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The following is an extract from the obituary article on D. Jayakanthan (1934-2015) by M.D. Muthukumaraswamy in Frontline. The article can be accessed here. Disclaimer: I had never heard of Jayakanthan before this article. But I was struck at two points while reading the obituary. This extract is of the first point. The second one follows in a separate page.
The true literary merit of Jayakanthan lies in the fact that he knew what he was creating. K.S. Subramanian's interview with Jayakanthan, published in Indian Literature when Jayakanthan won the Jnanpith award, India's highest award for literature, in 2004, stands testimony to the fact that Jayakanthan was a conscious practitioner of literature. In the interview, Subramanian asks: "....the incredible range of your characters. They are drawn from whole spectrum of social and economic strata. Two: your mastery over the dialects and communities of Tamil Nadu. Sankara Sarma's Brahmin dialect, raw grassroots Chennai slum slang of Chellamuthu, Telugu-laced Tamil in Pudhiya Seruppu Kadikkum and the Anglo-Indian lisping of Henry in Oru Manithan Oru Veedu Oru Ulagam. How have you been able to portray such a range of characters and the shade of so many dialects?"
Jayakanthan replies: "Well I would perhaps refer to four aspects in this context: experience, sensitivity, empathy, and integrity. These are not isolated and independent categories. Each impacts upon and enriches the other. Integrity is being true to oneself that embraces the first three factors. From as far back as I could remember, I have revelled in every aspect of life, savoured and stored every little aspect of experience.... what I have seen, heard and enjoyed. WHen you are immersed in something, you cannot speak about it. When you so speak it would only be an aspect of that and not the experience itself. Only when you withdraw from it, you can realise and feel the fullness of an experience. There is another aspect of experience. Often people tend to define experience as direct physical experience. This is a narrow definition of when you apply it to a creative writer. It is here that sensitivity and empathy come into play. A true creator's antennas are very sensitive. They can capture the subtle emotional vibrations occurring in fellow human beings. How it occurs I cannot say. I know it occurs. It occurs to me for reasons I cannot explain. Such sensitivity logically leads to empathy. The writer should be able to feel with their hearts and weep when they are hurt. The interplay I just now mentioned does not take place in a vacuum. It occurs in a social environment. It operates through the personality of the writer. The writer also does not function in a void. He is a product of his circumstance. He is shaped by experiences. By gradual evolution, he develops a vision, a swadharma. If his swadharma is violated his creations will be fake, and he will lose authenticity."
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