Tamil Nadu

Karunanidhi treads the poetic path

M. Karunanidhi

CHENNAI: In a bid to get the younger generation interested in ancient Tamil literature, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has started appearing on television to explain the relevance of poetry of a bygone era and the context of the writings.

“I consider this [recording the explanations of Sangam-era poetry] a great achievement,” Mr. Karunanidhi told The Hindu when asked about his Sunday morning appearances on Kalaignar TV. For now, he intended to appear in around 100 episodes, which would be telecast at 10 a.m. every Sunday.

Since his youth, Mr. Karunanidhi has been penning poetry and has also devoted a lot of time for Dravidian literature and literature from the Sangam era. He has written extensive explanatory books on ancient texts, including the Tirukkural and Tholkappium.

“I have tried to make all these literature accessible through my explanations…Writing the explanations and contextualising the verse has not been easy,” he said, adding it was imperative that the younger generation learnt about the rich literary heritage.

Writing explanations alone will not suffice, he said. These had to be given in a form that people would be able to assimilate. This was the reason for his appearances on television.

The slot has been kept short. Mr. Karunanidhi reads out part of a poem and then explains its meaning. A typical four line poem has explanation running into as many as three pages. Mr. Karunanidhi said he did take some liberties in his explanations so that the poem was better understood. He felt there was no point in merely speaking from platforms of the rich heritage when many could not understand the texts in their original form. Hence the effort. Asked if Mr. Karunanidhi would stop with explaining to the people the ‘puranaanooru,’ his daughter and poet Kanimozhi said she doubted if he would. “I am sure he would also want to do the ‘aganaanooru’. I do not think he would be satisfied with that too.”

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu