Where words take flight- An Interview with Jeyamohan

“Where words take flight” 

A Literary Conversation with Jeyamohan, author of “The Stories of the True.”

Transcribed by: Jegadeesh Kumar

On an overcast and drizzly October morning, Colleton County High School welcomed acclaimed Indian author B. Jeyamohan for a special literary event that drew over 250 students passionate about reading and creative writing. Known for his expansive body of work in Tamil and Malayalam, including the epic Venmurasu, Mr. Jeyamohan engaged in a wide-ranging conversation about literature, philosophy, and the power of storytelling.

The event opened with a warm welcome from Mr. Jegadeesh Kumar, Chair of the Math Department, and was moderated by Ms. Sarena Hale, who guided the dialogue with insight and grace. Students Brianna Wiley and Juris Ramirez added a personal touch by sharing reflections on Mr. Jeyamohan’s stories, highlighting their emotional depth and relevance. What follows is a transcript of the interview—an inspiring exchange between a master storyteller and a new generation of writers.

Dr. Angel Tucker: It’s a privilege to welcome to the stage Mr. Jeyamohan, one of India’s most revered literary voices. Writing primarily in Tamil and Malayalam, he has shaped contemporary Indian literature through a vast body of work that spans novels, short stories, essays, and philosophical reflections. His fiction is known for its moral depth, spiritual inquiry, and engagement with Indian ethical traditions. Among his most celebrated works are Vishnupuram and the monumental Venmurasu—the longest novel ever written—a modern retelling of the Indian epic Mahabharata that spans over 25,000 pages.

This year marks a major milestone in his global journey with the release of Stories of the True, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and translated into English by Priyavada Ramkumar. The collection offers a vivid, truth-seeking portrait of modern India, blending realism with philosophical insight.

Mr. Jegadeesh Kumar, our Math department chair, has translated a selection of Jeyamohan’s stories, bringing them together in a compelling collection titled A Fine Thread and Other Stories, published by Ratna Books in New Delhi. The book is available in our school and local libraries, offering students and readers a chance to engage with Jeyamohan’s powerful storytelling in English.

Please join me in welcoming Mr. Jeyamohan, a writer whose work continues to challenge, illuminate, and inspire across languages and borders.

Mr. Jeyamohan walks onto the stage.

Dr. Tucker: Mr. Jeyamohan, would you walk us through your writing process? What inspires you, how you come up with ideas, and how you get started with writing?

Jeyamohan: Thank you for the invitation to your institution. Sorry, I’m a bit nervous right now because I was a very bad student in my college and school. So being in an educational institution is a very strange experience for me. I am from nearly 8,000 kilometers away from this place. I don’t know whether you can follow my accent, but I’d like to say something.

The first thing is, creativity is entirely different from thought and logic. If you are thinking something, if you are logically constructing something, you cannot create anything in literature. So try to dream through words. Literature is a process of dreaming through words. Imagination is a process of dreaming through words.

I think everyone here knows about artificial intelligence. It can do anything which is logical and structured. But it cannot do anything without structure. So crossing the structures of the human mind is called dreaming. Every time we have a dream, we feel that it is actually new to us. We cannot repeat it. Every time we have a dream, it surprises us. So if your creative work can surprise yourself, you are creating something. That’s the answer. Try to dream. The future is for the dreamers, not the logical ones.

Dr. Tucker: Thank you, sir, for that. Your latest book, which is translated as Stories of the True—what is the name of the book in Tamil?

Jeyamohan: In Tamil, the name is Aram, which means “Stories of Truth” or “True Stories.” You may have heard about a movement called postmodernism. Postmodernism actually practically ruined every virtue. It created something called deconstruction. That means you have the right to deconstruct anything offered to you. That’s your right. But deconstructing everything is a very wrong thing.

If your mother can deconstruct the love of your mother, there’s nothing left. If your father can deconstruct the love or the duty of the father, he will find it meaningless. What’s love for a person living for some other man? That’s meaningless. A person dedicating their entire life to another person, for them, that’s practically nonsense. But it is a kind of virtue.

So I wrote that book to rediscover the original virtue of humanity. That’s what the name of the original text means. In Sanskrit, the name is Dharma. When translating that work into English, the translated form was simplified. That’s why she named it Stories of the True. It can be understood like this: stories of true people, stories of true values, stories of true history, or simply, stories of the truth.

