Ashokamitran's Chennai

Ashokamitran's Oru Parvaiyil Chennai Nagaram (Chennai at a glance), which is now available in English is a masterly survey of the city by the master himself. In classic Ashokamitran style, the book proceeds district by district, looking at each with affection, sympathy and loads of wit. Chennai emerges in all its colours from this book.

Having been a long-term resident of the city of Madras that is Chennai, Ashokamitran made it a central feature of several of his stories. But this book is different in that it is the story of the various areas that make up the city itself. There are ways and ways of writing a book on a metropolis ranging from the completely factual to a wholly fictional. It required Ashokamitran to present Chennai factually but in the engaging manner of a novel. The city, which has been lucky in having chroniclers from the 1870s to the present, could not have asked for anything better.

V. SRIRAM, Chennai chronicler