RIP - Sujatha

[Pic Courtesy: The Hindu]
Writer Sujatha a.k.a Rangarajan passed away yesterday, leaving a void that is not going to be filled easily. With his short stories, novels, serialized stories, essays and scripts, he had an indelible impact on Tamil and will sorely be missed.

While I used to read a lot of English novels when I was young, my Tamil reading was restricted to magazines like Kumudham and Vikatan and I never tried reading novels. So unsurprisingly, my introduction to Sujatha came through cinema - when he began serializing the story for Kamal's Vikram in Kumudham. The accompanying stills of Kamal were what got me to start reading but it wasn't long before I became hooked on Sujatha's writing. He had a casual, down-to-earth narrative style that was instantly engaging and the conversations between the characters positively sparkled with smartness and humor.

Unfortunately, I didn't stay with Vikram till the end. The lack of instant gratification - one had to wait an entire week to see what happened next and even then, all one got was a measly two or three pages that left us hanging again - made me abandon the story midway. I did try to read other serialized stories - like a Ganesh-Vasanth tale - but never managed to keep my patience till the end. But as they say, we don't have to eat a full meal to know whether the cook is talented! And what I read was enough to tell me that Sujatha was a literary genius.

Ofcourse, even someone who hadn't read a single word written by Sujatha would still be familiar with him from his wonderful scripts for some great movies. Priya and Gayathri were both based his stories though, according to my mom, the films paled in comparison to his original stories and Priya, in particular, was a blasphemy that Sujatha himself disowned any connection to. He had an amazing ability to explain complex or abstract concepts in a lucid, easy-to-understand manner and this was evident from his scripts of his movies. Whether it was corruption(in Indian), multiple personality disorder(in Anniyan) or the origins of black money( in Sivaji), we all knew exactly what Shankar was talking about, in no small part, because of Sujatha. And one just has to listen to the patriotic dialogs in Roja and the youthful lines in Boys served to understand his versatility in penning smart, natural lines. He was on board for Shankar's Robot also and now one has to wonder if anybody else can present the sci-fi aspects of the film as well as he would have.

With Sujatha's demise, Tamil has lost one of its true icons and torch-bearers. May his soul rest in peace...