பாவத்தின் சம்பளம்-சரவணன் சந்திரன்

An assortment of the complexities of human relationships and  systems. The narrations can be finely divided into 2 broad categories-before and after sin. The thread that weaves through all these individual incidents is that every act of human is motivated by perceptions-either for the good or bad. The parents who abandoned their young children in an orphanage, perceiving that they could not provide better lives for their kids, and wanting to reunite with them as adults; the seth from Bombay that perceives balanced life between his wives, but goes berserk at the loss of his son; the cine artist that falls a prey to a second class life, perceiving an escape from the boundaryless greed of her parents, the son with a 'B' ring that goes in search of his father as an adult: All these exposes the vulnerability of a child in the hands of irresponsible parent(s)-and their evident ruin. I've always been intrigued by perceptions and how they make or break-and this book was a perfect fodder to the multidimensional effects of perceptions.

Although I believe that thoughts have a strong influence on one's way of life (பெருமைக்கும் ஏணை சிறுமைக்கும் தத்தம் கருமமே கட்டளைக் கல்), I still find it hard to believe that there are after effects of committing a sin itself -that the capitalists are still surviving and managing to play big roles in the world is a proof-on a broad plane. That the unexposed child molesters, who were from one's own family and friends, are living big happy lives is a proof- on a narrow plane.

The uniqueness of Saravanan Chandran's writing is his ability to convey a life story through unnamed characters. In most of the narrations, there's a 'they were brought to me', 'the incident was brought to my notoce', 'we decided to help' etc-and in most cases, the narrator goes out of the way to help the requestor-these stirs a curiosity about the narrator and his profile.