T. K. Doraiswamy

Nakulan is the pen name of Tamil poet and novelist,T.K.Doraiswamy. He also wrote briefly under the pen name, S. Nayyar(sp?). Born in 1922, he retired as Professor of English, Mar Ivanois College, Thiruvananthapuram.He started serious writing only in his forties and was encouraged in pursuing the art by his good friend Kaa Naa Subramoniam. Many of his students acknowledge that he initiated them into the art of writing good poetry. He was widely read. Equally distinguished as a poet, translator, critic, anthologist, novelist and short fiction writer, his publications include a novel and six books of poems in English and nine novels and five books of poems in Tamil. His alter-ego Naveenan in his Tamil novels stands out as a modernist anti-hero who was perhaps the first of his kind in Tamil literature. He was one of the first writers to attempt techniques like stream of consciousness in Tamil literature ably.

He was awarded the Asan Memorial Award for Tamil Poetry in 1983. He also won other literary awards.

His only novel in English was called "Words for the Wind." It was published by P.Lal as a Calcutta Workshop publication. His English poetry collections include "Words to the Listening Air," "Non - Being" and "A Tamil Writer's Journal I, II and III". He wrote a long poem in English called "Raja Vembala." His short stories were frequently published by Pritish Nandy in the Illustrated Weekly of India. He has translated Joyce, Eliot and K Ayyappa Paniker, to name just a few. His best translation work may be the book "The Little Sparrow" in which he devotes himself entirely to the great Subramonia Bharathi's writing.

Although the influence of Joyce was pronounced in his writings , it was more the metaphysical and religious thrust similar to Eliot's and the spareness of style of a Samuel Beckett that really made his works stand out. He was definitely a late Modernist moving into the realm of Post- Modernism. He never compromised in his writing or his life on what was expected of an artist. He was a bachelor. He died on 17 May 2007, at Thiruvananthapuram. He had looked after his parents till they died and so their domestic help Purthai took care of him till the very end.