Language, Culture and Philosophy

I guess this is a post on random thoughts, triggered by the Karnan Movie. Its been actually quite a gap before I saw a full feature film in Tamil, that too an old movie. A few first impressions...

(1) The dialogue and action may be alien to the current trends etc, but the language is fabulous
(2) The lyrics for the songs are just out of the world. I must admit that I have always loved Kannadasan's lyrics (Duh...)
(3) As usual, I had the usual conflicting emotions on seeing Sivaji on screen. Sometimes just brilliant and some times plain silly/funny. I guess its probably just me. As I can clearly see my dad getting annoyed whenever I speak about the silly/funny side of Sivaji's acting. Maybe we should just attribute it to the director. Didn't Bharathiraja get the best out of him by restricting what he did before camera?

Anyway.. coming to our main theme. Two things focused my attention. First one is on language.

The Scene.....

Karna replays to Kunti, the episode where he was playing dice with Bhanumathy (wife of Duryodhana). When Duryodhana enters (to the back of Karna), she tries to get up. Karna thinks that she is trying to escape from the game and grabs her. The pearls which are attached to her cloth rips open and scatters on the floor. Both Bhanumathy and Karna are stunned at this inappropriateness of Karna's action. Duryodhana is quiet/smiling, asks if he should "எடுக்கவோ  கோர்க்கவோ ". Basically he highlights that he trusts both his friend and wife.

When Sivaji as Karna refers to the cloth that Banumathy was wearing around her hip, he mentions மேகலை .

I thought back to இப்பால் கைவளையும்  மேகலையும் காணேன் . From the commentary I read, I knew this was a piece of cloth, more specifically one worn as a covering cloth. When this dialogue was playing, I understood that this is really a cloth worn around the hips and can get easily undone. When parakala nayaki says she lost her cloth, the commentary made more sense as the cloth can get easily exchanged with perumal when they are embracing/ கூடல் !!!

Till I read the commentary (and confirmed it with this movie), I knew Mekala as just a name for the ladies!! I never knew that this actually means cloth. Suffice to say that my knowledge mother tongue is very limited :-(

Moving to the கண்கள் எங்கே நெஞ்சமும் எங்கே, கண்ட போதே சென்றன அங்கே  song, this has straight contra-reference to the "Love at first sight" blog posting. It also has reference to the same pasuram நைவளம்  referred above for மேகலை .

Here both eyes and heart have left the heroine to go to the hero upon "sight". In Parakala Nayaki's case, the eyes feasted on the Lord  and இளையாழ்வார் in the previous திருநெடுந்தாண்டக pasuram (மைவண்ண ). She steps backwards thinking they are verily the gods and are too elevated for her to reach!!. However after seeing his simplicity / approachability (despite his infinite greatness), her heart first and then her eyes rushes to him  மனமும் கண்ணும் ஓடி .

You can also make a further argument that the heroine in this case was first impressed with Karna's valor in saving her from the chariot when horses run scot free. However the attraction here is only based on physical appearance and valor. In Parakala Nayaki's case, physical appearance and greatness makes here wonder if she can even approach such "gods". Attraction comes only when she realizes the simplicity/approachability of bhagavan and more importantly the importance Bhagavan attaches to reach out to her.

I guess in the human endeavors, eye takes precedence and the results are questionable!!