SUKUMARAN (1957)
Born in 1957,Sukumaran is a Tamil poet, writer, translator and editor. He has published 8 volumes of poems, 2 novels, 6 collections of articles on art, literature and social issues, and compiled and edited 4 volumes of pioneers in modern writing. As a translator, he has published 11 books from Malayalam and 7 from English. His translations include the works Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Allasandro Barricco and AyferTunc. His poems have been translated into Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Gujrathi, Marathi Punjabi, English, German and French languages. He has served as editor in print and television media for more than a decade. He is now working as the Executive Editor of Kalachuvadu, Tamil magazine for art and ideas. He was awarded the Iyal Award by The Tamil Literary Garden, Canada, in 2017 for his overall contribution to the literary field. He lives in Coimbatore with his wife.
JAHANARA (Novel)
Peruvali
Number of Pages: 192
Little is known about Shah Jahan’s daughter Jahanara, the most erudite of Mughal princesses. Even as an adolescent, she advised her emperor father on state affairs and diplomacy. Fending off the machinations of Shah Jahan’s devious stepmother, Noor Mahal, who manipulated her husband Jahangir and later Aurangzeb like a puppeteer, Jahanara continually attempted to broker peace between Shah Jahan, Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb. Conversant with Persian, Sanskrit and several other languages, she had studied not only the Quran but also the Vedas and the Puranas. At one point, she was known to have owned the largest number of ships for sea trade in the Bay of Bengal.
However, hers was also a life of great emotional turmoil. She had fallen deeply in love with the Rajput king Chattar Sal, but her grandfather, Emperor Akbar, had ruled that women born into the royal family were not to take lovers or enter into marriage. She ended up living in isolation, tending to her father and relying on the friendship of a tenacious eunuch called Panipat.
Sukumaran’s Jahanara tells the story that Panipat stood witness to. Drawing upon her personal diaries, it brings to vivid life a woman whose personal freedom was tossed into the hellfire burning between her brothers.
