Manam Oru Kurangu

by Cho Ramaswamy

மனம் ஒரு குரங்கு

152 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2013

About the author

Srinivasa Iyer Ramaswamy called as Cho Ramaswamy (Tamil: சோ ராமசுவாமி) is a comedian, editor, political satirist, playwright and lawyer in Tamil Nadu. He is the founder and editor of the Tamil magazine, Thuglak. His popularity in the Tamil Nadu literary circles is mainly due to his impartial assessment of political issues, and the audacity with which he publishes his viewpoints.

Reviews

[Pratip Vijayakumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Author weaves an interesting story in the Stage play format. Each chapter is introduced in a scene format with the location and the characters participating in the scene because this is a Screenplay book of the movie of the same name.
This book deals with the human mind and how quickly its emotions changes. The author mocks everyone especially the so-called "Modern Women" of that time and how they just show off? He not only mocked them but also men and their misogyny. But the former was mocked the most.

[Arvind Srinivasan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always a story with different thought process in comedy genre is what we would expect from cho sir, the books falls into the same grouping. Gopi challenges that he would make a vegetable selling woman into a posh city cultured woman. In doing so what are the hickups faced, how does people around react and what happens to gopi and lady in the end is the plot.

Generally cho sirs books will not have too much of people questions, but this book has lot of questions on human kind and their behavior patterns. There is also tinge of philosophy and emotion which adds strength to the plot. The final words on "innocence could not be taught it is inborn" is a deep thought which I did not expect from cho sirs novel.

Though it starts as a normal satire and seemed very ordinary in the beginning takes turn and becomes quite a thought provoking book at the end. The behavior of educated youth explained in the book seems more like the thought of current era than the era in which cho sir wrote the story. May be satire then is real now, if so we are as we have been mocked 50 years back which raises lot of question on us calling ourself developed. I am not sure if cho sirs hard fans will like it, but a light read which will for sure make you think.

[Prabhu R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice drama with a mix of humour & emotion. The drama brings out the nature of the human mind with the analogy to the monkey's behaviour. Like the monkey that jumps between branches unpredictably, the human mind changes so rapidly according to the turn of events and situations, similar to the unpredictable behaviour of the monkey. The characters in the story are depicted in such a way that they change their minds so quickly that it flows naturally with the story and also blends with the reality.

[Malavika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good