Ra Ki Rangarajan passes away

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Ra.Ki. Rangarajan (85), former joint editor of Kumudam, passed away at his Chennai residence early Saturday.

He joined Kumudam in 1950 and exited in 1993. He was called a writing machine in Tamil.
His achievements as a writer are many.

In the early ’60s, Tamil readers had a verbal-visual treat through his novel Padagu Veedu, which was serialised and had Kashmir as background.

He was the first person to write a Tamil historical novel in first person, inspired by the English novel I Claudius, presented to him by Kamal Haasan.

Ghost, a popular serial on unnatural mystery, was a big hit those days, which he wrote under the name Krishnakumar. Ra Ki was first appointed for Kumudam’s children’s magazine Jingli. Before that he and poet Kannadasan had worked in Tamil monthly Sakthi.

In his 43 years’ stint in Kumudam, he became a household name among Tamil readers. He wrote more than 3,500 short stories and over 1,000 novels that included several translated works like Papillon and the Sydney Sheldon novels.

Rangarajan had used several names: Krishnakumar was for mysteries, T. Duraisami for emotional family drama, K. Malathy for ‘postal-related’ stories, Surya for youthful romance, and Mohini for historical novels.

His novels Ithu Sathiyam and Sumaithangi were made into films. He was co-writer for Kamal Haasan’s Mahanadhi. He was in the discussion group of Kamal’s story department.

Also, he was the man behind making DMK leader Karunanidhi write his autobiography, and CM Jayalalithaa her first novel, Nenjil Oru Kanal, which was serialised in Kumudam.

Ra Ki Rangarajan introduced several writers and had in fact started a correspondence course for short-story writing. When I entered Kumudam in 1980 as a freelancer, he asked me to change my name because I too was Rangarajan.

That’s how I became Sudhangan. Famous writer Sujatha’s name was also Rangarajan and so he took his wife’s name.