நான் தவறு செய்யாவிட்டால், மன்னிப்பு கோர மாட்டேன்

 

நான் தவறு செய்யாவிட்டால், மன்னிப்பு கோர மாட்டேன்

One of the biggies of Tamil cinema pronounced haughtily that he would not tender apology for a mistake he did not commit. His unabridged statement in this regard as reported in today’s newspaper is, “If I am wrong, I will apologise. If not, I won’t.” The title of this post given in Tamil translates as, “I will not apologise”, with the qualifier coming at the beginning, “if I am not wrong”; close enough for the purpose of this post.

In my nearly seventy one less about 18 years of living, just recently I sought forgiveness from a classmate of mine; that is, I let a mistake of mine, acknowledged but falsely justified, linger on and eat me from inside for about 53 years. Now I feel quite light in my heart. It took me that long to reconcile myself or own up to my mistakes.  

The first question is who decides that one made a mistake that is worthy of offering a heartfelt apology. Ironically, you have to do it yourself; no one else can do it for you. The haughtiness in the statement of the movie star is far too apparent to even suggest that he had done any introspection.

And, he was wrong in suggesting that the language Kannada, the State Language of Karnataka, is a daughter of Tamil. No, it is not. What can perhaps reasonably be claimed is that Tamil has retained more of the characteristics of an older language out of which both these languages developed as per the local genius of the people.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me hasten to add that the above does not mean that either language is any more-genius generated than the other. Both thrived to sustain a culture over centuries, that is all. Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam are more than sprinkled with unreturned loan words from Sanskrit as compared to the far fewer, if any, such words in Tamil (except in TamBrahms’ spoken dialect). The above does not mean Tamil has carried fidelity to its proto language more than the others to theirs. Tamil just developed in its own way and time.

If Telugu was the language of the people of the undivided Andhra Pradesh, I do have one nagging question. Why is the rump Telangana instead of Telugana? Why the insertion of the ‘n’, and why ‘a’ instead ‘u’ as the fourth letter? Tamils say the name of the language of their immediate northern neighbour as Telungu! Why not Telugu? These questions are, at best, farcical.

Rev. Robert Caldwell is perhaps undergoing some image alteration, and I needed no such effort to appreciate his dedication to the work he took upon himself. I doubt very much that the movie star had even flicked through the reverend’s monumental work. I have, more than flicked through, but was deficient in absorbing anything but the basics as I am not a linguist.

I know I am not an expert on anything I have posted on, including this. Yet, I never claimed that someone else needs to point out my errors. I have returned to my posts a number of times and have corrected them when I have had the opportunity to chew the cud on the topic.

I can only hope the movie star does it too.

Raghuram Ekambaram