He's been writing for 25 years but is better known for dialogues he scripts for Rajnikanth. Meet S Ramakrishnan, a recipient of this year's Tagore Literature Award

S Ramakrishnan lives in Chennai with his wife Chandrapraba and two sons, and is known for his scripts for Tamil films starring Rajnikanth. But those who read Tamil fiction will know Ramakrishnan as one of the best contemporary writers of modern Tamil literature, whose oeuvre extends from fiction to plays, essays and pieces of film criticism. The world cinema expert has written four novels, five short story collections, nine collections of essays and has three books on films.



On May 5, Ramakrishnan was one of the eight recipients of the Tagore Literature Awards instituted by the Sahitya Akademi in 2009, along with Samsung India, to recognise regional writers. He won the best Tamil language novel for 2010 for his fictional work, Yaamam. In its second year, the awards have been given to writers from languages such as Dogri, Assamese and Odiya, among others. Next year, eight other languages will be chosen to award writers.u00a0

Can you tell us a little more about Yaamam?
Yaamam has two parallel stories. The first is about a family of perfume makers, who move to Chennai. There are no perfume makers in the city now. Through them I get into the history of the city, how many families migrated into it, and what the process of perfume-making was like. The other storyline is about a Tamil student in London, who is modelled on the mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan.