Question-  Describe Venkataramani's reflection on village life which he presented in his novels.

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What do you know about the themes of Venkataramani's novels?

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Venkataramani grew up in Kaveripattinam in a Smarta Brahmin family. He learned to love the Indian countryside. He knew all the beauties and rhythms of life in a rural village by the "eddy-eyed Cauvery". He studied well at school, but, like, Rabindranath Tagore, he did not like conventional education as much as he liked exploring nature. In 1928, Venkataraniani met Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, Tagore's newly founded school. Tagore was already known all over India and around the world, having won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore suggested that Venkataramani could start a Tamil weekly, which he did, entitling it Tamil Ulagu'. It was published from 1922 to 1924. Later, in 1938, he launched another Tamil journal, Bharata Mani, fostering the enduring ideals of Indian traditions.
His earliest books were 'Paper Boat (1921) Second edition 1925 and 'On the Sand-Dunes' (1923). In these writings, Venkataramani sketched his. reflections on village life-musing on the daily patterns and the personalities, the emotions and the relationships of villagers. These sketches were works of poetic prose. His biographer, N. S. Ramaswami, notes that some themes and elements in these early books foreshadowed elements found later in Venkataramani's great novel 'Kandan the Patriot' which first appeared as a series in 'Swarajya' the national daily newspaper in 1931 and was then published as a book in 1932. For example, in 'Paper Boats' certain village folks such as a neighbour with a career in a civil service and family members, such as the grandmother who is head of an extended family, intrigued him. In 'Paper Boats' he also contemplates the Indian Pilgrim and the beggar.
In 'On the Sand Dunes' the author shows he was very wary of industrialism as a panaced and concerned about a materialistic way of life which puts man on a treadmill. Venkataramani was no enthusiast for the machine age, and he was not enamored of a big city life. He had his reservation about the boats of the modern age. For all its promises of improvement and flashing signs of progress, its blaring ads and self- congratulatory fanfares modernity failed to win over a number of Indian writers and thinkers in the 1920s and 1930s. They saw loss, noise and crassness, frenzy distraction and decline where others pointed to novelty, change and advance. Old Hindu culture and vital customs might fade in the fast pace and makeshift innovations of modern life, and loss of enduring beauty and worth seemed a high price for uncertain gains. Therefore, critics like Venkataramani raised questions and reminded people of the timeless values of Indian villages at their best.
Venkataramani also wrote about village life in his first novel, 'Murugan the Tiller' published in 1927. His biographer wrote he is the best expounder of Indian village life in Indian literature..... in the 1920s and 1930's" 'Murugan' depicts Gandhian social ideals without particularly talking about the specific activities of the political movement.
Venkataramani's work for village uplift should not be underestimated. He worked out a program, with organizational plans in his book 'Renascent India' (1928; Second edition 1929) A chapter of 'Renascent India' about the Indian village, was reprinted separately as a pamphlet in 1932, and Venkataramani revised and extended this piece and published it as 'The Indian Village' (A Ten Year Plan) in 1936. Venkataramani's proposed plan for village uplift included a multipurpose store selling affordable farming equipment, a marketing organization, a bank, and a medicine dispensary, as well as a school, a good water supply and electricity.
The story of 'Kandan' includes characters who are low caste laborers Nandan, Mukkan, Nallan, and Kariyan are all Harijans and agricultural collies who figure in the story. The well educated and fully dedicated Kandan is of Tamillon ancestry, but has international experience, having studied at Oxford and lived in Natal, South Africa, where he worked with Gandhi in the passive resistance movement. He was in the Indian Civil Service, but quit in a mood of disappointment when a romantic relationship failed. He returns to Tamil Nadu to do some public-work. Another hero, Rangan, is about Kandan's age, and is a civil servant transferred to Tanjavour District who becomes interested in the freedom movement. Padmanabhan is a third youthful hero, a student from Shiyali, close to Kaveripattinam, who runs away from home to join the nationalist struggle which is picking up luxurious life to work alongside his fellow nationalists. The climax of the story comes when the activists from the region hold a large meeting in Tranquebar and Kandan is fatally shot by police. The story ends with Padmanabhan philosophizing in the Vellore jail where he is being held.

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