Holmstrom sets us right. “Critics,” she writes, “have placed him among the great innovatory writers in modern Tamil, along with Bharathi, Pudhumaipithan, Mouni and La Sa Ramamritham. They have praised, in particular, his powers of description and his handling of complex powerful emotions and metaphysical notions in easy and accessible prose...but above all, his gift lies in his handling of colloquial language, of creating characters through speech.” She might have added also a word about his essential humanism. The first books that Ramaswamy himself translated was Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s Chemmeen and The Scavenger’s Son. Though his characters inhabit the seemingly secure and inviolable world of the upper-caste Iyer Brahmin community of their time, Ramaswamy’s own imagination, like that of the little Balu and his mentor Laccham in his novel, ranges with the freedom of the kite that Laccham brings to the house. The kite itself, let it be said, has a small vignette that will appeal to followers of Tamil cinematic folklore. For at the very tip of the kite, Laccham has affixed a tiny portrait of the famous child heroine of those times—Baby Saroja, still alive and radiant in her old age at Chennai.