An Aural Voyage To An Intriguing Era,,, ---------------------------------------------------- 1.Era is tenth century AD,,, The place is somewhat near to the south most tip of current TamilNadu,,, a short and strong person, a hard-core Vaishnavite (devotee of Vishnu), a quick tempered and religiously fanatic, named Aazhvaarkkadiyaan approaches Anirudha Brahmaraayar, the chief-minister of Paranthaka Sundara Chozhan –and expresses his concern about his mentor – Anirudha Brahmaraayar himself – for deviating from the supreme principles of Vaishnavism and treading towards bit of “barbaric” Shivism – a religion officially endorsed by and widely followed in Chozha empire,,, A wise man, the chief minister advised Aazhvaarkkadiyaan who is one of his trusted confidantes and spies about the equality of all Gods and the importance of religious tolerance,,, When that long discourse digressed into other royal subjects, he mentions about the appreciable qualities of – Arulmozhivarman – an younger prince and a second heir-apparent and chief-commander to the southern army, who is going to be the King of Kings (Rajarajan) two decades later – who has been, at that point of time, camping in Lanka island (Now Srilanka), which (this expedition) raises the eyebrows and concerns of many of his own citizens, and quite stirred some kind of serious political controversy,,, There is officially no war,,, And it is because the enemy – Mahinda IV had fled from northern part of Srilanka to southeast hilly region – Rohana and his army either flees or scatters away,,, Arulmozhivarman, a man of great principles – who is hesitant to return from Eelam without fully and firmly establishing the kingdom of Chozha there - wants the food items for his vast army supplied from Chozha kingdom itself rather than plundering the enemy’s country for feeding his army,,, More than that, as his army is not fighting any enemy, he directs them to help in reconstructing the temples (Buddha vihars) of Buddhists in war-torn Srilanka,,, 2. Can we believe it???,,, Before we answer to that question, let us quickly comeback to current scenario in Srilanka,,, Tamilians who have been there for more than ten centuries and contributed their lives and works for the welfare of that country had been slowly and steadily degraded to be the second-class citizens politically as well as economically by the wily racist politicians,,, As there was no government to protect them and their rights to live, they had to take up the arms,,, Both civil and military war ravaged the nation,,, At the end of the war, people who fought for preserving their rights and their identity lost badly,,, The victorious ones, in this so called civilized era where internet is pervasive but humanity is shrinking, abused the surrendered ones, raped them, tortured them, ill-treated them and killed them and then ill-treated even their life-less bodies, with the cameras of mechanical mobile phones of equally mechanical military morons capturing those wretched moments,,, And then, they have been trying to systematically decimate the cultural identity of those losers by destroying their temples, buildings, etc,,, 3.Now let us go back to that tenth century and could we believe that a triumphant person like Arulmozhivarman behaved the way he was supposed to behave as mentioned by Anirudha Brahmaraayar,,???,,, I don’t know about you but I strongly believe that he would have definitely behaved that way,,, does it mean that I trust this history (or any history) as it is ???,,, No, absolutely no,,, And in fact, the first paragraph is not lifted from the hard-researched notes of any historian who deals with Chozha kingdom,,, But it is taken from the novel of Kalki – one of the great Novelists of Tamil - Ponniyin Selvan (The Son of Cauvery),,, How come one who does not believe in the veracity of history (histories) could believe in the fictionalized novel of an imaginative writer???,,, 4.In order to answer to that we need to delve little bit on the subject – History,,, What is exactly meant by History and what is the exact purpose of history???,,, For whom It is being written,,, By whom it is being written,,, Can they be written impartially??? Can they be impartial in their view of incidents and events???,,, They are difficult questions to answer,,, Subject would instantly turn to philosophy as we have to deal with episteme aspects of this subject,,,, And apart from this, I don’t believe in the “historicism” of Hegel or “dialecticism” of Marx (But I have great respect to both of them) as they provide some undue, purposeful meaning to the “random” historical events,,, 5.Mostly history “means” somewhat sequencing the chronological events of polity of countries and lives of extra-ordinary people,,, They would occupy the centre stage and all other “unimportant” aspects – the ordinary people and their lives - would