January 30, 2025
Dear Mr. Charu,
I am Ramu (58) from Chennai. I was introduced to you by your ardent fans during our stay at Nithyavanam (Jeyamohan). Based on their guidance, I bought four of your books, viz.,(1) Anbu (2) Existentialism (3) Rasaleela(4) AurangazebI have finished reading (1) Anbu, (2) Existentialism, and (3) Rasaleela (just 100 pages)
At the outset, I would like to tell you that I love your writing since it is very simple, without much wordplay, avoiding circular references and unnecessary embellishments, etc.
However, I wish to seek a few clarifications from you, since your books are completely different / away from my normal reading experiences, including those of your favourite writers like Ashokamitran, Thi. Janakiraman, and Thanjai Prakash.
First, let me share a few grasping from my reading of your two-plus books, and then seek clarification.
Novel 1: Anbu – My Views
This novel felt like a kind of “dark comedy” genre, where the protagonist Perumal angstily expresses his suffering because of “Ulagalandhan” and “Vaidegi” in such a way that it causes extreme comedy for the readers, despite realising that the traits of “Ulagalandhan” and “Vaidegi” have intruded into every one of us. Finally, “Podi Sunny” and “aduthavan sooththa nondathe” turn out to be life mantras.
I enjoyed this novel and was able to connect with Perumal on various occasions. I felt that this novel might have drawn the least effort and time from you and could be one of the lightest novels of yours.
Novel 2: Existentialismum Fancy BaniyanumYou have mentioned that a few of your ardent readers felt this was the BEST novel of yours, though you personally felt that Rasa Leela was your best.
After completing Existentialism…, the following is my feeling. The protagonist, Surya, was sitting in a chair like a doctor and narrating various life events — neither chronologically nor to a single person — but rather narrating bits and pieces to different patients who visited him.
What I found odd, or what I have never come across in my reading journey so far, is this: The novel does not narrate one’s life on a continuum basis, nor does it narrate certain critical portions of life in a continuous manner, so that at the end, as a reader, I may not be able to feel that I have lived someone’s life.
While reading Ashokamitran, Thi. Janakiraman, etc., I can feel that I have lived through the novel. I sincerely apologize for bringing in comparisons, but I do not find a better way to communicate to you what sort of a reader I have been so far. Both your novels, Existentialism and Rasa Leela, appear to be more or less of a similar genre, where the narration keeps jumping, hopping, landing, jumping again…
I understand that “post-modern” novels need not have grand stories, need not have a clear beginning or end, and can be completely localized rather than urbanized or globalized. However, at the end of the day, the purpose of reading any literature or fiction is to gain worldly wisdom by having a vicarious experience of the story or novel.
Isn’t it?
In the Existentialism… novel, I could not clearly make out what kind of “existential living” Surya was actually living. As I mentioned earlier, in the initial portions, the Surya–Bala Delhi episode appears and then completely disappears. Similarly, various characters keep appearing and disappearing, except Surya. Thus, it gives me a feeling that Surya, like a doctor, has been narrating his own different life events to different patients as if garrulous talking.
Clarification Needed
Dear Mr. Charu, I can clearly see that you are a stalwart who has carved out a unique identity for yourself, especially in post-modernism, existentialism, and transgressive writing.
Hence, I sincerely request you not to consider my above comments not as criticism, but rather as an attempt to understand how I should approach such writing so that I may evolve as a better reader and gain more life wisdom.
Thank you, Mr. Charu.
Sincerely,
Ramu
Dear Ramu,
Thank you for your carefully thought-out letter. I read it with real attention, and I want to say this at the outset: I did not experience your observations as criticism. On the contrary, they felt like the questions of a serious reader who is honestly trying to understand a form of writing that resists familiar reading habits. That sincerity matters to me.
