Tamil Books, with Taste and Rigor
When I first met S. Ramakrishnan at his Tiruvanmayur office, I carried with me a glossy paperback of Dilip Kumar’s Ramavum Umavum. He gently prised it out of my hands and replaced it with the Cre‑A edition — the same text, but dressed in surreal cover art, produced with care and conviction. That small gesture captured his ethos: books were not mere commodities, they were cultural objects to be nurtured, polished, and sent into the world with dignity. For half a century, Ramakrishnan insisted that Tamil deserved this kind of respect, and he built Cre‑A to prove it.
“A well‑educated Tamil household,” Ramakrishnan once told BBC’s Mark Tully, “will happily spend fifty rupees on an English paperback but will not think of buying a Tamil book.” As he explained in Tully’s bestseller “No Full Stops in India,” this severely limited the market for serious Tamil publishing. Worse, publishers faced competition from “monthly novels” — cheaply printed romances and thrillers sold for two rupees. Weaning readers away from sensational serials was no easy task.
Ramakrishnan was a well-paid advertising executive before he forayed into Tamil publishing in the early 1970s. A member of the English‑speaking elite, he was determined to give Tamil readers books of high quality in both form and content. “We wanted to do in Tamil what has not been done before. We have to extend the language so people can express themselves,” he told Tully. His decision was ideological, not commercial. A health‑care manual translated into Tamil might sell for its utility, but what about books on film or art criticism? How do you bring enriching, impractical ideas into people’s consciousness, so they become part of everyday reality? For Ramakrishnan, even the absence of a bird guide in Tamil mattered.
Quite literally, he brought modern words into the Tamil lexicon. His most enduring legacy is Cre‑A’s contemporary Tamil dictionary. Even as he battled COVID‑19 in a government hospital in 2020, he was concerned about releasing the third edition on schedule. He managed to keep that commitment, just days before his death.
Ramakrishnan encouraged translators of world classics and nurtured local writers. Many Tamil authors, used to benign neglect, were startled when he pored over manuscripts and suggested revisions. They soon realized he wanted their work to shine. He would oversee layout, select tasteful cover art, and send books into the world with dignity. Dilip Kumar, one of his protégés, recalled working in Cre‑A’s office‑cum‑showroom in Royapettah, above a paint shop near Pilot theatre. Renowned authors, theater people, and academics dropped in, creating a vibrant atmosphere of poetry, painting, philosophy, music, and education. Earlier this year, Dilip’s short story The Clerk’s Story was adapted into the award‑winning film Nasir. Ramakrishnan proudly shared the screening link.
Ramakrishnan knew readers might not finish every book they bought. Still, he believed the impact of good books was subtle and subliminal. He encouraged beginners too. When I said that I was a “language orphan” who hadn’t studied Tamil in school, he handed me a collection of Imayam’s short stories to practice reading.
Israeli scholar David Shulman, author of “Tamil: A Biography,” wrote: “Every language, and especially an ancient and noble language like Tamil, needs some extraordinary persons to care for it, heal its wounds, and reveal its richness. Ramakrishnan was such a person.” Shulman added: “For half a century he was the living heart of modern Tamil. He discovered and published the finest writers, meticulously edited their works, published major works of Tamil scholarship, translated foreign classics into Tamil, and also produced the finest dictionary available for any modern South Asian language. He was a man of impeccable taste, one of the rarest of human virtues. He was a great and loving friend. All those who love Tamil will mourn this terrible loss.”
Ramakrishnan’s life was a reminder that publishing is not just commerce but cultural stewardship. He extended Tamil’s reach, nurtured its writers, and gave readers books that dignified their language. In the end, his greatest gift was not just a dictionary or a publishing house, but the conviction that Tamil deserved to stand tall, with taste and rigor, in the modern world.
