Mirror on the Wall

                                                                During our primary, all we know of Silappathikaram as one of the five great epics in Tamil. During the high school, a talented Tamil teacher would engage us for a span of half an hour and narrate the epic. The epic would be so concise. In the future stages, the teacher would read the poem from the informative Tamil text. The poem, “Thingal Potruthum...” is one of the best eco critical poems in Tamil literature. It is eco critical because, Ilango Adigal considers the sun, moon, the rain, the mountain and the place as a single entity. He is so philosophical that he shows these things as autonomous bodies and then gives priority to men. When our ages rose, our curriculum also grew. The teacher would always tell us that she would want the whole day as the breath...

As usual, an introduction to something fresh is done by our teacher. One such idealistic influence on students like us was a freshener, the teacher introduced. We have a freshener in Tamil literature. He is called Puthumaipithan. The first respect I could give him is to remove the red line beneath his name by adding his name in the dictionary. This writer is a reformist. The writer became a very popular figure. In the life, he has led; he was blessed with the option to take his pen and paper to reform the country. Puthumaipithan was the writer of the story, “Kadavulum Kanthaswami Pillaiyum” (God and Kandaswami Pillai). The story is about an indigenous doctor, Kanthaswami Pillai. Doctor Pillaivaal also runs a magazine based on health care. He is like a normal businessman. Note this. He is a just a business man and not a business doctor. Puthumaipithan is very careful not to make him a mercenary completely and not too generous as well. His ‘generous’ nature is found when he asks Kad...