P. Singaram

Singaram was born on 12 August 1920 as the third son of Ku.Pazhanivel Nadar and Unnamalai Ammal in a town called Singampunari in present-day Sivaganga district, Tamil Nadu. His elder brothers were named Subramanian and Bhaskaran. The family was involved in clothes business along with Singaram's grandfather Kumarasamy Nadar.

Singaram had his primary education at Singampunari Primary school and further education at St.Mary's higher secondary school Madurai.

When he was 18 years old, Singaram went to Medan, Indonesia to work as an assistant for a pawnbroker named S K Sinnamuthu Pillai. He married a woman there (possibly of British Malaya).[1] When he was 25 years old, his wife died in her pregnancy.

After a brief return to India in 1940, Singaram once again went to Indonesia and worked in the Public Works Department, around the time of the South-East Asian theatre of World War II. After the end of World War II, he and some other Tamils obtained the approval of the Indonesian government to load cargo in ships bound for Penang, Malaysia.

He came back to India in September 1946 and lived in Madurai, working at the local Dina Thanthi newspaper office till he took voluntary retirement in 1987. He did not maintain close relationships with anybody and lived alone for 50 years in an YMCA hostel in Madurai.

During his second stay in Medan, Singaram didn't get his share of Tamil magazines, as ship transport between India and Indonesia was stopped. However, the Public Library in Penang, Malaysia evoked his interest in Hemingway, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky.[1]

He has more than once spoke of Ernest Hemingway's influence [2] in his works and listed him as his favorite writer. His influence of Hemingway was very evident in both his works and he considered A Farewell to Arms his favorite and masterpiece of Hemingway. He believed A Farewell to Arms an important milestone in American literature and rated Anna Karenina more than War and Peace.

His knowledge on Tamil literature was limited to short stories of Pudhumaipithan and Mouni he read before travelling to Indonesia. In his later years when asked whether he is aware of the present Tamil writers and their works he commented it lacked depth and he couldn't read past two pages of Sujatha and Sivasankari

Writers Konangi, N. Murugesa Pandian, S. Ramakrishnan and many others met Singaram in his last years of life and told him in person how much they were moved by his works. They repeatedly told Singaram's his stronghold in Tamil literature but Singaram was stoic as ever. He refused to accept his place and no more wrote.

Around September 1997, following his eviction from the YMCA hostel, Singaram took up residence in Nadar Mahajana Sangam (near Vilakkuthoon in Madurai). He gave away his entire saving of ₹. 7,00,000 to social welfare trusts.[1] Soon , his health condition deteriorated and on 30 December 1997, he died in ambulance while being taken to hospital. He had told not to inform about his death to anyone.