M.L. Thangappa, the accomplished translator of Tamil poetry into English, died on May 31, 2018, aged 84. For over half a century, Thangappa interpreted Tamil poetry for a wide audience.
Starting from classical Sangam poetry to the 20th century greats, Bharati and Bharatidasan, he covered a wide swathe of poets who grace the two-millennium long tradition of Tamil poetry. A Tamil teacher and prolific Tamil poet himself, Thangappa was steeped in its poetic riches, and had an original understanding that did not rely on commentaries and glosses.
In 2012, Thangappa won the Sahitya Akademi award for Love Stands Alone: Selections from Tamil Sangam Poetry . His translation of the classical text, Muttollayiram , was published as a Penguin classic under the title, Red Lilies and Frightened Birds . Widely anthologised, he also did a prose translation of Vallalar Ramalinga Swamigal’s Songs of Grace . Some years ago, he completed a full translation of the didactic text, Naladiyar , and a selection of the medieval rebel poetry of the Siddhars.
As his long-term collaborator and editor, it has been an honour to encounter the man and his work from close quarters. Below are two of Thangappa’s translations: three stanzas from the 11th century Kalingathu Parani, celebrating the victory of Kulothunga Chola; and second, three verses from Thirumoolar, the great Saiva philosopher-poet of the late first millennium. While the first celebrates the amorous expectations of women awaiting their warrior husbands’ return from war, Thirumoolar’s verses talk of the transience of life. These selections capture beautifully the span of Thangappa’s work.
From Kalingathu Parani
The crescent of your forehead
is filled with beads of sweat.
Your necklaces are disarrayed.
Your locks of hair
adorned with red lilies
lie dishevelled.
Your bangles
keep clamouring.
Still you aren’t tired
of making love.
O women
come, open the doors.
***
Intoxicated with love
Your uttered intimate words
to your husbands.
Your pet parrots that overheard
them
start repeating them before
everyone.
Blushing with shame
you try to shut the parrots’ mouths
with your hands
O women
Throw open the doors.
***
Expecting your husbands
you throw the doors open.
Afraid they may not come
your close the doors again.
Thus the hinges of the doors
keep working through the night
and wear out slowly.
O women,
throw open the doors.
***
From Thirumoolar
All the villagers gathered
and mourned his death
raising noisy wails.
They discarded his name
and called him a corpse.
They carried him to the
burning ghat
that lay amidst the shrubs
and cremated him.
Then they had their cleansing bath,
went home
and forgot everything.
***
The sun rising in the east
goes down in the west
in a trice.
A young calf
grows into a bull
before your very eyes.
But, how is it that
these blind men of the world
do not learn from this?
***
Though they cut up their flesh
and grill it in a flaming fire
burning their bones as firewood,
unless they have a melting heart of
love
and dissolve into tenderness,
they cannot obtain
– as I have obtained –
the precious gem.
***
The writer is a Tamil historian and author.
