RESONANCE e-magazine

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I speak on the world around us. It smiles like a flower on the bark of a tree. Some times it influences us and even corrupts us.Is our mind in resonance with the things around us?

Resonance is re-echoing or vibrating sound. But what we try to find inside us is more than that. Our attitude is just a response to the environment. If our mind is compared to a sphere of riddle, the outer most layer is our attitude. The sphere is not moulded with a single thing. It has many layers. If we want to simplify it we could reveal two more layers inside the outer layer. If we remove the layer of attitude we find our behaviour and if we move further we end up with the core values.Are we in resonance with the environment? How do we respond to environment with our attitude? Will the environment has a say on our behaviours and values? These questions challenge any kind of research. We respond to the environment each and every minute through our attitude. In the course of time most of us will become slaves to the surroundings in one way or other . We are preoccupied by the things around us. Here we may lose ourselves and forget our inner-self which is the true self.Our mind covers the inner-self. Those things which take the mind start dominating us. Then we experience the resonance. It is a prolonging one. It is just an obsession. Later it becomes an obstacle to the freedom. Most of the people imagine happiness without understanding the very nature of it. Liberty is the basis of happiness. Happiness is written on the paper of liberty, and could not be read. It is to be felt. To be precise happiness is realising of inner-self.For that we have to remain with our true self.We are not new to that experience. We do experience it throughout our life in the moments of tranquillity .We travel with the mind every day and take shelter in our true self for a very short duration like a bird in its nest. The environment and duties wash away a man along a stream. He swims all the way along the stream. He can let the stream to carry him. But he should not allow it to dissolve him at any point of time. This is how we should contemplate the world around us. Let our ears hear the noise of environment. But we cannot let ourselves resonate with those trifles. Our mind has many things in this world to dissolve itself . Select the one you like and it could be a song, a music or a poem.

Let the rotating world resonate with the beautiful song of nature.

- Dwarakaithalaivan

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Our mentor

Is a social reformer.

As he speaks

The river of oration

Flows in our mind.

The waves are rolling

The golden foils

And we are elevated

To jump into the water.

We smear the glittering words

All over the body and

Swim inside

Probing the water space

With drowsy eyes.

We are floating the mind

Like a piece of wood

on the stream of speech.

Our dresses of beliefs

Are many centuries old.

We the shabby people

Lose our thick rough clothes

In the flood of oration.

We now wear

The waves as attire.

All those years

We strolled along the streets

With fetters.

We dragged the iron shot

Chained to our feet.

It made trenches in our hearts.

Sharpness of Orator’s tongue

Has snapped the chain to pieces.

Now we are free

Not only to run

But to fly.

We built many walls.

we painted them with blood

And wrote on them with tears.

All those primitive barriers

Are now washed away by the

Eloquent speech.

We make books as boats

To row over the flood.

Our writers are

Expertised in designing the boats.

Boats are not made

With polished planks

But with the rough ones

Like the path of

Oppressed people.

They are nailed together

With quotes of our social reformer.

The boats sail as swans

and swoop up the fishes

Which find their way

In a new channel.

We survive by going

Along the stream.

We don’t travel over the water

All the time.

We dive inside

And row the boat

Like a submarine

As we notice

An arrogant eagle passes by.

The eagles hover

High in the sky

they land for a food

And go back to their

Play ground the sky.

The eagles are no

special persons.

They are some common people

Who strike a balance between faiths

And practical life.

They soar in the sky

And land for a while.

The nails of mind

Hold the belief as prey.

They take the medicine of dogma

To soothe their aching wings.

They get the blood of truth

To transcend the noisy ground.

We make a mockery of eagles

With feathers of shackles.

We declare ourselves

As sons of freedom.

But we fail to look at ourselves.

What did we intend to do?

Why did we make boats?

We were determined to shed

All the shackles and

Make ourselves free as a wind.

But in the process we created

Our own shackles

In the form of boats and paddles.

In the river rationality

which we believed

would wash away all the barriers

We are left as

Islands now.