be shoved back into background,,, Then history in general would have been written by the people sponsored by the very person who would be placed as the centre-piece of that history,,, For example, rock inscriptions, inscribed copper plates etc of any kingdom would have been endowed upon by the rulers and their “descendants” of them,,, Then history in general is being written for the purpose of maintaining the posterity of a person and so it should carefully “pick and choose” what should be propagated to posterity,,, 6.With such devious limitations, History can never be fully trusted upon to get to know the exact picture of a person, events and scenario mentioned in it,,, And we should not forget for every history, there should be an opposite and equal “re history”,,, But such alternative histories would not be allowed to reach the mainstream due to complex, incomprehensible political as well as social reasons,,, Simple example is that Columbus may have been celebrated to be one of the greatest adventurers of this world,,, He can be considered to be the discoverer of “new land of great hope”,,, In History that eulogizing Columbus, one would never find the cruelties meted out to the native people of that “new land of hope”,,, In such histories, if someone destroys something, that something is mostly needed to be destroyed,,, To know the obscure and suppressed facts, one has to read the alternative histories, written by intellectuals such as Howard Zinn,,, But such alternative histories would never be the subjects of reputed universities and knowledge centres,,, For thousands of readers of general history of USA, there will be less than one reader of people history of USA,,, And that is the hard realistic truth,,, 7. While History and the intention of writing, propagating and prophesising it seem to have its own under-current motives and political overtones, believing in whatever we read as part of history would severely delude us in understanding the truth,,, When we can’t believe history which is at least based on some kind of evidences such as unearthed archaeological artefacts, rock/granite inscriptions, copper plates, etc, how can we believe in the fictional work of an imaginative writer???,,, 8.I believe in Arulmozhivarman because of following reasons,,, Medieval Chozha kingdom reached an unprecedented heights at the regime of Arulmozhivarman and it reached its zenith not only in the extend of area but also in arts and fine arts,,, Murals, sculpting, pure rock/granite based temples (in contrast to Pallavas’ sculpted temples – in that sense, Chozhas could bring in God wherever they wanted rather than where big rocks available ), architecture, dance forms and Tamil literature ( that includes the translations and adapted works from Sanskrit, Prakiratham and Bali) etc reached its apogee during that period,,, And very first time in Tamil history, there was a regime that needed to deal with diverse cultured, multi-religious, economically prosperous trading communities,,,, And very first time in Tamil history, the politics of Temple (so religion) was intrinsically linked with art form (Aesthetics),,, And very first time in Tamil history, bottom-up consensus based administration, though may not necessarily be a fully democratic one, extensively tried out,,, And very first time in Tamil history, there was a kingdom with a sophisticated naval fleet and dedicated army force,,, And very first time in Tamil history, there was a kingdom which was much tolerant to various religious views of people,,, For me, this is not a mean or fluke achievement,,, and this should have been possible only by a towering personality with astute mind, magnanimous heart, valiant nature and extremely far-sighted vision,,,, And for me, such towering personality could be entirely different and distinct than the “run of the mill” kings,,, If Rajarajan could achieve all those extra-ordinary things, why could not he show the compassion as mentioned by Aniruddha Brahmaraayar ??,,, Before I proceed further, I have to counter a primary question – where are the evidences for all those “achievements” of Chozha kingdom ??,,, While history continue to be the source of questionable nature, most of the historians ranging from Romila Thapar to AL Basham agree to the supremacy and prosperity of Chozha kingdom based on various historical evidences,,, And without such characteristics, a kingdom could not have survived for four hundred years of sustainability from 950 AD to 1350 AD,,, 9. Anyway, the purpose of this posting is not to bemoan about the “diabolical” nature of the history or politics or anything else,,, This posting is for something entirely different,,, Many of us would know that reading a book is an awesome experience,,, In my case, that helps me to escape from idiotic, chaotic, extremely boring and mundane reality and to have