It is a quarter of a century since Ariyappadaatha Tamizhagam (The Unknown Tamil Country) by Tho Paramasivan (Tho Pa) was published from Palayamkottai. Edited by me with a foreword, typeset and printed on a mini-offset machine at Madurai, and published by ThoPa’s dear friend V Manickam, Ariyappadaatha Tamizhagam propelled a hitherto little-known academic to intellectual stardom.
In 1998, he was appointed professor of Tamil Studies at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli. This was poetic justice considering that an identical selection committee had turned him down for a lower position barely a year earlier. With this appointment, ThoPa returned to his hometown, Palayamkottai, for good, after more than two decades of teaching in colleges in Ilayankudi and Madurai.
In 2001, Kalachuvadu Pathippagam became his publisher. Crisply edited, elegantly produced and widely distributed, ThoPa’s books found thousands of new readers. A revised edition of Ariyappadaatha Tamizhagam was the flagship, and has since sold more than fifty thousand copies.
