

Simultaneously, he was introduced to religious literature by his close relative and started reading a lot of books on Siddhar songs. Fascinated by the songs, he started gathering books on religion till he read poet Subramania Bharathi and Swami Vivekananda. It diverted his attention to the social aspect of life and sowed the seeds of Marxian philosophy. St. Mary’s school provided him the platform to vent out his creative urge. His writings in the school magazine had a big fan following.

Ravikumar happened to read a tamil translation of Wilhelm Liebknecht’s The Spider and the Fly (1889) and that altered his outlook on society. “The book taught me how to look at life objectively. It introduced the social structure and how we are entangled in it. It was big eye opener for me and I gradually shifted my reading from religious literature to Marxian philosophy,” he says.

At The American College where he studied Tamil literature, he got a chance to discuss socialist theory and started a film club and screened Satyajit Ray’s films. His M.Phil dissertation on a folk lore practice of offering terracotta horse figurines to Ayyanar Temple captured all the elements of rural society’s traditional practices. Impressed by his work, his Tamil professor published it as a book titled ‘ Kuthirai Eduppu ’.

His interest in films got him a job in Educational Multimedia Research Centre, Madurai Kamaraj University, where he was involved in the production of more than 250 documentaries and one of his documentary Signs and Communication won a national award in the University Grants Commission Video Festival in 1990 in Calcutta. Out of his interest he also attended a film appreciation course in Pune Film Institute. “The 40-day course under stalwarts Satish Bahadur and P.K. Nair introduced world cinema and from then on I have become a regular to international film festivals,” he says.

Irked by the growing religious intolerance, caste violence and atrocities against women, Ravikumar voiced against these social maladies in his writings and painting works under penname Srirasa. He has made a documentary ‘ Pesu…Unakkaga… ’ which talks about the atrocities against women and The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005.

Quick to update on latest developments, he moved on to digital art. “The canvas is much wider with million of colours and brushes under your disposal. It prompted me to shift to digital art,” he says. His writings made him the deputy secretary of the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers Association.

Eager to pass on the information to the next generation he regularly conducts workshops for school and college students. An active member of Yadhartha Film Society, Ravikumar has written a book ‘ Kazhuthai Melyeri America Pogalama ’ introducing the reader to the world of children’s films.

An avid learner and voracious reader, he owns a personal library which has more than 10,000 books on different topics and genres. He also has a collection of 500 films too.

Ravikumar’s thirst for knowledge is unquenchable. He holds a song from Thiruvilayadal Puranam close to his heart. “The song on ‘thendral’ elucidates the quality of a breeze. The breeze wafts across a garden picking up the scent of flowers, enters the river taking in the chillness of the water and still hangs around in search of something. It collects all the goodness and passes them on the go. A true learner should be like the breeze, always on the lookout for knowledge and I am one such,” he signs off.

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