the feeling of vicariousness,,, But it – reading books - requires a calm place, nice weather and some easily digestible snack items to take etc,,, And you can’t do this in the office or on the driving-down to office until you have a cosy shock-absorbing BMW with an expert chauffeur on Indian roads,,, As establishing such better infrastructure facilities would take a few centuries in our countries as we unfortunately are not having the person like Rajarajan as our ruler, we can’t wait that far,,, But, we can go ahead listening to audio books when we travel to our office spaces in our inferior cars on the roads with expected potholes and unexpected craters, speeding down at 100 kms per four hours,,, 10.I had tried books such as “Vandhaargal, Venraargal” by Madhan and “KiMu, KiPi” by Madhan, from Kizhakku pathippagam, earlier,,, They were indeed good,,, Recently I had to go to Chennai for bringing my wife and daughter back to Bangalore after her vacation stay at that not so hilly not so coolly resort place,,, six or more hours of tiring self-driving had forced me to have something with me,,, I have lost all interest in listening to movie songs,,, They have become thoroughly unexciting to me,,, So, I downloaded something like “Arthamulla Indhu matham” [Profound Hinduism] by Kannadasan (these are the lectures given by Kannadasan himself and different from the book written by him) and Kalki-yin “Ponniyin Selvan” – The son of Cauvery” – ten chapters available for free download in some site - narrated by someone known as “From Bay Area, Sri” and few dramas of S.V.Sekar (or S.Vee.Shekher or S.Ve.Shekhar???),,, 11.USB that stored those contents was played on in random mode,,, Few chapters of Ponniyin Selvans were played first, then few lectures of Kannadasan and Dramas by S.V.Sekar in between,,, It was a nice experience indeed,,, Dramas were hilarious,,, Lectures were meaningful ones,,, And Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki had both of those and other hell a lot of elements within it,,, And unique tone of the person who narrated down it has added some comical hue to the listening,,,, Kuthoogalam was pronounced as Kuthugoolam,,, And he narrated the story in his own pace and rhythm which sometimes were not totally in sync with the pace and rhythm of the novel, and that added kind of comical touch to the whole story,,, 12.But I had real fun hearing those chapters,,, And indeed my thanks to them as I had been searching seriously in internet after coming back to Bangalore to find out if this book is available in “audio mode” entirely,,, And I had found out that “Ponniyin Selvan” an audio book – produced by C.K.Venkatraman and directed by Bombay Kannan – voiced over by more than sixty drama artists – has been released almost an year ago,,, And youtube links were available for listening to the sample chapter and I got impressed with the quality of the effort,,, And I ordered for that “book” in nammabooks and it got delivered by next day afternoon, if you believe it or not,,, 13. Though it is an audio book, it is not completely narrated down by a single person,,, It is more like a radio drama,,, characters are voiced down with different persons,,, And it is filled with suitable background music, background noises and voices, songs, well-recited poems mentioned in the novel, etc,, And I would definitely say that it is a tremendous and dedicated effort by Bombay Kannan and co,,, I guarantee you that it would provide you with 78 odd hours of aural entertainment, if you order it and buy it through that website,,, It costs 600 rupees and your support would help such dedicated people to try other treasures of Tamil in the same format which is lot more comfortable one than reading,,, 14.Now, let us getting back to the nostalgia as usual with respect to Ponniyin Selvan,,, No one can qualify to be some kind of reader of Tamil books without reading the three classicals of Kalki – Parthiban Kanavu (The dream of Parthiban), Sivakamiyin Sabatham (The Vow of Sivakami) and Ponniyin Selvan (The Son of Cauvery),,, Everyone would urge and encourage the young readers to read these novels though I now seriously think if the underlying plot is really suitable for young minds,,, As no exception, I too have read them but I really don’t know now whether I had really grasped the plot very much when I did so,,,, But the narrative – fluent sentences with mild humour – would force one to read them fully whether one understand the nuances of the long winding story, in completely absorbed manner,,, All of those three novels (they are more of long episodic writings rather than strictly defined to be the novels) are interesting ones and Ponniyin Selvan is no doubt a crest in the crown of Kalki,,, Very few novels like that would imprint the characters and their characteristics so deeply into the minds of the readers,,,, However