PEERSHUBA

Abstract:

Jeyamohan’s world of writing opens up new experiences for the audience. His ideas of justice, liberty, and equality have limitations, drawn from his lived experiences. Hope and light are an integral element of his writing. Darkness and cruelty have spaces in his world of words. To extricate his ideological past from his writings is a challenge. But he has definitely transcended the prism of ideas that kept him in a cage. If we frame life as a miracle that happened to each one of us, Jeyamohan’s works of art have lived up to that miracle. 

Jeyamohan: A Lifetime Loving Writing 

On 17th June 2026, a human body frozen in ice with all the mountaineering gear and a backpack was discovered on Mount Everest. A writer on X.com mentioned that the ice is unforgiving. Nature does not care if you are on an adventure trip or not. Over 200 bodies are left on the icy slopes of the Himalayas as it is risky and expensive to carry them back to the foothills. 

If knowledge is adventure and lived experience, what is it worth if it cannot rouse people and lead them into action for the common good? One of the answers to this is that a writer cannot represent the entire spectrum of society. Because writing is more about lived experiences and the wealth of knowledge collected from archival sources. Time will tell if a writer has developed the fittest texts or not. 

Before the review of Jeyamohan’s writings, to further explain the miracle that is life, here is a quotation from a physicist. 

If you took a very long ruler that stretched from here to the planet Pluto, one inch of that distance would be you. The rest of the distance would be other possible human beings that could have been, but never were. Each of us has won a lottery with a hundred thousand billion different players.

Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience. Yet it is the easiest to overlook, to take for granted. We wake up in the morning, have our coffee, make breakfast, send the kids off to school, go to our jobs, move through our routines, worry about deadlines, check off items on our to-do list. And we forget that beneath all of it lies something profoundly rare: existence itself. The simple fact that we are here, conscious and aware, is so unlikely that it borders on the miraculous… From the distant past, billions of years ago, to the distant future, billions of years ahead, the universe will never see another one of you.

• Alan Lightman, The Atlantic 

Jeyamohan’s highly productive contribution to the body of Tamil literature has been made of many great moments that will inspire generations to come and a few moments which could have been healthier. Jeyamohan spent his youth as a grassroots activist of India’s Far Right movement. Perhaps the bad moments in his literature such as mocking the vulnerable populations are coming from an amount of indoctrination that is still lingering in his mind. The past does define your personality. However, you need not allow it to determine your future.  Jeyamohan has not allowed his past to influence his writings badly. He has refused to be a victim of his past. Can you shake it off completely?

You can celebrate each life with the power of language. You can reinforce the status quo of power with literature; you can reimagine it as well through literature. Silappathikaram is reimagining justice. The author Ilango Adigal has worked wonders with poetry and continues to engage with public imagination. As an author, he makes the Pandya King and Queen die for wrongfully taking the life of the protagonist Kovalan. Manimekhalai epic is having a genuine conversation on philosophy and faith to this day. Divine Retribution is a very powerful narrative in this Buddhist Tamil epic. Tamil has a 2500-year old tradition of multi-faith literature. Jeyamohan has written more than 22 novels, over 300 short stories, and hundreds of essays in literary criticism. Jeyamohan’s life and soul are in the texts he has created. I have chosen a few stories, a few novels, and a few other writings for this review.

Literature is a site which has the power to transform human minds, reshape narratives, and make the world a better place. It helps people frame their lives better. This space has also provided a safe haven for people who don’t feel the pressure to change the world’s situation. They make fun of ordinary people using literature as a device. Despite everything, the right merger of realism and fantasy can take you places. That is what Jeyamohan has been doing brilliantly.

A Hundred Armchairs is a short story that fails to reimagine life situations of an Indian civil servant who comes from a tribal background. The story reinforces the idea that one can hardly cleanse herself of her caste even if she attains greater heights in career. The choice of portraying characters from downtrodden castes in a specific pattern is a conscious/subconscious decision of the author. While appreciating the prerogative and personal liberty of the author, it is necessary to rethink the images created by the writer in this popular short story. 

In the Indian context where affirmative action is under constant attack from the most conservative sections of society, portrayals disallowing escape velocity for the reader can have long-term mental health consequences on remaking communities for the larger good of the republic. 

அவள் அத்தனை வருடம் ஆவேசமாக மன்றாடியதற்கு என் பதில். “அம்மா நான் காப்பன். நான் களசத்தையும் சட்டையையும் கழற்றி விடுகிறேன். தம்புரான்களின் நாற்காலியில் அமர மாட்டேன். எழுந்து விடுகிறேன். நான் உன் காப்பன்.”

