As dawn sets upon the city, Chennai’s beaches come alive with scores of people starting their daily routines, with an exercise, a jog, or a walk by the waters, or selling the first catch of fish for the day hoping to make a profit. However, Chennai’s budding litterateurs have found a new way to spend their mornings by the sea — by sharing their love for Tamil literature! Through the platform ‘Storeach’, many youngsters in the city have been gathering to keep Tamil literature alive. Here’s how they are doing it...
“In this social media age, there is a disconnect between the writers and the readers. Writers don’t get to hear honest feedback about their writing. We wanted to have a platform for Tamil literature, which was both informal and honest, so I came up with the idea of gifting this platform to a friend on his birthday, so he could present his short stories to a wide audience of listeners. This is how Storeach was born a couple of months ago,” shares Maathevan Thiyagarajan, the brain behind this idea.
“The spaces in which one can present Tamil literature to society are rather serious, and hence we decided to gather by the beach for every session to keep it light and informal, so even youngsters who are interested in telling their tales are attracted. We have been having many bloggers and engineers, even individuals from the film industry like assistant directors who want ideas for new films, joining us to listen to our stories,” adds Maathevan, who also wants to establish himself as a Tamil writer.
Storeach, which will meet for the next story reading session on August 13 by the Besant Nagar beach, has been a platform for many unique stories, he says.
“There was one writer who wrote a story on the Fibonacci series, one of the more celebrated elements in maths, put in the form of Tamil literature. We plan to publish all the stories we discuss as a compilation in the near future,” he says with anticipation.
Maathevan also hopes that initiatives like these will strengthen the literature itself. “We believe that everyone has a story to tell, and everyone also has a story to write.”
