Ashokamitran (1931–2017), a towering figure in modern Tamil literature, was born in Nizam-ruled Secunderabad. In his writing he often draws on his experiences of growing up there after the fall of the Nizam in the wake of Independence, as he does in his award-winning novel Padinettavadu Atchakodu (1977), The Eighteenth Parallel.
One of Ashokamitran’s finest works, the story revolves around Chandru, adolescent, vulnerable and guileless, growing up through the turbulence before and after 1947, when Hyderabad was the State of Nizam. This forms the charged political backdrop, closely interwoven with Chandru’s life at home, at college, and his coming of age in the streets of Hyderabad.
Chandru, whose father works for the Nizam’s Railway, is crazy about cricket and cinema, perplexed by his budding interest in girls, loves his buffalo, and can sing. His disarmingly unaffected yet riveting first-person narrative—as he negotiates friendships with Tamils like himself, Muslims, Anglo-Indians and girls, and struggles to make sense of peaceful Hyderabad’s violent accession to the Indian Union, the horrors wreaked by the Nizam’s Razakars, the communal riots, and World War II—reveals how acutely Ashokamitran observed people, events and life. Cycling about Hyderabad and Secunderabad with Chandru, these historic cities come alive through landmarks like Lancer Barracks, Tank Bund, Regimental Bazaar, Nizam College, Tivoli Cinema and more. For many readers, Chandru, laconic, funny and uncynical, is unmistakably young Ashokamitran himself.
Padinettavadu Atchakodu won the prestigious Ilakkia Chintanai Award. Impeccably translated by Gomathi Narayanan, this timeless modern classic, first published in English in 1993, now appears in a beautiful new edition.