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Kamban the emperor of the realm of poetry wrote the greatest epic Ramayana in 10,569 verses of four lines (virutham) in Tamil. He had not translated Valmiki’s Ramayana. He rewrote the epic in Tamil in the style of his own. According to many critics he superseded Valmiki and gave the Tamil World a literary wonder. The greatness of Kambam is that he created each and every verse to speak on itself. He never lets a reader to skip a single verse . Kamban shaped each verse to perfection.For example the way in which he describes the river Sarayu in thirty odd verses is a fabulous literary treat. Any reader would be stunned by the depth of his knowledge in any subject and his graceful poesy . Kamban was the master craftsman and could challenge any poet around the globe. It induced V.V.S. Aiyar to write the book Kamba Ramayanam – a study. Kamban’s thirst to write the story of Rama competes with his poesy throughout his work .It would be interesting for a reader to find the one which wins. The greatness of Kamban’s poems is that they always need a special critic to present the richness of his work. Some people have reservations regarding the originality of the story. But Kamban’s work is a giant among all epics. Rewriting epics and stories is not new to any language. Shakespeare took many of his plots from Italian novels, English recitation stories and some of the great Roman plays. On the peak of poetry the question of originality of the story is just a passing cloud.

V.V.S. Aiyar was a well known freedom fighter. But many people are not aware of the fact that he was a great writer. Most of us would be surprised to read his works in English. He wanted to reveal the uniqueness of Kamban’s poetry to the whole literary world. Aiyar carefully translated the poems of Kamban for the sake of English readers to taste the sweetness of Tamil poetry. He translated over four thousand poems of Kamban and critically analysed his work. It was a tribute to the emperor of Tamil poetry. I cite one poem to show how closely he presents the words of Kamban in English. It has the same brilliance of the original work. Kaikeyi disclosed Rama his father’s wish. He should concede the throne to his younger brother Bharat and live in forest for fourteen years like a saint. No reader would forget the countenance of Rama described by Kamban. He showed no change in his face. It was as handsome as his spotless heart. Read it in the words of V.V.S.Iyar.

She said “The king commands that all the earth

By ocean girt thy brother Bharat shall rule;

And thou shalt wear the twisted knot and tread

The forest wide the saintly steps, and bathe

In sacred waters and in fourteen years

Return to fair Ayodhya and live in peace”

Can I in words describe how Rama looked

When fell these cruel words from Kaikai”s lips?

Who can his calmness fitly paint? Forwhat

It was so like before, the faultless lotus

Opening to the dawn,his un changed look

Out shone in tranquil grace!

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KAMBA RAMAYANAM - A STUDY

With translation in verse

Or poetic Prose

Of

Over Four thousand of the original poems

By

V.V.S. AIYAR

A DELHI TAMIL SANGAM PUBLICATION.

1950

First Edition.

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By V. V. S. AIYAR

Other Works

ENGLISH

THE THIRUKKURAL – Complete Translation

(Out of Print)

A. HISTORY OF INDIA

(Unpublished)

TAMIL

MANGAYARKARASIYIN KATHAL – Short Stories

LIFE OF CHANDRA GUPTA MOURYA

LIFE OF BOOKER WASHINGTON

NAPOLEON

(A book on Military Strategy – Confiscated by the late British Government of India)

THAN – NAMBIKKAI

(Translation of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s SELF- RELIANCE.

2^nd Edition by Sarvodya Pirasuralayam, Virapandi, Tiruppur (1950)

GURU GOBIND SINGH – A Biographical Sketch

2^nd Edition (1950) by Sarvodya Pirasuralayam, Karaikudi

KURUNTOGAI

Translation in English verse of the ancient Tamil Classic.

(Unpublished manuscript lost in 1942 disturbances)

“Coleridge hit the nail on the head”, says Aiyar in his book, “when he said, ‘the translation of poetry into poetry is difficult, because the translator must give a brilliancy to his language without that warmth of original conception from which such brilliancy would follow of its own accord’”. But Aiyar falsifies this dictum by his translation in verse of over a thousand of Kamban’s poems which are woven with great skill into the character studies in appropriate places. The rest of the work too is almost throughout a close rendering of the poems of Kamban’s Ramayana into poetic prose. Aiyar’s manuscripts show that over four thousand poems of Kamban, i.e. very nearly half of his monumental epic, have been translated in this work.

To those who know Kamban, the book is a matter for pride and pleasure, and to those who know Tamil but do not know Kamban, it is an incentive to go to the original. To those who know English only, it is an ambassador of Tamil Literature.