Dr. Tucker: Speaking of the work having to be translated, do you feel that there are some things that get lost in translation? I know that not every word from one language to another has an exact equivalent. So are there times where the emotions and what you were meaning to convey with a story might get lost because there’s no exact equivalent in English?

Jeyamohan: You may have heard about one of the major linguistic scholars of America: Noam Chomsky. He said anything which is in a human language can be translated into another human language. There’s a basic element of human language which is translatable.

So there are two things in translation. One: anything can be translated to any other human language. And two: something is always lost in translation. That is called the originality of the culture or something unique in the culture. But something else, which is very human, which is universal, that can be translated.

You can communicate with another human being from any country. Suppose you are traveling to New Zealand or some other small country and you meet new people, can you communicate with them? It takes ten minutes to have a perfect communication with that new person.

I’ve traveled through India, a land of more than 100 languages. I was traveling through India in search of stories. When I meet a stranger with a strange language, it doesn’t take more than ten to fifteen minutes to have a perfect communication with that stranger. So communication is always possible with a human. Translation is always possible with any human language.

Dr. Tucker: Your stories in Stories of the True are local to your area. They’re stories from your experiences and what you’ve seen. What do you suggest for our students who might not be familiar with your part of the world or your specific culture, if there are issues and conflicts and themes in the stories that might be unfamiliar to them?

Jeyamohan: See, in every half-century in world history, there is a common key point. Until 2000, the common theme of humanity was liberation or freedom. But not now. Today, we have all kinds of freedom. The theme of our era—your generation—is individuality.

You are losing your individuality continuously for more than thirty years. You can observe it. WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram—any social media you are using—is used by everyone. You are being brutally standardized by the media, government, and even the education system.

Similar students can be witnessed in every part of the world. Standardization is going on throughout the world. You are nothing different from any other person in the world. So finding your own individuality is the major task of your generation.

There’s a popular saying: anything which is originally regional is essentially international. So creating something regional is the major challenge of modern literature today.

That’s why the first book of mine was published in the U.S. because they wanted that vision. The global standard is a commodity. It’s a material. It’s not the essence.

So I say this: if you are a person, don’t read anything recommended by the New Yorker. It was created by a set of editors in a standardized methodology. It has a common theme, a common structure, sometimes even a common language.

Discover the uniqueness of literature. A work may come from a regional part of Africa and be more important than anything published in Europe. As a writer and reader, I want to listen to a strange voice from Africa—not a common, popular voice from India or the U.S.

Mine is a strange, oblique voice from India. That’s why it is international. That’s why it is more important than any standardized program in English.

So as a writer, I advise everyone here: if you are interested in writing something in the future, write something very unique. You may have a unique person in your mind. You yourself may be a unique person. Or you may create an original character. Try to write it. That’s universal. There’s no universality today apart from uniqueness.

Dr. Tucker: So as students are writing from their unique perspective to tell their story—and not trying to format a story to fit the popular mode—they would write from what they know, from their lives, from what is true. Many students have had to deal with difficulties in life. I’m sure your book reflects challenges and difficulties and maybe some serious themes as well. How do you tackle those topics or themes that might be controversial or come from a place of deep emotion, maybe even traumatic issues? How do you handle that in writing, or how do you recommend students handle these heavy topics?

Jeyamohan: The answer is—you need not train a child to feel pain. You need not train someone to be afraid of pain. It is very natural. Like that, you can express yourself very naturally in your language.

You just have to learn the structure of the text. You have to learn what is a novel, what is a short story, what is poetry. Then you have to scream out yourself. You have to be yourself. If you do that, your work will be naturally unique.

That’s the only thing. You cannot teach a creative writer to create something. That is naturally invented by the writer himself.

Dr. Tucker: Mr. Jeyamohan, thank you so much for sharing your time, your wisdom, and your stories with us today. Your reflections on creativity, individuality, and the power of regional voices have given our students—and all of us—a lot to think about. It’s been a privilege to hear directly from you, and we’re deeply grateful for your visit. We wish you all the best as you continue your journey, both as a writer and a teacher. Thank you again.