Jayakanthan is a household name in Tamil Nadu. He expanded the horizon of fiction writing in Tamil, even while experimenting with film making. He may not be writing now, but Sri Lankan Tamil professor Karthigesu Sivathambi thinks the best is yet to come from him.
“If Jayakanthan feels this himself, he may still come out with something new,” says Professor Sivathambi, a historian of Tamil literature, in the documentary ‘Ore Eezha Tamizhar Parvaiyil Jayakanthan Yentra Ulaga Pothu Manithan.'
Jayakanthan himself has said he may need another life to exhaust the ideas he has conceived. But this view was expressed by the writer while at the peak of his career.
The one-hour film has been produced by Canada-based Moorthy as part of an effort to encourage independent film making by the Indo-Russian Film Exchange. It critically analyses Jayakanthan the man and Jayakanthan the writer, from the Marxian point of view of Professor Sivathambi.
By alternatively showing the speeches of Jayakanthan and Professor Sivathambi's comments, the film tries to encapsulate the evolution of the writer, though the writer on one occasion says his ideas as a writer have not undergone any transformation.
Professor Sivathambi says one of the greatest contributions of Jayakanthan is the change he brought in the “process of thinking” in the Tamil literary world.
“He wrote about the subjects not explored by others. His writings revolved around the lives of ordinary people, especially those who were in the margins of the society. He identified the agon [a literary device in Greek tragedy indicating conflict] in the lives of the subaltern and popularised them,” explains Professor Sivathambi, who uses the Marxian tool of dialects to analyse the works of Jayakanthan.
While Jayakanthan openly declares his faith in god, Professor Sivathambi discounts his journey from the world of communism to spiritualism, saying it was not important in the context of Tamil society.
“Marxism offers no solution to personalised worries,” he says, pointing out that Marx himself had said that religion was soul of the soulless conditions and the heart of a heartless world.
But he refers to his “abrasive personality” as a powerful public speaker, showing scant regard for any established norms and ideas and demolishing them ruthlessly.
“He speaks his mind. The more I listen to him, the more I would like to re-read his works,” says Professor Sivathambi, suggesting an analysis of his abrasiveness to find out how it has contributed to his great literary vision.
In the same breath, Professor Sivathambi also moots the idea of psychoanalytical study of Jayakanthan, to understand the man and his works. “We have done this in the case of Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi,” he says.
This is the third documentary on Jayakanthan, winner of both Sahitya Akademi and Jnanapith awards. Besides a documentary by writer Sa Kandasamy, writer Ravi Subramaniam had produced another film with the support from music director Ilaiyaraja, his comrade in his communist days.
