Dear All I see the mocking and ridiculing mails from some members when they are asked to mainatin a decorum because We are striving to be a group trying to reach for the stars .... This is a mail I got from an well read and keen enthusiastic member who now has left the group
Hes a retired IIT professor with an eagerness to improve our heritage
My head was hung low when I read this mail in shame...Dont know about the rest...I may still get a adrasakkai or kelammmbeetangayaaa as a response for this but then.....
If anyone is interested You can contact prof Subramaniam on his project of Mahabalipuram
Dear sridhar Ratnam, I have already started communication with the great prof SS and am charting plans to join his endeavours. even though I would still continue as a PS group member, I want all mature members to give respect to age, educational background and concern to some people who dont rely on ever weeping episodes in TVs and wane away their retired life! Instead if you see the flow and power of the messages of Prof.'s letters, we feel him to be a man very young at age! We feel guilty even if we waste a single minute daily!! So, as a PS member my request to some good humoured members is that they can see the situation and then crack their jokes. Any time you open the yahoo page, it is not necessary to only write ridiculous comments on anything, everything and everybody. I wish my message is taken in the right perspective and I am ready to apologise to senior PS members (those who get fame and pride due to their witty mails)who think I am over reacting. Dr.Satnam as a moderator, has done his best to keep both groups at their own limits, but it is for each member to inculcate sense of participation to the other side too. If that does't happen, one-manness and bias will creep into this beautiful enriched, educated group. We should not allow this to happen. Edirpaarpudan, Chandrasekaran
Dear Chandra Thank you for a wonderful mail You can feel the pain expressed in that great man's mail didnt you Any way there are millions of things to accomplish...in 24 hours.....
I am sure the doyens of the group have enough contacts to get something goings regarding the temples and the workers
With great humility i would also like to putforth my observations.
by the way i have not seen anybody write any "ridiculous" comments on anything, everything and everybody. can u please be more specific.
pls understand sir, all comments were passed on the literary characters and not on any individuals who are members in our group as such . and where a member has been commented upon , it was taken in the right sense even by the person who was being commented and there were even retorts from the same member which is also being taken in the right sense.
Just like somebody can ridicule that people get fame and take pride by writing witty mails everybody has right to say so. Freedom of speech sir. The limits of that is known to everybody.
Even in your mail you have ridiculed the TV serials. would it tantamount to ridiculing the producer, the director , the cre, the actors related to the serial???
I strongly feel that all have a right to comment upon and even ridicule as u said on a literary character.
Poonguzhali is a literary character .. even the ardent fan of poonguzhali in our group takes the character analysis of poonguzhali in the right sense. I dont know why such a character analysis should not be done. If one has to make only observatios toeing the line of the author, then why sould we even analyse????
For instance, who is vandiyadevan?? does ridiculing vandiyadevan a tort?
nobody even knows the ancestral details of vandhiyadevan and we are just talking about possibilities of his lineage and nobody knows about his real existence. just one word about vandhiyadevan in kalvettu to my kowledge, as told by our members who are experiened in kalvettu reading, prompted kalki to make him a Hero.
If somebody can say that vandhiyadevan or any other literary character cannot be ridicled , i am tempted to ask "why"??
leave alone literary character... why can't a historical person be ridiculed???
" Tughlaq" i think is the most ridiculed because of his shifting of capital... but lot of evidences are there to prove his administerial abilities.. still he is ridiculed ...
Even Akbar the great changed capitals.. but he is not ridiculed .. then why single Tughlaq alone??? because a play was made using him as a character .... yet nobody whimpered why a King was the target of mockery...
aurangazed.. was a simple man who used to even knit his own dress according to what the quoran says.. still he is the most hated person due to various reasons and mythys associated with him.
Rabindranath Tagore(for our national anthem), Subrahmanya Bharathi ( you know when he used to walk in triplicane.. people used to tell "paithiyam pogudhu paaru", also he was ridiculed for singing in rpaise of "wales ilavarasar"), Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna paramahamsa ( if u want, i will tell you in a personal mail what mockery was made of ramakrishna paramahamsa) The Great Mahatma Gandhi is still being made a mockery of.
The great saint "vallalar" was the object of mockery once. hope you know this.
"yaazhpaanam aarumuga naavalar" called vallalar's "arutpa" as "Marutpa" and even filed a case against him in the court, that was later dismissed anyway.
Pls understand sir, nobody ridicules just for the sake of ridiculing and curtailing participation from the other side. It is just an attempt to kindle the participation to a greater extent and to understand the other side of the coin too...
this sort of ridiculing or kindling and mockery wud make us stronger and do a lot of introspection regarding the historical characters which wud be a great asset when some outsider comes and makes the same observation.
hope you would appreciate my stand.
Also, your point on allowing participation and free flow of thought is a valid observation.
But by saying that one cannot even ridicule a person, i think u are making the mistake of curtailing participation. This would not lead to any fruitful discussions in the group. Rather it would just be another "kilippilaigal..." group.
as observed by you, The same one-maness, biased observation will creep in if an analysis should not be made in the group.
When you see the prof's mail, the prof too has made the same observation .
in the second point of mail he says that thee attitude that "cholas cannot go wrong" will lead us to nowhere and truth cannot be revealed , and it is this reason also which has prompted him to write such a mail.
Why has he made such an observation??? what prompted him to write in such a manner?
Time for introspection regarding this too by our honourable group members.
Dear Diwakar, I no where mentioned your name in my reply for this subject. I was surprised why you replied back to me!! Having known your knowledge in various subjects to ponder, your this reply to me was much informative than many other mails of ridicule. I also am not interested in pin pointing anyone. Did I? When Dr.Sridhar Ratnam quoted..`my head hung in shame.' I too felt the same way. But it should not be to an extent of making an elderly scholar leave our group. Mockey or ridicule may not be taken easily by members of all age group. Isn't it? Where we have to give respect, we have to. To get back the same respect- as you said the other side of the coin need not be checked for people beyond our age group and reach. If possible you can read through what he writes, or otherwise you have the choice of moving on to the next message. Similarly myself- I just skip on such mails of personal chat or mockery w/o substance. But the main theme of this subject should not be lost- we should leave no stone unturned to bring back men like Prof. who are more knowledgeable and informative to group like ours. That was the point I was trying to prove. Nothing else.
Also, a humble request. When members reply back, they can please remove the messages that are stuck along- ( Should I explain? I don't think it is needed! But still I have to say..Just take the cursor within the reply box, click, go to edit|select all|delete). Then the whole reply box becomes empty and clean. Members can type their messages henceforth and on.. I wish this suggestion will allow us to not read the same message many a time, in form of attached reply messages! :( Chandrasekaran
I was just voicing my thoughts in the group too. Please do not take it as a personal mail.
Since, it was also coming as a sequel to other mails on the same subject, i took the liberty of using the opportunity to continue the thread.
Yes, i completely agree to your view that all elderly knowledgeable people should at all cost be retained in this group. But i dont understand what ridicule has been made.
May be some ridiculing might have happenned in the background which i may not be aware. Iam not interested in knowing that too. But anyway, if such ridiculing has happenned it should be condemned in the strongest of words.
What i wanted to convey too is that the honble prof has made some remarks in the second part of the mail too , which has easily been forgotton and sidelined .