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Creating The Next Generation Of Tamil Storytellers
From: http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/201...-storytellers/

Singapore’s Tamil community is stepping up efforts to pass along its unique story-telling traditions to a new generation with a month-long literary festival, and with a little additional help from one of the world’s best-known Tamil writers, S. Ramakrishnan.

April is a special month for Tamils in Singapore, when many celebrate their language and culture. And to take their story forward, Tamils need to empower the next generation of storytellers with the necessary skills and tools, said the India-born Mr. Ramakrishnan, who was in town to conduct a two-day story-writing workshop that concluded Sunday.

The workshop marked the beginning of a month-long festival of Tamil literature being held under the auspices of the ValarTamil Iyakkam, an organization dedicated to promoting Tamil writing and storytelling, and attracted a wide spectrum of participants – teachers, students, professionals and established writers – who sought to gain from Mr. Ramakrishnan’s perspective.

“It was especially encouraging to see so many students eager to acquire the skills needed to become successful writers,” says multifaceted local Tamil enthusiast Paalu Manimaran, who runswww.thangameen.com, which organized the event. Thangameen is an e-zine focused on Tamil writing from Singapore.

“Everyone among us has so a story to tell. Readers are just people who haven’t started writing yet. All aspiring writers should acquire the requisite skills and craftsmanship needed to translate imagination into literature,” says Mr. Ramakrishnan, one of the most acclaimed and popular Tamil short story writers in recent years.

A familiar name to readers of top Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan through his weekly columns, he has authored award-winning novels, plays and essays and has also dabbled in screenplay writing.

“There are various reasons why people write–more than what Primo Levi listed–but at the core is the impetus to share what we have either seen, heard about, experienced, or imagined,” says the author of acclaimed novels such as Upapandavam, Nedunkuruthi and Yamam.

So what propelled him to become a writer? “I realized early on that my tastes and perception of the world were different, and I soon developed an insatiable urge to chronicle whatever I felt was important. Stories are our way of communicating to someone, somewhere whatever is of importance to us. There is a reader somewhere who we can connect with. Writing is also the only way to experience various worlds that we don’t literally inhabit.”

Peppered with instances drawn from real life and popular fiction, his sessions stressed the importance of plot, technique, style and language. A voracious reader himself, Mr. Ramakrishnan continuously reiterates the need to read. “Many writers stop reading once they get busy writing.

Actually, you should read more after you become a writer.”

One of the workshop’s sessions was devoted to the need to explore and get acquainted with classic short stories from Tamil and world literature.

“There is a universality of theme in many classic stories from various corners of the world that resonates with us. The story of the oppressed, the suffering of the marginalized. That’s what a story does–it gives a voice to the voiceless.”

With books battling television and the Internet for young minds, and attention spans of readers fast shrinking, the writer is under greater stress to communicate using fewer words, he says. “This is the Twitter age. We are all under pressure to write shorter stories. No one has the patience for 75-page short stories anymore.”