Sunday, March 02, 2008

Sujatha

Sujatha (pen name of S. Rangarajan), one of the icons of contemporary Tamil Literature, has passed away. He was 72, and is survived by his wife and two sons. A Multifaceted personality, with engagements to name a few: Scientist, Engineer, Science Fiction Writer, Novelist, Columnist in weekly and daily publications and movie script writer, all in diverse fields. He is most popularly accredited as the man behind the Electronic Voting machines (EVMs) during his tenure with BEL (Bharat Electronics Ltd) when he headed the team that designed it. Sujatha is a rare gem from the science fraternity who is known for communicating complex and hard to understand science behind things through simple and lucid writing to the audience. Also he has penned about 100 novels and hundreds of short stories. Personally I liked his book, an Ananda Vikatan publication, 'yaen ? yedarkku? yeppidi?' (translates to what? why? how?). Interestingly, he is equally an authority in the kollywood (Tamil movie Industry) too with a number of projects. As far as I remember he wrote scripts from Indian (one of Kamalhassan's biggest hits) to Mudhalvan and Sivaji, to name the latest. His last creative venture was with Shankar's mega project, Robo. Sadly, he passed away before its completion.

Sujatha shall stay alive in the minds of readers with his writing and works. May his soul rest in peace.