Summary:
The talk which was organised by the Madras Local History Group as part of Madras Day celebrations was titled ‘Madras by Devan’. It was an insightful and fitting tribute to the extraordinary writing genius of Tiruvidaimarudur R Mahadevan, popularly known as Devan, the then managing editor of Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan. He spoke of how the writer challenged the conventional understanding of a ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ in his work, as both were fairly regular middle-class. For instance, he said, Ananda Vikatan was fined `500 by the British for Devan’s comic about the 1943 Madras Harbour bombing during the Second World War. “It was Charukesi who went to great lengths to bring out Devan’s writing..