Monday, October 13, 2008

Short story found

I had come across this story sometime in 2005 and lost the link. I accidentally found it again this weekend. A story named "En peyar chitra" that could be described almost as a short story version of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" set in a tamil lower middle class milieu.

I did read the Tamil version after reading the English one yet the tamil one remains my favorite. Now, how many times have we been able to say so about any book or a movie which has had an earlier work as an influence? May be it was because the mileu was familiar, may be the author was able to really bring in the emotional differences better or may be he was able to do so because it was a shorter version. Whatever, if you can read tamil, please do read it and LET me know what you think of it.

I also have to admit here that in spite of reading these two stories and several other websites, I still don't have a good gasp of what autism is. I have met couple of kids(one a colleague and another occasional passer by), both the kids 5 year of age. May be both these kids were in the far end of spectrum of autism, I am not sure, but I couldn't really spot anything abnormal in these kid's behavior.

This is from someone who has read a wee bit about it. There are people who are not even aware of it. When my friend's niece was diagnosed with autism, another friend told me that this was the first time he had even heard of the term.

I am not sure but may be by knowing about it better, we might be able to help the parents involved and kids when we bump into them.

3 comments:

  1. I have read the English version and it is one of the books that affected me a lot. Thanks for linking the tamil version - will read it soon.

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  2. A-Kay,
    Finding people who would read tamil and english fiction, so please read and let me know what oyu thought of it.

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  3. oops i meant finding people who can read tamil and english fiction is hard..

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