I must give her my answer to her frenzied pleading all these years: “Amma, I am Kappan. I will remove my shirt and my clothes. I will not sit in the master’s chair. I will get up. I am your Kappan.”

(Page 71. A Hundred Armchairs. Jeyamohan.January 2016.Vijaya Pathippagam. English translation by Priyamvada Ramkumar)

It is not the failure of the character to see her son in a great position of power. It is that of the author. Reinforcing caste hierarchy through literature is a disease of the mind. In the Western context, from James Baldwin to Maya Angelou to Toni Morrison to Percival Everett to Ta-Nehisi Coates reimagine racial equations with the power of their writings. If an author is reinforcing an oppressive system through play of his characters, the challenge is not in the device but in the design. 

The text is coming from an author who is invariably referred to as Aasaan or Teacher (the local dialectical references can mean Master). 

I completely understand why the text of Jeyamohan in A Hundred Armchairs was blindly celebrated by many. It is pure love for literature. Love for words. Eternal love for your mother. 

ஒரு நாளாவது பசிக்குப் பதில் ருசியை உணர்ந்திருப்பாளா? அவளை அப்படியே அள்ளி அணைத்துக் கொண்டு கத்த வேண்டும் போலிருந்தது. சாப்பிட்டு நிறுத்த அவளுக்குத் தெரியாது. இலை காலியாக ஆவதையும் தாங்கிக் கொள்ள முடியாது. “போடு போடு” என்று கையால் இலையை தட்டிக்கொண்டே இருந்தாள். இப்படித்தான் இருந்திருக்கிறேன் நானும். அந்த என் உடல் இந்த உடலுக்குள்தான் இருக்கிறது. 

Would she have known flavour, instead of hunger, if only for a day? I felt the urge to hold her in a tight embrace and scream. She did not know when to stop eating. Neither could she bear the sight of the leaf turning empty. She kept beating the leaf with her hands, saying “put, put.” This was how I had been. That body of mine lay buried within this body. 

(Page 60. A Hundred Armchairs. Jeyamohan.January 2016.Vijaya Pathippagam . English translation by Priyamvada Ramkumar)

The world of Jeyamohan’s short fiction travels from the British Raj to the contemporary times and presents itself as a series of conversations. The conversations are works of art most of the time. At times, the talks fall flat and point to a lacuna in the selection of stories for this collection ‘A Fine Thread and other stories’. As a storyteller, Jeyamohan has been disruptive in the Tamil literary landscape for the last three decades. It is through the voices of the ordinary people and a unique rhetoric that he captures public imagination. The author’s ability for relentless dialogue is now part of Tamil folklore. His spectrum of work in Tamil fiction is vast and his grasp of the beauty of the Tamil language is deep and unique.

The lyrical quality of his prose allows miracles to evolve through a buildup of everyday words. It is through such a constant construction that Jeyamohan goes back to an imagined past and finds solace. It is the sickness of modernity – of cosmetic surgeries, steroids, and ideas of democracy – that takes him back to the ‘glorious’ past of magic and miracles. Some critics find his ideas anti-progress and anti-women. A careful reading of this collection of short stories by Jeyamohan will help any reader discover that he is a much more complex creator. His commitment to the world of storytelling is sincere, deep-rooted, and non-negotiable.

The author is  a philosopher and believes in logic. At the same time, he is not able to face the rigor of rational questioning as we can see from the narrative of some of the stories in this anthology. The lyricism of Tamil language and the world of magic is where he takes refuge. This comfort zone or a space of privacy is what he has built over the past three decades. His world of fiction is where he seeks and finds answers to the most complex questions of our time. Like most master storytellers, he is persuasive in most of the situations. His failure to be convincing in some of the situations is spectacular. It is breathtaking because we cannot hide our biases in the transparent world of writing.     

The story ‘Rope-Snake’ is symptomatic of Jeyamohan’s short story genre. It is a take on our traditional knowledge systems and their power to challenge some of the modern systems. It is both magic and blind belief at the same time. It is the fine thread he is weaving with the language. It is the sorcery of the yore that intimidates the two White men in the story. Can’t we challenge intelligence with intelligence? Why don’t we outdo the Whites in science? Neither the author nor the reader has an answer to this question.

‘Shiva! Shiva!’ is a story where the author goes to artistic depths and reminds us that he belongs to the league of master storytellers such as Pudumaipithan. Jeyamohan weaves words beautifully to create a surreal experience for the audience in this story. Jeyamohan flips the Bhakti (Devotion) narrative here. If you are finding God in every sound, can’t we find it in the sound of Sarasa as well? Such rare moments make the author an inevitable voice in contemporary Indian literature. His endurance in long fiction and deep-dive into philosophical narratives may not work well in the world of short fiction as we can see from some of the stories such as ‘Mountains’ Dialogue.’

