...with permission from AV, am presenting this poem penned by the great actor Kamal Hassan. These are a few lines, yet they speak volumes of the ingenuity of this man - Kamal Hassan - in my opinion one of the finest actors the world has ever produced..
AV has been kind enough to translate this for me in English(thanks buddy!).
"Manidha kadalile oru nal
En chinna thoondilil
Sikkinar sila Nyanigal
Andreno pasiyillai
Samayalukku aalumillai
Kadalileye vittuvittu
karai nokki viraindhu vitten
- Kamal Hassan
ONE DAY IN THE SEA OF HUMANITY,
IN THE HOOK OF MY FISHING ROD,
A FEW SCHOLARS GOT HOOKED,
SOME HOW I WASNT HUNGRY THAT DAY,
ANYWAYS NOBODY HOME TO PREPARE TOO,
SO I LEFT THEM BACK IN THE SEA,
AND WENT BACK ASHORE SOON
- Translaton by Anand Vanchi
Life presents us wonderful opportunities in the form of relationships. The best and the worst in us is determined by the people who come into our life. Many a time,as Kamal here says,we are not hungry and leaving them aside, we come ashore not realizing that we have just lost a chance to better ourselves. Every relationship that we make,be it an aquaintance, a friendship, a lover, a spouse,determines just how much we are gonna progress in our life...A good fish and our meal is the best, a bad one, our meal is ruined, yet we have a chance to make a better meal the next day.
Worst is, when we are not hungry!,and we give vague reasons like 'none to cook the fish' as the poet puts it so beautifully.(a great metaphor for vague excuses we give !)
- 2 cents for my synopsis.
I would love to hear, maybe different interpretation than mine.. That's the fun of reading poetry isn't it ?
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3 comments:
An oblique thought:
If he weren't hungry the other day, and if there was none to cook his catch either, then why did he go fishing in the first place?
Translated to human relations, could this perhaps also mean, if you don't have a particular appetite for relationships at a given period of time, or if you don't think you can handle them, then it's pointless to seek, and perhaps even cruel to flirt about (because for the person doing it, it may mean nothing, but for the fish that gets hooked, it can be a question of life and death)?
And, going by your interpretation, if 'Andreno pasiyillai' and 'Samayalukku aalumillai' are only vague excuses, then what could be the real reasons? After all, the person seems to know the value of his catch, as is illustrated by the use of the word 'nyanigal'; so, what explains his hesitation to take his catch home?
-Russian Salad
Hi..
the person has written this as an after thought of his experience..
experience is a comb u get after u loose ur hair..
the fish hook is a metaphor.. like when u go to a place to meet soem friends u might also get to see somebody else.. u cant avoid it..
however not realsing the true value of the person or the exchange.. there could be thousand reasons.. i am not trying to defend the poet..just trying to put things in a different perspective..
what the write is trying to say is sort of lamenting his lost opportunity and that is it..
i am free for critics.. :-)
Russian Salad, your comments are reflective.
human behaviour is highly unpredictable, we do things without a reason, don't we ? I'm yet to figure out why some people say somethings when they don't mean it or why they mean opposite of what I think they mean ? etc etc in short man is complex and reactions are situational and circumstantial... having said that,it is so probable that we might go fishing when we arent hungry too :)
sometimes people hesitate bcos they are simply afraid....fear is man's biggest showstopper...
Anand,most often we look back and realize we could have done things differently if not better :) alas, in retrospect only..
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