>
> BTW, the phrase ‘Red Earth and Pouring Rain’ gained international
fame
> when Vikram Chandra wrote a novel by that name. I wonder how he
chose
> the name 
>
> swetha
>
hi
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/07/01/stories/1301067c.htm
Red earth and pouring rain: Powerful imagery
SINCE June this year, an English translation of a Tamil poem from
the Sangam anthology is on display in the trains in the London
Underground. The original poem, in Tamil script, is also featured
along with the English version.
The London Tube, as the underground metro train service is known,
was started in 1863 and now covers 408 km. It is the lifeline of the
city. When the transport authorities began paying attention to the
interior of the coaches, they instituted prizes for the best
advertisement posters. In 1986, encouraged by the Poetry Society,
short poems of five or six lines were displayed in a special show.
It proved so popular that poetry display has since become a
permanent feature in the trains. Funded by the Arts Council of
England, the poems are printed in uniform sized enamel plates and
displayed inside the coaches. Copies of these displays are sold as
posters and are sought after as souvenirs. The collection of these
poems, published under the title Poems on the Underground has just
gone into its ninth edition. This practice has been adopted by
public transport systems in New York, Moscow and other metros and
the display of poems has become part of the urban landscape.
The Tamil poem that is exhibited now, the oldest to be featured, is
from Kurunthogai, a collection of 400 poems on love, ascribed to the
first three centuries A.D.. This is the most popular and off-quoted
of the Sangam anthology. When the team of selectors for Poems on the
Underground started looking for the original text, Nalini Prasad,
curator of the South Indian Languages section of the British Library
stepped in. The library has in its holdings, a Kurunthogai text,
published in 1915 by Vithyarathnagara Press at Vellore. Tirumaligai
Sowriperumalarangam of Tirukannapuram had written the annotation.
(There were later editions with annotation by U. Ve. Swaminatha
Ayyer. It was my delight to see and handle this edition at the
British library. A calico-bound imprint, in good condition, it had
been bought from a certain Saraswathi Book Stores in Vellore, as
evidenced by a rubber stamp impression on the title page.
The poem, as it appears in this book, was photocopied and reproduced
in the display. The English fonts were slightly altered to match
with the Tamil characters. And the display board, designed by Tom
Davidson, with a kolam design on the left margin, looks elegant and
exudes a period flavour.
The English version, by A. K. Ramanujan, has been taken from his
book Poems of Love and War (1985). The credit of introducing the
splendours of Sangam literature to the English-speaking world in our
times goes largely to Ramanujan. He seems to be able to capture with
ease the quiddity and the texture of these poems and contextualise
them. One has only to read the Interior Landscape, a translation of
Kurunthogai, to get an idea of his abilities as a translator.
His “Afterward” at the end of this book is the best introduction to
Sangam literature I have read.
The poem is titled “Red Earth and Pouring Rain”. In the background
of authors of many works remaining anonymous, in Tamil literary
tradition there is this practice of identifying a poet by a phrase
or word from his poem. Thus the author of this poem is
Sembulapeyaneerar, literally “The poet of red earth and pouring
rain”.
The poem is about two lovers uniting and the man reassuring her of
his love.
The powerful imagery in the words “red earth and pouring rain” is so
evocative, standing at once for the union in love and also for a
geographical context. Evidently, it is this line that inspired the
title of Vikram Chandra’s recent English novel, Red Earth and
Pouring Rain.
In Interior Landscape, Ramanujan explains his philosophy of
translation. “The effort is to try and make a non-Tamil reader
experience in English something of what a native experiences when he
reads classical Tamil poems. Anyone translating a poem into foreign
language is, at the same time, trying to translate a foreign reader
into a native one.”
Ramanujan once told me a st story about a leading English publisher
in India approaching him for a translation of Tirukural.
Enthusiastic about the idea, Ramanujan asked for at least two years’
time. He needed that period, as he did not want the translation to
read like a list of aphorisms such as “Honesty is the best policy”.
The publisher, in a hurry, wanted it in six months and approached
another translator who agreed to abide by the deadline. Thus the
world lost an opportunity to get what probably would have been the
best ever English translation of Tirukural.
S. THEODORE BASKARAN
