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Though not a literary person, R Raghunathan was busy doing the translation of Bhagavad Gita, his hobby, for his blog. His son-in-law saw him doing it. Being a lover of Tirukkural, he nudged his father-in-law to write a commentary/translation on his
blog.
"I felt I was not up to it as I am not a scholar in Tamil. But then he brought and gave me a couple of books in Tirukkural. I studied them and found the advices great. But, to be frank, I found that the codification done in the various books in 10 couplets in each of the 133 chapters was not to my satisfaction. I found the couplets on any given subject lay scattered over in different chapters. Therefore, I felt a literary urge to recodify the Tirukkural according to my understanding. I, therefore, re-codified the same in the sequence of life's happenings," says
Raghunathan.
He argues that in life, education comes first. That gets a boost or becomes a hindrance through the circle of friends we associate with. Therefore, he put the circle of friends next.
Then comes the need to know the virtues we need to adopt and the vices we need to avoid. After which comes the need for acquiring communication and family management skills. Then our worldly desires and needs take over and there comes the importance of our attitude towards money and work.
Once in work, we have to pick up managerial skills and provide good governance for the benefit of those we are serving. Then comes the needs of society where the need for environmental consciousness comes up. And all these culminate in ourselves becoming spiritual.
"I believe that Saint Tiruvalluvar, who wrote his great advices for the common man, would have made them in the above order. You know, history tells us that these couplets were lost for some time and another great soul made laudable efforts to collect them as available and codifed them in the order in which we see them today. Maybe the compiler's view was different and he made his codification in the manner he felt appropriate," says
Raghunathan.
He felt the present codification does not take the full message of Tiruvalluvar to the common man in the manner he may have intended. Hence, he took the liberty of re-codifying the great work of
Tiruvalluvar.
But he is humble enough to say that "Perhaps, there could be some people who could take offence to my re-codification. I place my sincere apologies before them."
Another vital point is that he has omitted the entire 'Kaamathu Paal' "for I felt that Kaamathu Paal was altogether on a different wavelength from the theme I had chosen for myself."
"I reiterate here the fact that I am not at all a scholar and I am an ordinary citizen with only literary love," he explains away.
He invites readers to go through his blogspot titled thirukkuralmadeeasy.blogspot.com, "taking a totally new and useful approach to
Tirukkural".
R Chitra
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