ஜெயமோகனுக்கு என் வாசகரின் பதில்

ஜெயமோகன் எனது கட்டுரையான “ஜெயமோகன் கிளி எடுத்த சீட்டு: ஊனத்துக்கு” எதிர்வினையாக அவரது பாணியில் ஒரு கீழ்த்தரமான தனிநபர் தாக்குதலை தொடுத்துள்ளார். அதற்கு எனது வாசகர் ஒருவர் தனது இணையதளத்தில் வலுவான ஒரு பதிலை ஆங்கிலத்தில் அளித்துள்ளார்.

http://baliniscosmos.blogspot.com/2010/04/shame-on-you-mr-jeyamohan.html

அதை கீழே படிக்கலாம்.

Shame on you, Mr. Jeyamohan!

I read with much surprise and equal angst the recent post in acclaimed Tamil writer Mr. Jeyamohan’s blog attacking Abilash (a talented new writer and blogger in Tamil) and Poet Manushyaputran . While I am not qualified enough to comment on the literary achievements of Jeyamohan, I can very confidently say that by writing that post, he has projected himself as a man of extreme insensitivity.

Jeyamohan has literally character assassinated Abilash and has made a mockery of Abilash’s physical disabilities and his talent as a writer. His tall idea is that a man with physical difficulties (in this case Abilash, who suffers from polio) ought to completely negate that aspect and only take pride in this mental (meaning the power of human brain) strength. On first reading, this idea appears like a perfect quote from a self-help manual written by motivational experts like Shiv Khera or Stephen Covey. But on deeper thought, Jeyamohan’s words are regressive and completely out of tune with reality.

Jeyamohan painstakingly describes how Abilash found it difficult to commute to his house without support. He also says Abilash felt that people around him treated him like a worm. To push his point, Jeyamohan says Abilash himself has written about his physical challenges in his first book. My question here is this: How is that Mr. Jeyamohan is not able to treat this aspect of self-doubt in Abilash as a normal one? In his youth (or even now), hasn’t Jeyamohan ever felt down, depressed? Hasn’t his self-confidence ever taken a beating? If he is going to answer “No” for all the above questions, then it is really difficult to consider him human. He should surely be deported to Mars, immediately!

People with physical difficulties encounter insurmountable odds every minute of their life. To a normal person, it is not easy to understand their plight unless they spend every minute with people with physical challenges. Let me give a simple illustration to prove my point. I am a person who does a desk job to earn a living. If I work more than the stipulated eight hours, I get a back pain. Sometimes even those eight hours seem physically tiring. So this physical tiredness takes its toll when I go out to indulge in my hobby – photography. I really cannot apply myself well when I am tired and that surely reflects on the shots I click. Unlike me, for a physically challenged person, every minute in their job is a sheer strain. Their response time to tasks which can be done blindly normal people is itself quite long. A person with a polio leg cannot jump at a given instance and answer a calling bell. He or she cannot climb stairs easily and are bogged down by travel.

Abilash is exactly in this situation. He has a genuine physical disability to manage life long. Whatever Jeyamohan has described in great detail in his article is just Abilash’s response to his real physical problem. I can challenge Jeyamohan that he will definitely not be able to be normal after a hectic day at work. He will definitely postpone writing for that day. At that time will you go and advice him saying, “Come on, Mr. Jeyamohan! You are mentally strong. You should not be bogged down by such trivial physical things. Get up!”? How absurd would that be! One more catch is that if Abilash would have been wallowing in self-pity all these while (as Mr. Jeyamohan says), he would not have been able to write a single page worth of notice. That Abilash has a strong readership and has written articles of worth is proof enough that he cares a damn about his physical difficulty. The same holds good for Manushyaputran.

Jeyamohan’s argument that physically challenged people are capable only of self-pity and nothing else holds good only for people who make a great deal of fuss about their handicap. I have seen physically challenged people run teas shops, paan shops and PCO booths with a signboard saying “Run by handicapped person. Please support”. Such people want to milk the sympathy of normal people like us and earn a living. I have nothing against those people or the signboards they put. But I am really annoyed at the way normal people respond to such people. Let me illustrate it. A friend of mine got employed in a small-time IT company. He got into a scuffle with his reporting head. That reporting head brought this to the GM’s notice. The GM did not care to listen to his side of the argument and had bluntly said, “I was large-hearted enough to give you a job even though I knew you were handicapped. And now you have the guts to behave like this!” This is clearly how Jeyamohan has reacted to Abilash. I do not know if he has read the works of Abilash, because he has another blanket remark about it, “Abilash has not written anything of worth”. Common sense would tell us that we speak in general terms to do two things: either we do not know anything about the matter under contention or we are simply lying. Jeyamohan alone knows which of these he is doing. He has projected himself as a messiah who came to save Abilash from his “self-pity” and when he has done so much for him, Abilash writes articles against him and stabs his back. Can anything get more cinematic than this?

If Jeyamohan really wanted to get back at Abilash for supposedly “damaging” him, he should give us a properly analyzed view of Abilash’s points. Not this kind of cheap yellow journalistic articles where he distorts facts to idiotic heights. A man of values and a decent level of empathy will not do so. But Jeyamohan has proved that neither he has values nor does he empathize with his fellow beings.

Postscript:

1. I recorded my anger at Jeyamohan’s article by posting the following comment in his blog. It has not seen the light till now. But it nevertheless needs to be documented and I do so here:

A writer of your stature stooping to such low levels of character assassination is both a surprise and a condemnable act. Your intolerance towards any of your “fanboy” readers turning to writers (or even aspiring to be a writer) is a well-known fact. The truth is that any new writer of talent does not need your “certification of authenticity”. Time and worthy readership will decide that. From all your writings it is very clear that you are a “strong” man. What surprises me is that a strong man like you lacks basic sensitivity and empathy for fellow beings. Like you said, one’s mental strength alone determines one’s approach to life. If you really had that, you will not generate reams of yellow journalistic articles like this. I think at least your readers have that mental strength. That should help them discriminate between true character portrayals and the vicious one like you have written.

2. Please click here to read Abilash's post on Jeyamohan.

3. Please check the following links for Jeyamohan's articles on Manushyaputran:

http://www.jeyamohan.in/?p=5761
http://www.jeyamohan.in/?p=5764
http://www.jeyamohan.in/?p=5770
http://www.jeyamohan.in/?p=5779