Classical Tamil!

“As long as we have the language, we have the culture. As long as we have the culture, we can hold on to the land.”

Quite a few have said that I have good 'intuitive' skills but I think I have a good 'inbuilt warning' system. I think I am able to sense the looming or going-to-loom dangers much earlier. Sometimes it could lead to 'over thinking' or 'over presuming' things, but till date my skepticism has been good, though my sisters think that I am 'too -ve' :( I remember the test series in Australia when the controversy was raised, courtesy Harsha Bhogle, Sunil Gavaskar and co over Ganguly dismissal
I was watching it live and even though I may 'support' Ganguly many times, in that case, I knew that something was wrong, though it was Ganguly who was dismissed. The issue was later revealed that Kumble and Ponting had an agreement that fielder's word will be taken and so all this 'furore' was nothing but non-sensical.

When World Classical Tamil Conference was announced, I was neither surprised at the need to praise the 'classical Tamil' nor irritated as some of these 'pro-Tamil/LTTE' idiots were. I was definitely surprised at why Coimbatore was chosen as the venue. I asked a relative from Coimbatore and he said that only Coimbatore has the infrastructure for holding such a conference. Like many other people from Coimbatore, he probably has an axe to grind against Chennai, but my point was why not Trichy or even better, Madurai. After all, Madurai is the 'seat' of Tamil. I was later told or even recently by my chithi's son from Coimbatore - DMK is basically very weak in Coimbatore region and that is why MK announced it here. Development works are going on in war footing - so he said. That settled it for me. No surprises, Coimbatore all decked up for grand Tamil meet. Sure, MK is easily the most educated Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and has special affection for Tamil but he is not the most successful politician in India (atleast in elections) for nothing. He has brilliantly mixed his love for the language along with a political motive. I really cant blame him at all.

Though Tamil is my second language (I dont think I would have even thought of choosing Hindi or Sanskrit as second language just because it enables me to get higher marks), the fact is that atleast during my school days, English was the medium of instruction and with my father having his own small library of ONLY English books, I was more conversant with 'English' world. I read so much about Perry Mason, Hardy Boys, Three Investigators, Alistair Maclean etc and dont even remember reading one single Tamil non-text book. Infact, I didnt even read Tamil papers unless I went to a barber shop! I did not think what others thought about Tamil, maybe they think English is better than Tamil (going by films and 'experts'). Some of my relatives were living outside TN and surely their children didnt know to read/write Tamil. Like any other brahmin kid, I too 'learnt' Hindi but this concept of 'classroom teaching' didnt suit me and I passed 'Rashtrabasha' in first class on my own and STOPPED going further. At the same time, I dont see 'learning in mother tongue' as a great thing at all.

I have been seeing recently that students from rural Tamil Nadu are doing much better in all exams and to quote from the link above,

Tamil Nadu accounted for 16.2% of successful candidates in recently concluded civil service examinations.

Tamils have made themselves amenable to most changes and Tamil itself is one of the earliest languages to be made computer ready. For a language which is so old, I felt that it is incredibly simple and easy to learn for anyone, because probably it is highly intuitive and common-sensical. Just when I get irritated with languages like French or Hindi which are NOT gender neutral, Tamil has so many easy-to-use, SIMPLE and intuitively great features. I have to say that at the same time, I am ashamed that my skills in Tamil are not higher, atleast on par with English.

Coming to the conference, the theme song penned by MK himself got a shot in the arm with music from AR Rahman and a picturization by Gautham Menon. I think MK must have chosen them on his own and it also suits the mood for the conference because it enables to highlight that Tamil has indeed kept up with time. More often, language 'guardians' are often branded as 'conservatives', 'old-timers' and 'traditionalists' etc. So a mix of genres in the music and the picturization for the theme song was nothing but APT.