Kalithogai 19 – Ask not about me

Sangam Lit

In this episode, we perceive the confidante’s disappointment in the man’s decision, as depicted in Sangam Literary work, Kalithogai 19, penned by the Chera King Paalai Paadiya Perunkadunko. The verse is situated in the ‘Paalai’ or ‘Drylands landscape’ and depicts the consequences of the man’s parting.

செவ்விய தீவிய சொல்லி, அவற்றொடு
பைய முயங்கிய அஞ்ஞான்று, அவை எல்லாம்
பொய்யாதல் யான் யாங்கு அறிகோ மற்று? ஐய!
அகல் நகர் கொள்ளா அலர் தலைத் தந்து,
பகல் முனி வெஞ் சுரம் உள்ளல் அறிந்தேன்;
மகன் அல்லை மன்ற, இனி
செல்; இனிச் சென்று நீ செய்யும் வினை முற்றி,
‘அன்பு அற மாறி யாம் உள்ளத் துறந்தவள்
பண்பும் அறிதிரோ?’ என்று, வருவாரை
என் திறம் யாதும் வினவல்; வினவின்,
பகலின் விளங்கு நின் செம்மல் சிதைய,
தவல் அருஞ் செய் வினை முற்றாமல், ஆண்டு ஓர்
அவலம் படுதலும் உண்டு.

The confidante employs the voice of the lady to prevent the man from going ahead with his plan. The words can be translated as follows:

“Saying the right and sweet things, you passed your days in a gentle embrace then. How could I know that all that would turn to be falsehoods, O lord? Spreading slander that even this vast town cannot bear, you intend to leave to the hot drylands, swamped by the rage of the seething sun; You are not a honourable man, for sure! So, go now. But, when you are in the midst of the task you set out to do, to those who travel thither, do not enquire about my state asking, ‘Do you know how the one, whom I abandoned without love, is doing now?’ If you ask so, ruining your esteem, akin to the shining sun, this great and important task that cannot wait, may incur the disrepute of being left incomplete!”

Let’s explore the nuances. The verse is situated in the context of the man’s parting from the lady, after marriage. Even after the confidante’s repeated attempts at dissuading him, the man was intent on leaving the lady to pursue his mission. Understanding this, the confidante speaks to him, assuming the voice of the lady, to drive home her perspective. We hear the lady’s voice recollecting how the man used to say the perfect words to win her heart and had spent his days in her embrace during the past. She laments that she didn’t realise all that was false now. This makes me wonder what these men said to their ladies when in courtship! Is it ‘never ever will I part away from you’, ‘every day of my life I will be only right next to you’? Even the idea of making such promises seems bizarre. Returning, the confidante in the lady’s voice says how slander is spreading in town because the man’s parting away to the drylands. As to why the town must gossip if the man is leaving the lady to pursue a mission or seek wealth, will forever remain a puzzle to me. The confidante goes to the extent of calling the man ‘a person without honour’, just because of his intention to leave!

Then, as if accepting his decision, in the lady’s voice, the confidante says to the man, ‘Sure, go now, but don’t you ask others from our town about how I’m faring when you are in the midst of your mission’. Without explicitly saying why the man shouldn’t ask that question, the confidante says, if the man happens to ask that question, then he may have to abandon that great task midway, bringing disrepute to his glowing honour as a leader. Thereby, she implies that the man will hear the news of the lady’s end as the answer to his question.

Yet again, this lady is presented as a vulnerable being, like a dry and dead twig that will break in a moment, in the man’s absence. The thing is, it’s not even the understandable grief that arises, because of an irreversible parting that we are talking about here, like death, or a journey to some faraway land, where the return is not assured. Just a parting to another place, where there’s even chance of meeting people from the lady’s town, is projected with so much drama. Seeing with our modern eyes, in a time when women live, work, travel, even to space and beyond, on their own, such depictions are hard to accept. Even in that ancient era in the Sangam tradition, this could be a fixed theme that poets had to write about, with little connection to reality. In any case, glad to have progressed to live in a time and land, where such descriptions of a fragile woman have no place! At the same time, my heart goes out to the women in Afghanistan today, whose freedoms are being unimaginably curtailed in the hands of the misguided proponents of patriarchy! Hope these mothers, sisters and daughters, along with others like them in some other parts of the world, will break free from the shackles of this male-dominated oppression that goes on even in this twenty-first century!