Rajesh Kumar: I wanted to stand out from my contemporaries

Novelist Rajesh Kumar, known for his crime investigation stories, revealed that his foray into writing crime has thrown a spotlight on him, and he wanted to distinguish himself from his contemporaries. He has been doing promotional interviews for the upcoming investigation thriller series Regai on the Zee5 platform.

In an interview with Galatta Plus' Baradwaj Rangan, Rajesh Kumar said, "Back then, romantic stories and family dramas were popular in magazine serials. Crime was a largely unexplored territory, as even Sujata only occasionally writes crime stories. I found that space as an opportune moment and identified myself as a crime writer."

He elaborated, saying that even in the under-explored world of crime, he wanted to stand out by moving outside Chennai. "I owe my success to the curiosity I create by setting my stories far from Chennai. I choose a random museum from Hyderabad to start a story or a dam in Karnataka. I used to travel a lot in India for my father's business. Such business trips helped me expand my knowledge of several milieus. By setting my stories in other cities, I spur interest in the readers, giving them information about those cities and slowly pulling them towards my story."

Regai, written and directed by M Dhinakaran, is about the suspicious death of a young person in his hostel toilet, which leads to several other killings that happened at around the same time. Although it appears the victims are totally unrelated to each other, the investigation reveals that they knew each other, and their connection leads to something bigger and more dangerous that has been happening secretly.

Led by Bala Hasan, the series also stars Pavithra Janani, Pobalam Pragathesh, Vinothini Vaidyanathan, Sriram M, Anjali Rao, and Indrajith E, among others.

The technical crew of Regai comprises editor Dorai Prakash SA, music director RS Rajprathap, cinematographer Mahendra M Hendry, and art director P Saravanan.