While talking about Mahabaratham, I cant avoid thinking of one hilarious article by U.Ve.Sa iyer. In one of his collections, I read an incident titled 'dinginane dinginane'.
Venkatesh, I think its one of the book I took from your pudayal sometime back. The old books dating back to 1890's...
The incident goes like this, in the usual wit of U.Ve.Sa... I laugh whenever I think about this.
One of U.Ve.Sa's classmate, Saveria pillai was sent by their master Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai to Mayavaram to meet a big shot and get back with news from him.He was supposed to return in the night but people were worried, till he returned the next day morning.
When asked why he was late, Saveira Pillai recites what happened to him. On the way back, it was already dark and cloudy that even star lights are not available to see whats next to you. So he was wading through the dark, when suddenly he could not move his leg. He was paralyzed thinking some evil spirit has caught him.But mustering courage and feeling by his hands, he could find some human heads and realized that people were sitting there around. Before he could realized whats happening, one of the nearby person whispers dont move, sit down and so he sits down. Straining his eyes, he sees around and finds that a large gathering have been sitting there and it took sometime for him to realize that all were looking in the same direction.
Straining his eyes he could see, at a distance that there was light and found that its a koothu medai and could not hear much. But the discrete sounds brought by air, told him that mahabaratham koothu was going on.
Though he could not hear anything, he heard just a coupld of lines and could not understand its meaning. He could hear the words because once the katiyangaran sang a line, the chorus followed him... the song goes like this...
hes so confused and by the time he could start again it was dawn and hence he is late to reach his master.
Narrating this, he asked Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai, as what does thie mean and he has not heard of a flower called Marathe poo and never heard the word 'dinginane'.
Pilla laughs and says, its like this - beemasena mavarasa maratha pudinginane....'(beemasena maharaja uprooted a tree).