I’m glad Anbu worked for you the way it did. Calling it a “dark comedy” is quite accurate. Perumal’s suffering is not meant to be tragic in a grand sense; it is deliberately excessive, almost grotesque, so that laughter arises alongside discomfort. When readers recognise “Ulagalandhan” and “Vaidegi” within themselves and still laugh, the novel becomes a mirror rather than a moral lesson. Yes, it is one of my lighter books, written with less inner resistance than some of the others.
Your deeper unease begins with Existentialismum Fancy Baniyanum—and continues into Rasa Leela. I want to stay with that unease rather than rush to resolve it.
You describe Surya as someone sitting like a doctor, narrating fragments of his life to different listeners, without continuity or a single addressee. I found this description extremely perceptive. That fragmentation is not accidental; it is central to how the novel thinks. Very early on, the book rejects the idea that life can be presented as a stable object, capable of being grasped in one sweep.
This is also the point where deconstruction quietly enters the work. Derrida asks us to distrust what appears whole, natural, or self-contained—to pay attention to breaks, postponements, and silences. Surya does not speak in fragments because he is confused alone; he speaks that way because meaning itself arrives only in fragments. His speech dismantles the expectation that a life must explain itself fully, chronologically, or ethically. What appears as discontinuity is, in fact, a refusal to pretend coherence where none may exist.
Here, my work inevitably departs from writers like Ashokamitran or T.Janakiraman., whom you rightly admire. Their novels trust continuity—of memory, time, and selfhood. Even when life is painful or absurd, it can still be narrated as a life. My refusal is not a rejection of that tradition, but a doubt about its sufficiency today. I am not certain anymore that the self remains intact enough to deserve such coherence.
Episodes like the Surya–Bala Delhi stretch appear and disappear because memory itself does not behave responsibly. Life does not always return to complete its own sentences. Existentialism, as I understand it through Sartre and Camus, is not a doctrine one “lives out” visibly. It is a condition of living without guarantees—where clarity is intermittent, and meaning is constantly deferred.
Roland Barthes’ idea of the “death of the author” is relevant here. These novels are not meant to be closed forms that deliver a completed life to the reader. They ask the reader to participate, to assemble, to hesitate. The discomfort you feel is not an obstacle; it is part of the reading experience the book demands.
Michel Foucault’s thinking also operates in the background. Lives are not only lived; they are shaped by circulating discourses—about sexuality, morality, masculinity, desire. In Rasa Leela especially, characters do not “develop” in a linear fashion; they surface and recede like discursive formations themselves.
If I may add one local note: deconstruction is not entirely foreign to Tamil literary sensibility. Our older narrative traditions—through fragmentation, aphorism, and unresolved endings—often trusted suggestion over completion, resonance over closure. In that sense, what appears “postmodern” may also be a return to an older discomfort with final meaning.
Jean-François Lyotard’s suspicion of “grand narratives” also informs this approach. I am not attempting to offer a total vision of life or a universal wisdom. Instead, the novels operate through smaller, localised moments—what Lyotard would call “little narratives.” They do not add up neatly, and they are not meant to.
You ask, very reasonably, whether literature should offer worldly wisdom through vicarious experience. I would say: sometimes yes, and sometimes literature must first question that expectation itself. Baudrillard reminds us that even the idea of a “real” lived experience is often a construction. In a world saturated with representations—copies without originals—our faith in coherence itself becomes fragile. This is where deconstruction becomes not merely a theory but a necessity: literature may first need to unsettle our belief in wholeness before it can offer any understanding at all. The novel dismantles meaning not to destroy it, but to show how meaning is produced, deferred, and endlessly negotiated.
How, then, should one approach such writing?
Not by expecting completion or moral summation. Not by asking what finally “happens.” Instead, by noticing what repeats, what breaks off, what refuses to return. Sometimes the meaning does not arrive while reading, but much later—or not at all. That absence, too, is meaningful.
If these books resist you, that resistance is not a failure of reading. It may be the reading itself.
I am grateful that you chose to engage rather than dismiss. That willingness—to remain inside uncertainty—is already a form of wisdom.
Please write again as you continue reading. I value this exchange deeply.
Warmly,
Charu