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| C.Subramaniam, Former Vice - Chancellor, Tamil University, Thanjavur |
In his poem Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard, famed
English poet Thomas Gray mourns the death of the common people as he
comes across a country churchyard in an evening. Finding no
difference between the great and common, Gray even assumes that
there might be someone like John Milton, Oliver Cromwell and John
Hampden among the dead villagers, whose talents had never been
discovered, for they were simply folks of the countryside. From a
similar angle as Gray viewed the rustic people, a poet from the Kongu
region shares his memoirs on the people of his village people in his
book Mamaraththupatti. And
the poet is none other C.Subramaniam, former registrar of Bharathiyar
University and retired Vice-chancellor of Tamil University,
Thanjavur.
“ The hamlet
'Mamaraththupatti' in the present day Tirupur district is my native.
In my book of poems on the same title, I have remembered a few, great
people, who have left an indelible mark on me” says C.S, as
C.Subramaniam is popularly called in Coimbatore.
While
introducing the arid village C.S says:
“ Despite its
name being ' Mamarathupatti' ( A village of mango trees), the village
hardly has any trees. And I wonder how it was named so”
But, Sirpi
Balasubramaniam, a two-time Sahitya Akademi award winning poet of
Coimbatore, who has penned the foreword to the book, assumes the
answers for C.S's question.
“ It is
surprising that the village ' Mamarathupatti' has few trees. Still,
it could have got the name after a rare event, in which a mango tree
must have grown somewhere there! ”
Though the book
is about a nondescript hamlet in the Kongu region, Sirpi commends C.S
for making it distinctive by introducing its sons of the soil in
the background of their anecdotes in his book of poems.
A busy
educationist, heading a number of schools and colleges in the city,
C.S informs that he could find a little time to write the book while
he was at his daughter's home in the US recently.
“ Writing a
book on my native village Mamarathupatti had been my long-time wish.
The characters you come across in my book are real men and women of
my village, alive or dead today. Their ethical life style,culture and
sincerity inspired me to pen the book” says C.S.
The book
Mamarathupatti, which has as many as 24 chapters, includes the
author's memoirs on a traditional midwife, who helped his mother
deliver the child. Interestingly, soon after the baby boy
(C.Subramaniam) was born, the birth worker had to attend to another
pregnant woman, who delivered a baby girl just after an hour from
C.S's birth. And now, the baby-boy and baby-girl are the elderly
couple C.Subramaniam and Chellam Subramaniam – the husband and
wife, who met the coincidence of sharing their birthday!
Writing a
chapter on Periyaa Nadar, a coconut palm climber, C.S recalls:
“ Periya
Nadar would always be bare-chested. If you observed the bruises on
his body, you could certainly say the number of trees he climbed. A
diehard fan of the Tamil matinee idol and former Tamil Nadu chief
minister M.G Ramachandran, Nadar, one day, watched the evening show
of M.G.R's 1955 box office hit Gulebakavali at
the touring talkies in the village Arikaran Valasu. The film, which
portrays the hero's fight with a tiger, had a different effect on
Nadar. As we headed to the same film for the night show, the
innocent Periyaa Nadar told us that we would not watch M.G.R's fight
with the tiger in the night show. Because, the hero had killed the
animal in the evening show itself ! “
Link to a small publication of this story in The New Indian Express: http://epaper.newindianexpress.com/c/15022155
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