Othering certain identities goes against the very brilliance, diversity and dignity of life.  It is where the moral decline of a section of Indian society is conspicuous. Moral bankruptcy is the challenge of our time. If artists, filmmakers, writers, and musicians can stem the rot by constant engagement with the public, that would be a great achievement. Several Comedians across India have lived up to the promise of art. The youngest people in the country are rising against evil now. Many Seasoned writers continue to justify injustice because they lack the courage to imagine new ways of being.

Jeyamohan is not a hate machine

In the author’s note to Vellai Yanai (White Elephant) Jeyamohan talks about the anti-Dalit attitude of the Other Backward Caste (OBC) leaders of the Justice Party. It is a selective attack by the author on the Dravidian political movement of Tamil Nadu. For more context and deeper understanding of the impact of the Justice Party, we can think about the fact that the Outcasts or Panchamas got access to buses / public transport only after the Justice Party came to power in 1920 in the Madras Presidency. 

1878ல் ஐஸ் ஹவுஸின் கடைசி நாட்களில் நடந்த போராட்டம் முழுக்க முழுக்க தலித்துகளால் நடத்தப்பட்டது. அது இடைநிலைச் சாதி கங்காணிகளாலும் பிரிட்டிஷ் ஆட்சியாளர்களாலும் உயர்சாதி குத்தகைதாரர்களாலும் நசுக்கப்பட்டது. …..

And ….பிரிட்டிஷ் ஆதரவாளர்களான ஜஸ்டிஸ் கட்சியினர் பின்னி ஆலை வேலை நிறுத்தத்தை ஆதரித்தது அவர்களின் சாதி அடையாள அரசியலின் அடித்தளமான இடைநிலைச் சாதியினரின் போராட்டம் அது என்பதனால்தான்.

(From Jeyamohan’s Author’s Note to VELLAI YANAI, August 18, 2013)

அது ஒரு திருவிதாங்கூர் மனநிலை. அவர்கள் அனைவருமே ஆங்கிலேயரை வழிபட்டவர்கள். திருவிதாங்கூருக்கு காவல் தேவதைகளாக இருந்தவர்கள் பிரிட்டிஷார். திப்பு சுல்தானிடமிருந்து நாட்டைக் காப்பாற்றியவர்கள். 

(From Jeyamohan’s Author’s Note to Kathanayaki, June 2022)

Barring such ideological baggage, Jeyamohan’s works of art have passed on the experiences of living fully in this world. They are of immense value to thousands of readers cutting across generations. 

….மலையிலேயே நம்மைக் கவருமிடம் அதலபாதாளத்தின் விளிம்புதான். சாவின் அருகாமை இல்லாத எதுவும் ஆழமும் தீவிரமும் கொள்வதில்லை. ஒருகணம் தவறினால் சாவு என்றிருக்கையிலேயே நாம் நம்மை முழுமையாகத் தொகுத்துக் கொள்கிறோம். ….

(கதாநாயகி, பக்கம் 104)

With masters of literature, a reader can feel all the emotions. Including coldness.

……பிரிட்டிஷ் நிர்வாக யந்திரம் அதன் ஆதார விதிகளின்படி பஞ்சத்தைக் கையாள கற்றுக் கொண்டு விட்டது. பஞ்சத்தின் ஒட்டுமொத்த விரிவையும், அதற்கான காரணங்களையும், அதை நிறுத்தும் வழிகளையும் அது முழுமையாகவே தன் கவனத்தில் இருந்து தவிர்த்து விட்டிருந்தது. பஞ்சத்தை சாலைகளில் பெருகிச் செல்லும் மக்கள்திரள் மற்றும் சாலையோரங்களில் கிடக்கும் சடலங்கள் என்ற பிரச்சினையாக வகுத்துக் கொண்டிருந்தது. அந்தப் பிரச்சினையை ஆரம்ப திகைப்புக்குப்பின் சீராக கையாள ஆரம்பித்திருந்தது. ….

(வெள்ளை யானை. பக்கம். 244)

If I argue that Jeyamohan is not a hate machine, you may ask me what about his hatred for the film Manjummal Boys and women. He spoke dismissively of the  charges of sexual harassment against Konangi. He chose whataboutery to deflect attention from the charges against Konangi. His contempt for women is explicit in his blogs such as Tamil Penniyam: Oru Varalatru Surukkam. He wrote the anti-woman Sarkar film script. He cannot be singularly held responsible for a film script that is always a collective effort. His aversion for the Manjummal Boys is the same casteist hatred against the downtrodden. The same jealousy expressed by him on seeing the growth of Nadar community on a Rubber industry-backed economy. 

