Every town a home town, every man a kinsman. Good and evil do not come from others. Pain and relief of pain come of themselves. Dying is nothing new. We do not rejoice that life is sweet nor in anger call it bitter. Our lives, however dear, follow their own course, rafts drifting in the rapids of a great river sounding and dashing over the rocks after a downpour from skies slashed by lightnings— we know this from the vision of men who see. So, we are not amazed by the great, and we do not scorn the little. The poem, from the Purananuru, another one of the classical Sangam anthologies, is best known for its first line, which has achieved the status of a proverb in modern Tamil. But it is also the statement of a worldview, and a collective aspiration, a universalism and forbearance that the Allan Blooms of this world think the invention of European Stoicism. And in Ramanujan’s sly rendering, we owe these insights about life and living to “the vision / of men who see” —not the sage, but the see-er, not theology, but poetry. - See more at: caravanmagazine.in/reportage/reading-small-print?page=0,6#sthash.0fgZ4Vrd.dpuf
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 18:34:38 +0000
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