In thisВ context however, the poet must mean to say life-seed: Ethu - Thiyagi. The word maveeran could be translated as hero. There are no volcanoes in my soil, the poet cries, but you, the aggressor have made my soil neruppu, a fire-producing volcano! There are no deserts in my soil, yet you have made my soil barren land. The horror of the situation is conveyed in the title: Neruppu = fire. Kasi Ananthan stands tall as an acute and acerbic social critic. The military aggression and the torture of innocents by the State are mocked as the adversary par excellence. Such distant reports escape its profound conviction! The poet makes the comparison that the oxen in Eelam seem to be much safer than the Tamils. Sadly, the mainstream media functions within its limitations of moral paralysis. Eelam Tamils are tortured in numerous hidden Guantanamo Bays in Sri Lanka. When we place the text of suffering in its context of Munn, we understand the seriousness of the situation the Tamils are facing in their indigenous soil. But the poet laments the disappearance of many manithargal=humans. The poet writes that the oxen in our soil are branded on their back in order that they may not disappear.

I could mention that one hears the longing for his soil (as an exilic poet) in the writings of Kasi Ananthan. Speaking of Enaveri, meaning being drunk with racism, the poet draws from his own Munn, meaning, own soil вЂ“ his beloved birthplace. Let me now try and unpack that in English. Incidentally, Kasi Annan compares these literary sprinklings to the prose-writings of Walt Whitman. By coining a Tamil terminology he calls it вЂњ Sinthal IlakkiyamвЂќ, which he translates in English as вЂProse SprinkleвЂ™. The poet places these writings in the genre of prose.

I would like to begin by reading from a book entitled Kasi Ananthan Narukkugal. Some scholars have opined that Tamil has been a living tongue for over 25,000 years, with a 5000-year complex grammar treatise and pre-eminently rich in its prodigious literary content. As we all know, with the vision of Yehuda, Hebrew was quite literally resurrected! On the contrary Thamil is a living classical language in both oral and written form. I should say rather immodestly that the Tamils speak the most ancient language вЂњantiquatedвЂќ in the sense of not being obsolete or dead or even in need of resuscitation unlike the Hebrew language. Rubin being a Hebrew scholar and a Tamil speaker was saying in his opening remarks that he speaks two of the most antiquated languages. And then I suggest we make sense of it by hearing it in prose form in English.

Put it differently, you get two for the price of one: First, you would hear one of the ancient languages spoken in poetic form, which by the way is the language of bakthi ? of sweet spirituality melodic in content and useful for meditation. The express purpose, however, is to get the message across. Let it be said, that you find in myself a lowly narrative voice. Having done that, I will try my best to interpret it, not in poetic form perhaps in fractured prose. What IвЂ™m planning to do is to read a selection of his poetic-prose in Tamil first, in order that you would hear the rhythm and blues, as it were of the language. It will be pretentious should I claim to be the вЂњauthorizedвЂќ translator of Kasi AnanthanвЂ™s poetry. A few weeks ago, during a telephone conversation with the poet, I noticed, even after many years, one could hear in his voice, that perfect balance of gentleness and the enflaming passion that is locked within this man for the liberation of his dispossessed people. Kasi Ananthan is the poet laureate of Tamil Eelam. It must be noted here that his emotive poetry is yoked in perfect rhythm, jiving with the golden nuggets of deep Dravidian spirituality. We shall swiftly move into the most important thing вЂ“ the poet and the message. This outline covered the poetвЂ™s life of struggle from the early 1960s until 1978. He included poems from the embryonic non-violent political struggles against genocidal violence and the resulting prolonged incarcerations and torture of Kasi вЂњ AnnanвЂќ by the Sri Lanka state.

Speech by Chandi Sinnathurai, February 20-22, 2006ДЄnnotated and abridged by Yakov Rubin (YR), Greenwich Village, NYC Kasi Ananthan's Poesy and the Eelam Liberation Struggle Ilankai Tamil Sangam Association of Tamils of Sri Lanka in the USA

Tamil eelam kavithaigal