Uma Varatharajan is an avant-garde writer in Thamil hailing from the East living in Kalmunai, now in retirement from being the Senior Manager of Singer in that area. He writes at leisure and an aesthete at heart with a natural bent towards humour and a slight mischievousness in sarcasm. There are more than 250 creative writers – poets, dramatists, short story writers and novelists – in Thamil in this country. Among them a few writers write differently meaning writing fiction not confining them exclusively to write about ‘progressive’ themes such as social and political problems concerning caste and class differences, and the ethnic imbroglio. But in the writing of a handful of writers psychological and human condition takes primacy. Among the latter group of writers are Uma Varatharajan, A Saanthan, Somapala Ranjakumar, K Saddanathan, Kokila Mahendran and a few others who began writing such fiction in the1970s. One distinguishable quality in their writing was that they paid equal attention to the craft of the medium. This I found a miss in other social realism stories written by veteran writers though who were faithful in concentrating on the content than the structure and were rather careless about the form.