Jeyamohan has said that his work is about being a provocateur. In one of his blogs, he has said that he attacked individuals before he reached the age of 50. In 2010 and 2013, he said Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy’s contribution to the Vaikom movement was insignificant. In 2020, he reluctantly acknowledged that Periyar had a role in the Vaikom Satyagraha. This was made possible thanks to Pazha Athiyaman’s breathtaking book on Periyar’s leadership role in the Vaikom Resistance Movement. Journalist P. Thirumavelan has documented this elaborately here. If this expression of hatred for Periyar was part of the propagandist past of Jeyamohan, the readers may be adequately informed of this streak in him from time to time. 

Jeyamohan argues that the killing of thousands of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka during the last days of war was not genocide. This argument shows his clear bias against the people who have been wronged historically by an ethnocentric government in our neighbouring country. Jeyamohan has advocated in favour of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka to the extent of refuting rape charges against the force. It is erasing available evidence. The victims of genocide are still waiting for closure of the injustice. 

Jeyamohan claimed that he introduced the Tamil word அறைகலன் for the English word furniture. The claim got debunked as many people provided evidence of this usage in the Government of Tamil Nadu publication ஆட்சிச் சொல்லகராதி for several decades. 

Jeyamohan’s song of Righteousness 

Finding redemption or moksha is a priority for all of humanity. Scriptures and all the fittest texts assume justice and truth as the foundations of the universe. Jeyamohan’s inspirational figures include Mahatma Gandhi. This is what keeps his song of Aram going day after day. Jeyamohan explains Gandhian attitude simply as follows in one of his blogs.

காந்தியம் எதிர்ப்பினால் ஆனது.  எதிர்ப்புக்கு ஆதாரமாக அமைவது நம்பிக்கை. இவ்வுலகை மாற்றிவிடமுடியும் என்ற கனவு. அந்நம்பிக்கையை இழப்பவர்கள் காந்தியிடமிருந்து விலகிச் செல்கிறார்கள். அவர்கள் பொதுவாகவே எல்லாவகையான இலட்சியவாதங்களில் இருந்தும் விலகிச் செல்பவர்கள். அவர்களின் பாதை வேறு.

Jeyamohan’s Elephant Doctor and Chasing the Yeti relive Gandhian justice which is rooted deeply in nature. 

In Elephant Doctor, Dr K tells the storyteller this:

“You should read Gandhi. He is the only thinker who has the power to impact the ideas of the present generation. He has something original to say about every topic there is.” 

The use of Gandhi’s philosophy for safeguarding self and nature by Jeyamohan is understandable from his writings. Gandhi is about positive action. If writing is Jeyamohan’s positive action, he has fulfilled his promise to the universe. 

In Chasing the Yeti, a prayer reflects the author’s relentless obsession with nature.

‘Lord Buddha! How beautiful is this sky! How beautiful is the earth too! What a glorious life has humankind been blessed with! But because of his selfishness, man troubles others. That is the reason why he, too, is troubled. Lord Buddha, you taught great compassion to humans. Let that benevolence fill my heart too! I should not hate anyone. Bless me!’ Pandian prayed in his heart. 

Truth is the foundation of all good writing, says Anne Lamott. Most of Jeyamohan’s works of art have lived up to the miracle of life. It comes from the realisation that art should create greater experiences for the users. His writings help you understand and appreciate the beauty of life. 

A writer is perhaps the only person who understands that every detail is of value in human life. Author Samraj says that a writer tries and captures moments that keep slipping away all the time. Jeyamohan may have been successful in capturing most of what he has come across in his life. That makes him prolific in the world of writing. 

If literature is a safe space for human expression, it allows the entire spectrum of human experience including the darkest parts of it. Reviews like this one enable readers to see beyond the text. To inform them of greater possibilities of lived experiences in the universe.

When the world of English language publishing expressed reluctance in publishing Jeyamohan’s works citing some of his anti-women remarks, his disciples mentioned the case of V.S. Naipaul. Despite being an Islamophobe and a racist, V.S. Naipaul went on to win a Nobel Prize for literature in 2001. Jeyamohan’s advocates said Jeyamohan’s comments against women were less toxic when compared to V.S. Naipaul’s anti-Islam comments. After a very successful campaign, Jeyamohan’s Stories of the True and The Abyss have received critical acclaim in the world of English writing. 

Though Jeyamohan mocked Ambai’s story in which a woman character counts  dosas made by her during her lifetime, history will judge him kindly for the love of his mother expressed through ‘Kathanayaki’ and several other stories. Jeyamohan has been a great husband to Arunmozhi Nangai and a wonderful father to Ajithan and Chaitanya. History will judge him kindly for this as well.