young and immature you are, you can’t avoid loving either Kundavai or Poonguzhali,,, you can’t avoid loving either Vandhiyath thevan or Arulmozhivarman,,, you can’t avoid being enchanted by the mysterious beauty of Nandhini,,, you can’t avoid being enchanted by the mystic handsomeness of Arulmozhivarman,,,, you can’t avoid bemused by the loud-mouthedness of Aazhvaarkkadiyaan,,,, you can’t avoid intrigued by the grey nature of Pazhuvettaraiyars,,, you can’t avoid swayed down by the valiant nature of the dynasty of Chozhas,,, 15.The grand success and the undiminished popularity of this novel, written during the mid of 20th centuries as episodes for around five years in a weekly magazine, lie in its interesting narrativeness of opening chapters and the author’s imaginativeness of twisting the history’s confounding nature,,,, Chozhas have indispensable space in the history and landscape of Tamil identity,,, Early Chozhas had their enormous presence felt in many Sangam era literature works of Tamils,,, Even after the decline of those early Chozhas, many small kingdoms or tributaries to many other kingdoms were formed with the invoking of the “valiant” names of Chozhas but they could not muster the force to be reckoned with till the end of 10th century AD,,, A small-time king – Vijayaalayan claimed to be the descendent of great early chozhas – could accidentally capture the city of Tanjore – traditionally linked to Chozhas - from the clutches of a feudatory of Pallava Empire which had recently started to decline – Muttharaiyars,,, Having captured a small land for himself, he started seeding for an empire which is going to be in hundred years later,,,, His valiant son – Adithyan expanded the victory of his father and established around hundred Shiva temples on the banks of the river- Cauvery,,, However, the greatness of the dynasty started from the regime of his son – Paranthaka Chozhan who established his victories over Pandyas and Sinhalaas,,, But after Paranthaka Chozhan, there were 30 odd years of confusion which saw a quick regime changes across the hands of various princes, for which, no vivid reasons could be established by any historian so firmly,,, The lacunae in the regime and the reasons behind them fuelled so many theories and many of them were leading to one or many controversial theories,,, Family infightings, exterior incursions, and so many other reasons are being put forward,,, No two historians agree to the same point to what have happened in this era,,, And ambivalent archaeological evidences are also adding up to such confusion,,, 16. What really had happened in the Chozha kingdom from the death of Paranthaka Chozha and the coronation of Arulmozhivarman as Rajaraja Chozha ???,,, Paranthaka Chozhan had three sons,,, First prince Rajaadithyan died childless in a battle ground,,, Next prince, Kandaraadithyan ascends the thorn and rules it with the help of his younger brother Arinjayan,,, When Kandaraadithyan dies , his son – Maduranthaka Chozhan – was a kid unfit to be coroneted as a King and this leads the Arinjayan to become the King,,, Arinjayan too dies shortly after that and now the lineage to Chozha kingdom gets slipped,,, Instead of Maduranthaka Chozhan – son of Kandaraadithyan, Paranthaka Sundara Chozhan – son of Arinjaya took over the kingdome,,, Now, there are two aspiring lineages for the future power,,, One is leading by Maduranthakan and the other one is leading by Adithya Karikalan and nowhere in the picture is Arulmozhivarman – younger son of incumbent king – Sundara Chozhan,,, How could he become a king and that too mighty king of mighty kingdom???,,, Interesting,, Isn’t it??,,, 17.There are many scholarly works including the great research book of K.A.Neelakanda Sastry on Chozhas that provide details about that kingdom,,, But the imagination of Kalki as a tremendously successful writer adds the magical aroma to the “possibly not so interesting historical incidents” and convert those mysterious period into the basis for an incredibly interesting plot,,, Kalki with his dextrous writing skill converts the incidents to be the chapters of an amazing espionage story with great character introductions, suspense sustaining narration, carefully chosen words that reflect eeriness by skilfully fictionalizing the historical backgrounds,,, And right amount of political intricacies, palatial intrigues, musical power chair games, wavering of minds of chieftains and other loyal workers, treason, chivalry, valience, perspicacity, astuteness, alertness, humour of characters and incidents make this story highly memorable,,, 18. In first volume (remember this is five volume novel), an young valiant messanger – Vandhiyaththevan who belong to a dynasty of Vaanas who were once rules and then subjugated by Chozha kings– riding down from thondai mandalam (north Tamilnadu) to southern part – carrying “some secret” messages from the prince of Chozha kingdom – Adithya Karikaalan who was the chief commander of northern army to his father and the King – Paranthaka Sundara Chozhan who is in Tanjore under the control of his loyal chieftains – Pazhuvettaraiyar brothers - and to his sister Kundavai who is in Pazhayaaru,,, On his way, he meets an interesting bellicose character Aazhvaarkkadiyaan,,, his adapted mysterious sister who had been forcefully married by the elder Pazhuvettraiyar,,, Through some incidents, he could understand the real power wielded by the Pazhuvettraiyars in Chozha kingdom,,, When he happens to stay at his friend’s palace (Kandamaran), he happens to see and hear that there was a secret meeting attended by many powerful persons of Chozha kingdom with some ulterior motive,,, He could meet the enchanting beauty Nandini by invoking his “liaison” with Aazhvaarkkadiyaan and got seducted by her,,, He could reach the Tanjore palace where Sundara Chozha is in kind of virtual prison under the control of Pazhuvettraiyars and passdown the message to the king,,, He could meet the princess Kundavai and get mesmerised by her charm,,, Kundavai, a brilliant sister of Adithya Karikaalan and Arulmozhivarman, having understood the seriousness of the current situation, commands Vandiyaththevan to pass a message to Arulmozhivarman about the current situation in Chozha kingdom who is in the middle of the jungle of Lanka island,,, With these thoroughly exciting incidents, the volume I of Ponniyin Selvan has been constructed by Kalki and incite us to go through remaining all four volumes,,, 19. Of course, there are things that would irritate you like anything,,, often repeated references to the “greatness” of Kundavai Pirattiyaar (I really do not understand what had been done by her to be appreciated by him and her country’s citizen so much!!!),,, the dialogues between Kundavai (sister of Arulmozhivarman) and Vanathi (future queen of Arulmozhivarman) that would troll and make you sleep,,, And the “lucky” hero – Vanavarayan Vandiyaththevan who happens to be in right places at right times just like Forrest Gump – would often remind you about the “ pure fictionalization” of the history,,, But, you can’t skip it listening (or reading),,, you may think that it could be written in much better manner and things could have been like this and that etc,,, And that itself shows that you have been deeply hooked to this fiction – fictionalized non-fiction 0r non-fictionalized fiction,,, 20.Try travelling listening to that audio book imagining yourself as Vandiyaththevan [or Aazhvaarkkadiyaan Nambi or Periya Palzhuvettarayar or Siriya Pazhuvettarayar or Sundara Chozhar or Kundavai or Nandhini or Poonguzhali depends on your gender and proclivity to be whom ] riding down in an agile horse on the path that meander to the royal cities abundant with granite palaces, castles, forts, etc, surrounded by forests full of greeneries and wild animals, parks to relax with swarming swans, peacocks and peahens, and interesting and intriguing spies like Aazhvaarkkadiyan to meet with on the passage,,, And I am damn sure that you would remember the journey which would have only been interrupted by anachronistic as well as incongruous gas stations, tasteless hotels, toll booths, clover shaped bridges, etc,, And you would damn sure have the wishful thinking of going away from all dammit gadgets that require to be charged, recharged and again rererecharged and have the communications – mails written in spiral palm leaves and parchments – transmitted through physical messengers, have the travel by horses and palanquins, have the romantic rendezvous with delicate royal princess at eco-friendly parks rather than with rough and tough girls wearing jeans and T Shirts at Coffee and Pizza shops,,, Won’t it be nice??? Epilogue: I have to agree that my thinking/reading process has been much influenced by Sundara Ramasamy, in the middle between my adolescent reading state and current reading state,,, He did not have great opinion about popular writers like Kalki and Sujatha,,, According to him, they were cheap commercial writers who catered to the philistine needs of basic and rudimentary readers, with no profundity in their imaginative works,,, I believe in what Sundara Ramasamy said about them,, However, they can’t be just brushed aside just for those reasons,,, They were the ones who initiated many into reading tamil novels and writings first of all,,, More over that, in six hours tiresome car journey, Sundara Ramasamy should not expect an ordinary guy like me to listen and ponder to the “profound” thinking of “JJ Sila kurippugal” (one of awesome books written by him),,, However, I wish to do so, very much,,,
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 11:26:48 +0000
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