-Delhi Tamil Sangam Publication

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Pramill (Dharumu Siva Ramu] is an icon of modern Tamil poetry. Resonance is proud to present some of the poems penned by him in English.

Bird in the cage

Had feathers of

Rainbow.

I gazed at its beauty

And let its feathers

Paint my mind

Until I saw

Its eyes.

Suddenly it started

Losing its charm.

With no more colours

On the wings

The bird had

Only a dark film of imprisonment

Covering its feathers.

In front of the cage

A small bird

On the bark of a tree

Is a visitor to the zoo

From the near by forest.

It produced sounds

To acknowledge the breeze.

It fluttered its wings

And lifted its legs

Showering and

Dusting my eyes

With freedom

To open the

Cage of mind.

(Recorded on April 12^th 2009)

It will be interesting to analyse what the etimology of the words Aryan and Dravidian reveals.But it is quite ridiculous to search for Aryans and Dravidians in the twenty first century as far as India is concerned.In recent times some people in India have been trying to establish Aryans as aboriginals of India. Since they belong to the northern part of India, they imagine themselves as Aryans.By proving Aryans as original inhabitants of India they could declare themselves as the sons of soil. They try to tamper the history of India.By doing so they not only deceive others but also make a fool of themselves.Thousands of years ago there was a time when India was ruled by some Aryan and Dravidian Kings.But now there is no separate race called Aryan or Dravidian in India.According to Rahul Sankrityayan the two civilizations mingled to form a single society a very long time ago.

It is baseless to argue that there was no Aryan invasion in India.According to Max Muller the Aryans invaded India around 1500 B.C. and most of the historians have accepted that theory.3500 years have gone since the arrival of Aryans.It is meaning less to talk about Aryan and Dravidian divisions in India where people are already divided by language,caste and religion.Aryan and Dravidian were great in their own way.No race was superior or inferior to the other.When Aryans came to India the art of writing was new to them.The language they spoke had no alphabets.

It took them a long time to overcome the resistance shown by Dravidians when they settled in India.So their language mingled with that of Dravidians of Northern part of India to form new languages like Prakrit and Pali.Lord Buddha spoke Pali.Dravidians had mastered the art of writing a long time before the arrival of Aryans.Aryans brought with them the greatest discovery of human race,Veda.The essence of Vedas is the experiences of the spiritual mind and soul.

Vedas are not just a collection of spirutual stories or ethics and are not some body’s preachings either. They talk about the experience of soul right now and at any point of time in future.Dravidians or Tamilians of ancient south India definitely had a religion or two.There are strong evidences to testify that Lord Shiva was worshiped long before the arrival of Aryans.Aryans always had a great respect for Dravidian mythology.Upanishads were derived from Vedas.Many people assume that upanishads contain the experiences of Aryans battling against the Dravidians.It is very difficult for any body to understand the real meaning of upanishads.A reader should have some basic knowledge and real experience.Upanishads should not be read like any other spiritual book.It is difficult even for the scholars to interpret them correctly.They contain a lot of metaphors and images.For example cows are not representing the cattle but the rays of sun in vedic hymns.They talk about the man’s war against the evil forces in his mind.They don’t refer to the battle between Aryans and Dravidians.They try to explain the ways of over coming the trifles that hinder meditation and take away the tranquillity of human mind.They talk about the process happening inside a man.The great saint Thirumular says that the sacred Manasarovar lake is in our head and not in the out side world.

On seeing the art of writing of Dravidians,Aryans wanted to record the vedic hymns and they developed Sanskrit exclusively for that.Sanskrit means cultivated or reformed language.They used the alphabets of Tamil to write in their language.Epigraphical studies reveal the resemblances of early Tamil alphabets and the present Sanskrit alphabets.The uniqueness of Aryan mythology is that it reveals the purity of soul and energy levels attained through meditation.There was an amalgamation of Aryan and Dravidian cultures and dogmas.They complimented each other in many ways and Hinduism was born.Human beings have been living on earth for about fourtry two lakhs of years.There might have been so many migrations of different races of people around the globe.We cannot go back in time as we like to testify the aboriginals of different parts of the world.History cannot be written or rewritten according to our imagination or will.We should not let slip the present because of some vested interests and make the future laugh at us.

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Resonance e-magazine