Sujatha's நைலான் கயிறு (Nylon Kayiru)

I dont know, suddenly I started reading novel. I remember being addicted to Rajesh Kumar's crime novels. Once I used to go to the streets near New Cinema Theatre in Madurai to get the second hand novels from the book stores. Somehow I came out of that habit!

And its now when we guys went to Erode for one of my colleague's wedding reception where we just happened to walk into a book shop opposite to the hotel we stayed and I picked up a couple of books which included Nylon Kayiru (meaning a nylon rope)! 

Well its the first novel by writer late Sujatha in the end 60's which was published for 14 weeks in a Tamil weekly magazine. Now they have compiled all the episodes and published as a single novel. I started reading the novel and finished in 3 hours. The reading experience is like watching a thriller movie! So interesting!

I was amazed with his writing style and given the fact that it was published 40 years before! His style was different. He is so knowledgable. He is trying to intoduce unknown facts and also explains them. In one of the episode, he hints about a medical term "sepsis" and "internal hemorrhage". These terms are definitely new 40 years back and even now "sepsis" is new for me :) ! I did a google search to find its explanation!

He has adopted a different narrative style in this novel with inserting a snippet from a person's diary and narrating a murder followed by the sequence of its investigation and finally the investigation leads to the diary. It might have been a trend set in introducing different writing style. At first you dont get to know the relation between the diary and the scene described in the episode. Given the fact that it was published weekly, it would have created an immense curiosity among the readers! In fact, after reading the whole novel, I went back and read the diary snippets alone from each episode again to get a clear picture of the story! I am sure, movies are inspired from his writings! If I was amazed with the non linear editing style in Christopher Nolan's Memento, then I had a similar feel while reading this novel. I didnt know that through writing also one could give a non linear view!

Sujatha is no more, but he has shared lots of his knowledge and views through his writings and has given work for us to read, enjoy, learn and think! Indeed, Art is long and life is short!