The writer Pudhumaipithan – and his contemporaries who wrote in Manikodi, a path-breaking little magazine in Tamil – coupled Western forms with Tamil life to produce a scintillating repertoire of short stories. Ki. Rajanarayanan folded oral folklore traditions into the short-story form to make it uniquely his own. Ashokamitran, inspired by the style of writers like Hemingway, ushered in a spare aesthetic in Tamil prose, one that could express the vicissitudes of Tamil urban life.
He has spent most of his career in culture and communications fields as practitioner, policy analyst and educator. He works for the Institute of Policy Studies and taught at the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University. Beyond his professional career, he has been active in serving the Tamil community. Over four decades, he has collaborated with government agencies and community organisations to develop the community’s intellectual and cultural resources. His current project is to launch the first Encyclopedia of Singapore Tamils, an online resource in Tamil and English.