Fiction-Tamil
By Imayam
For the teacher is one of those whose education and exposure to the wider world have kept his caste consciousness from diminishing his self-confidence. A place name for him is just an address. Not so for the girl, who is one of the few in her community to have made it to that middle school full of ‘other’ children from ‘other’ villages. Ironically, her name turns out to be Arivoli—the Light of Wisdom. Her parents have given her the name of the literacy movement—Arivoli Iyakkam—of the 90s, which drew people from every nook and corner of Tamil Nadu to raise the literacy level to 85.5 per cent. But Arivoli did not do away with the caste system. On the contrary,
Reviewed by: Vasantha Surya