Discussion on Language Proficiency and Poetry

May I ask you something, sir? How many languages do you know?

To put it in English,

I have the dubious distinction of being an illiterate

in four languages.

Illiterate in four languages. That feels so super.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you, "Get out of me."

I can't read or write Telugu.

I can't read or write Hindi. I can't read or write

Bengali. Ah, I can't read or write Kannada either.

Tamil and English, I just manage with them

somehow.

Sir, Malayalam, sir, Malayalam.

I can't read or write Malayalam either. So, in five languages.

But I know all of them.

If someone recites poetry, I'll clap at the right places.

I find that hard to believe, sir. You know all that.

But you—

I only said I can't read or write them.

I went to Sri Sri garu…

I recited his “Mahaprasthanam” right in front of him.

Oh!

You say this, then you say that.

That’s it, that… all those who don’t know how to read,

Even Ilaiyaraaja came to me

for a PhD in music.

He came all the way from Pannaipuram.

“In acting, Sivaji Ganesan only studied up to the third grade,” he’d often tell me.

“You’re more educated than I am. That’s why I treat you with respect.”

If you ask why I'm saying this, I was in third grade, you were in eighth.

That's a five-grade difference, man.

Sir, that Sri Sri, sir…

Any two lines from his poems.

We wouldn't understand the meaning. We wouldn't understand it.

But he's a major communist writer.

It's a song that sings for the downtrodden

people. He'll point out any corrections.

Okay, sir.

O fallen, outcast, bitten by the snake of sorrow,

O brothers who have fallen, don't cry.

Jagannath's chariot wheels are coming, they are coming.

I will set the earth on course to the apocalyptic roar of the chariot wheels,

I will cause an earthquake.

One,

Sri Sri will be attending a festival.

You can learn this and perform it there, or meet him

That it's rendered while doing it is understandable.

After all this time, once, or many times, Sri Sri sir

must have come and met him.

But what he read all that time ago, even now, without a word changed,

if he is still saying it like this, then this is not something that just

comes naturally at all. This is something else.

Truly—

It is also our duty to tell this generation about Sri Sri Ayya.

I bear all the sorrow of not having seen Bharathiyar.

But I have seen Sri Sri. They are one and the same.

Sir, on a television channel, if you remember, you recited a

poem. It was just unbelievable.

After that, I WhatsApped you.

I wrote that.

Ah, that's it. I was thinking it was something traditional.

I was the one who wrote it. Unbelievable, sir. You remember that?

Beyond the planets and their rulers, there is said to be an immense power.

Everyone has their own interpretation, yet no one understands it.

What happens now is said to have happened before, a fate that made it happen.

Fate lovingly plotted even against those who tried to conquer it.

Leprosy, genital sores, tumors, colic, and hemorrhoids,

are its cruel desires. A worm living in a wound is blessed.

They say it will graciously grant a new birth.

They say it tests millions of gods without making them suffer much, then grants

them salvation. Watching the hardships that befall the poor is its

habit. It may play. Whatever comes to pass,

the Lord who ordains it can even wage war through it.

Like splitting a demon’s corpse, it split the atom and had it done using the atom, they say.

They say it did so through the atom. It turned innocent people living in foreign lands into

delicacies and ate them. Your kin, relatives, and learned

teachers worship wholeheartedly the power that others fearing what they may say, you too must worship.

Believe that what does not exist exists.

Immerse yourself in the pool of scriptures, wash away the three impurities, and spend on theistic rituals.

Do so. Beat drums in worship, ring bells in worship.

Camphor

ārati.

If they hand you a needle and say, “Sew, lad,” do not sew what is

proper. After ignoring the true path that would save you,

it is better for you to waste away.

That is the one and only camarasa.