பசித்த மானிடம் - கரிச்சான் குஞ்சு

This is the perfect title for the book. The book talks about human's hunger for everything mainly physical satisfaction, respect and power. The author beautifully brings the culture and the lives of ordinary people in kaveri area between 1920's to 1950's.

There are two main characters whose lives meet at many points. The common aspect of their lives - lust. But we can easily identify how these two lives their life exact opposite to each other. Ganeshan fails in material world and moves to spiritual world  but Kitta grows in material world but fails in spirituality.

I doubted the story line a bit since the story takes place in 1940's before Indian independence. Specially , the same sex  portrayal . The relationship between Singamuthu and Ganeshan,  - first time I read some thing like this in Tamil novel. Another relationship between the female doctor and Ganeshan, whom doctor uses like a gigolo.Another unbelievable thing is that Ganeshan and Kitta both are from conventional Brahmin family . But that was the master stroke by the author for breaking the taboo topic.

The author had created variety of characters. Sama, brother of kitta, who is living his life roaming around and ends up dying with treasure given to family. Sankari, the friend of Balamba, who treats everyone the same way(I liked this character).The author very cleverly uses the character of the policeman 'Pasupathy' to show how people believe in 'godmen'. But in this case ,the author also uses this character to explain the spirituality and way of good life. The blind Sundari inspires leper Ganeshan' by her belief and hope. Does portraying the main character as leper means punishment for his sins?

In the last part of the story, Ganeshan lives in a five house street and they respect him and searches him when he leaves them . I wondered why the author used number five and while reading I thought of five senses and how author uses the number to explain how Ganeshan came out of it. I searched anyone had same thought as mine, I found Mr.Rajanayagam too had same as mine.

The story moves very fast as if the author wanted to finish it as soon as possible but one can still enjoy the story. Though the story looks cinematic at times, specially Ganeshan's as he gets introduced to new characters one after the another but author make sure that each character speaks for itself.The writers like Jeyamohan and S Ramakrishnan put this novel in their top Tamil novels list.

Definitely one the classics of Tamil literature. And a great read!