Subrabharathi Manian
‘The Wasteland’ Turns 100 Today
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land
In the afternoon of the last day of Coimbatore Book Fair, writer Subrabharathi Manian was sitting alone at a lawn along the path to the exhibition hall. An author of a number of books and recipient of several awards, he drew a book from his jolnabag and presented this correspondent. The front jacket of the book depicted the image of a dark man in his white vest, illustrated by the city-based eminent artist Jeeva. On it, the title read ‘Tirupur -100’
“You know the knit city Tirupur has turned one hundred years today. However, these days, few people are interested to look back its development as a dollar city at the cost of its environment” Subrabharathi Manian worried.
An author of over 55 books in the genres of short stories, novels, poetry, travelogue and nonfiction, the Tirupur-based writer bagged the Tamil Nadu government’s best book award for his novel Saaya Thirai (Coloured Curtain) in 1998, which spoke on the unmindful devastation of Tirupur’s environment caused by the dying factories of the city.
His recent book ‘Tirupur -100’ does not celebrate Tirupur’s development as a dollar city, which earns a foreign exchange to the tune of Rs.30, 000 crore and provides job opportunities to a plenty of migrant labourers from different parts of India. Rather, the chapters in the book concentrate on how the city got its economic ‘developments’ at the cost of its environment with a number of dying factories discharging their effluents into river Noyyal.
“The book ‘Tirupur -100’ is a precursor for the one hundred year history of the knit-city. The once fast-flowing river Noyyal is now lying dead as a pool of sewage across Tirupur. With its ‘progress’, the city witnesses the thronging of migrant labourers from various parts of country. Therefore, the price of real estate plots in the wasteland has gone up beyond imagination” writes K.Subbarayan, State secretariat member of Communist Party of India and former MP in his foreword to the book.
“The TASMAC outlets in Tirupur provide an annual revenue of Rs. 1100 crore to the government. The city provides a statistics of people consuming liquor for 3 crore everyday. On festival days, it doubles the above figure. It’s all due to the stressful life condition of the workers in the knit-city” worries Subrabharathi Manian
Interestingly, the writer says that Tirupur was visited by Mahatma Gandhi for a number of times. Also, there are many social welfare organizations functioning in the name of the father of the nation.
“Still, the state-run TASMAC outlets have hampered access to the Gandhian path of non-alcoholism” says Subrabharathi Manian.
B. Meenakshi Sundaram
Photos: Special arangement
