Ashokamitran

Ashokamitran (22 September 1931 – 23 March 2017) was the pen name of Jagadisa Thyagarajan, an Indian writer regarded as one of the most influential figures in post-independent Tamil literature. He began his prolific literary career with the prize-winning play "Anbin Parisu" and went on to author more than two hundred short stories, and a dozen novellas and novels. A distinguished essayist and critic, he was the editor of the literary journal "Kanaiyaazhi". He has written over 200 short stories, nine novels, and some 15 novellas besides other prose writings. Most of his works have also been translated into English and other Indian languages, including Hindi, Malayalam, and Telugu. Born in Secunderabad in 1931, Ashokamitran spent the first twenty years of his life there. His real name was Jagadisa Thyagarajan. He moved to Chennai in 1952 after the death of his father, following an invitation from his father's friend, the film director S.S.Vasan to come work at Vasan's Gemini Studios. He worked for more than a decade at the Gemini Studios. While working there he often acted as an "unofficial scribe" (in his own words) for people working in the film industry, and said that his efforts consisted of "writing most heart rending appeals for loans and salary advances." He also began writing about his experiences working in the film industry in a set of columns for the Illustrated Weekly of India; these columns later became his book, My Years with Boss (sometimes translated as Fourteen Years with Boss). The 'boss' referred to was S.S. Vasan, the owner of Gemini Studios. His experiences here and his interaction with people from the Tamil filmdom later took the form of his book "My Years with Boss". In 1966, he left his work in the film industry, and has since said that he felt he "should not continue with a system which had built-in inequities."