Openness and Kindness

Was it in the 6th grade, or was it the 8th, when I shifted to learning Sanskrit instead of Tamil as per my father's orders, er, instruction?  In any case, I was way too young then to have had any independently formulated thoughts on what language one ought to learn.

Now, looking back, all I can see is the one big reason that pops up for the shift to Sanskrit: The brahminical context.  A traditional and conservative Brahmin, my father wanted his sons to learn the language of the Vedas.  (Two years after I did, my brother too took the same fork in the road.)  My sister, on the other hand, studied Tamil all the way through high school.  In the old tradition, it was only the Brahmin males who studied the Vedas, and it was not necessary for a girl to know Sanskrit!

I enjoyed learning Sanskrit, and have fond memories of Narayana Sastrigal and Pattabhiraman sir.  The little bit that I learnt has found its way to many blog posts too.  Heck, it even helped me eavesdrop on a conversation in a park in Chennai.

But, I missed out on learning about some of the greatest Tamil works, which is what my classmates did in the years that I was learning Sanskrit.  Like the Tirukkural.

Tirukkural and its author, Tiruvalluvar, might be unfamiliar to those who are not from Tamil Nadu.  But, to the Tamils from Tamil Nadu, I bet that we won't be able to recall the first time we came across anything from Tirukkural.  It is almost as if we have always been immersed in it--even if all we know is a couplet or two.  

It is because the Tirukkural couplets are all around in Tamil Nadu.  If memory serves me well, a Tamil newspaper, Dina Malar (தின மலர்) used to publish a different couplet every day along with short commentaries too.  Kural was everywhere!  

In his review of the latest English translation of the Tirukkural, which dates back to the fifth century, David Shulman begins with a scene that anybody in Tamil Nadu will recognize:

Suppose you are traveling on a municipal bus in the sunbaked South Indian city of Chennai, and you know Tamil. At some point, overwhelmed by the sheer density of color and form that you can see through the window, you raise your eyes to the board just above the driver’s seat, where a couplet is inscribed ...

Public transport buses invariably have a couplet or two from the 1,330 in the Tirukkural.  Whether or not we truly understood the couplet itself was immaterial; we were immersed in them and that's all that mattered.

Shulman writes: "To translate even a single kural couplet, bewitching in its rhythm and packed with meaning, is a formidable task. But we now have Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma’s translation, without doubt the best ever into English."

The last time I read Shulman writing about the Tirukkural, his recommendation was different.  I blogged in January 2019: 

After quoting and discussing a few of the couplets from Tirukkural, Shulman writes that "the reader is warmly advised to find his own favorites in translations such as P.S. Sundaram's or the beautiful French one by Francois Gros."

Pause for a little to think about this: Shulman, who was born in Waterloo, Iowa, and later immigrated to Israel, is a polyglot/polymath who knows more about Tamil than anybody in my circle of friends and relations does, and is applauding a translation by a guy whose middle and last names are not Tamil either.  These two non-Tamils are helping me appreciate one of the greatest works of Tamil, which I did not study during my formative years!

The nerd that I am, I watched the book-launch/discussion video, in which the discussant is Archana Venkatesan--yes, that same person! 

I loved the couplet that Pruiksma recited about openness and kindness.  Think about the cruelty that has come to define trumpism, as exemplifed by the recent political stunt by the Florida governor when he criminally trafficked refugees from Venezuela to Martha's Vineyard.  Tiruvalluvar has a message for these cruel Torquemadas, which Pruiksma delivers well:

From openness to all people the practice

Of kindness comes easily.

எண்பதத்தால் எய்தல் எளிதென்ப யார்மாட்டும்

பண்புடைமை என்னும் வழக்கு