Well-known Tamil poet, translator, screenwriter and actor Puviyarasu died in Coimbatore on Tuesday, due to age-related illness. He was 96.He was among the few Indian litterateurs to win the Sahitya Akademi Award twice, for translation and poetry.Born at Lingamanayakkan Puthur in Udumalpet, Coimbatore district in 1930, Puviyarasu passed his Tamil ‘vidwan’ examination from Tamil College at Perur. Out of love for Tamil, he changed his original name Jagannathan, which in Sanskrit means ‘one who rules the world’ to its Tamil equivalent Puviyarasu. He worked as a Tamil teacher and began publishing poems in 1952.In the 1970s, the Tamil poetry scene saw the emergence of a new generation of poets, many of them Tamil teachers. Most were idealists who supported communist movements on the streets while being socialists at heart. They were critical of DMK, sympathetic towards Congress, and, along with M P Sivagnanam’s Tamilarasu Party, participated in Tamil Nadu border struggles.Puviyarasu was a founding member of Vaanampaadi, a movement that popularised Tamil free verse, to make it accessible to anyone who wished to express their thoughts without being constrained by traditional grammar and metre. “I believe everyone has a poem inside them. It needs to be brought to the streets,” Puviyarasu said in one of his interviews. The movement found its name from magazine ‘Sky Lark’, published in England. Vaanampaadi members also ran an eponymous magazine till 1981, introducing many poets.Puviyarasu had published more than 10 poetry anthologies. However, he is best remembered for his translations of the works of Khalil Gibran, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Osho and Rabindranath Tagore, which were best-sellers and have seen multiple editions and reprints.In 2006, Puviyarasu won his first Sahitya Akademi award for translating the Bengali poem ‘Bidrohi’ by Kazi Nazrul Islam into Tamil as ‘Puratchikaran’. In 2009, he won his second Akademi award for his poetry collection ‘Kaiyoppam’.A connoisseur of films, Puviyarasu had worked closely with actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan. Puviyarasu wrote the screenplay of ‘Marudhanayagam’ — Kamal’s dream film, which sadly remains a dream — along with writer Sujatha. He also acted in the film ‘Virumandi’ (2004) directed by Kamal.“His poems gave me the courage to try my hand at writing poems,” said Kamal Haasan in a documentary on Puviyarasu. Kamal, BJP leader Vanathi Srinivasan condoled his death.
