To the Authors of Manimekalai - Part Two

Part Two To have written is to leave but a mark nothing stands for the proud rhyming syllables more than his acquired business acumen a Vaishya karmic hope Now we stand aghast before this edifying monument and verily wonder at some man who may have in gusting wind and blasting brine clung to his loincloth on the scaffolding his knotted hair thick with the chimes of the Colamandala tide the bells from Mahabalipuram to Chidamparam tolling in his veins his sinewy rhyming muscles pulsing to the chiselling of reliefs in memory of Kannaki and Matavi and the liana apsara Manimekalai in her forbidding expunging of her caste courtesan rôle the lethal unmaking of an infatuated prince Tied then to the creaking wooden framework left by Ilango Adigal's epic-making epic his stomach heaving the low burning wicker lamp stinging his nostrils in the stilled small hours his eyes hardly following the olai leaf of his beaten memory night after sleepless night his merchant's paunch and eyes sagging wife and mistresses in unrequited rut while in tryst forlorn one thought lingering under the tree in Bodhgaya lamenting for the disciple's offering of trichinosis he lets the dawn creep into his ears with the kuyil's ironically teasing call the fingertips charred with lampblack till loaded cartwheels grind on the gravel of his spent dreams It is easy for us now to quibble over him and make much of when he may have conceived his poem for at least in so doing he comes alive only to be killed revived chided praised drowned in words more than he has bequeathed us © T. Wignesan- April 7, 1992 (from the sequence/collection: Words for a lost sub-continent). Pub. in T. Wignesan. Rama and Ravana at the Altar of Hanuman: on Tamils, Tamil Literature & Tamil Culture. Chennai: Institute of Asian Studies, 2006.