Sangam verses that still hold audience in thrall

What could be my mother be

to yours? What kin is my father

to yours anyway? And how

did you and I meet ever?

But in love our hearts are as red

earth and pouring rain:

mingled beyond parting

The above lines from the poem ‘Red earth and pouring rain’, a translation by A K Ramanujan from the famous Sangam work ‘Kuruntogai’ that was published in his ‘Poems of Love and War’ (1985), have outlived the times they were composed in, yet remain relevant. Originally written in Tamil by

Sangam poet Sempulapeyanirinaar

, the poem ‘Yaayum Yaayum Yaarahiyaro’, depicts the love between a couple as a bond that transcends blood ties. The lover in the poem tells his beloved that they did not know each other earlier; they did not know how their parents met; but here they are in love as their hearts have mingled as red earth and pouring rain that cannot be separated again.

These lines from the Tamil poem were performed by Carnatic vocalist

Sikkil Gurucharan

in the ragam thanam pallavi section at Hamsadhawani, an event recently-held in Chennai. The event was prompted by Saroja Sundarararajan, in memory of her late husband T V Sundararajan, a civil servant. With Anil Srinivasan on the piano, as Gurucharan sang with great aplomb and gusto, tuning the poem to Brindavan Saranga raga, I realised the beauty it still held.

Celebrated indologist David Shulman, in his foreword to Ramanujan’s book ‘Poems of Love and War’, from which the translation was selected, wrote, "That is the miracle of these ancient poems: they are as fresh today as they were some 18 centuries ago, when, it seems they were composed . . . Grounded as they are in the specific natural world of south India, with its flora and fauna, its liquid light , the redness of soil, they deftly, unerringly pierce the heart of anyone — really anyone —who hears or reads them."

Even the British couldn’t escape the spell of the poem’s poignant lines. In 2001, it was selected by a team of enthusiasts comprising British poets Gerard Benson and Cicely Herbert and Judith Chernaik, a leading writer of Poetry Society, London among six poems from Asia to be exhibited among world’s best poems in London’s underground tube trains. Posters of the poem, both in Tamil and English, were emblazoned on London’s tube trains. The poem was accompanied by ‘kolam’ patterns, culled from a book of kolam designs by Rukmini Krishnamurthy, wife of Tamil writer and poet Kalki. The manuscript of the poem was provided by the British museum. The response to this kind of depiction of poems with translations was so huge that passengers requested authorities to continue the exhibition with similar poems.

(The author is a culture enthusiast)