You beauty..!!!!!!

When was the last time did you have a ‘hands-on’ experience with the word ‘Magnum Opus’?

Couple of weeks back, during my initial stage of summer intern, after reading 5 dailies, I was sitting lethargic, staring at my laptop, thinking about how to kill the time. Suddenly a bizarre thought cropped in my mind, “Free space is too low – scrub the hard drive”. It was during the cleaning phase, I noted a pdf named ‘Kalki Krishnamurthy – Ponniyin selvan’, sent by some good soul in my college through IP messenger.

I was in seventh heaven. Having heard about the charm and allure of the novel, I decided to give it a shot. It took almost 2 weeks for me to complete the 1500 pages but believe me; you can’t find a single instance to be boring. Talking about stultification is utter blasphemy, I swear. It has got everything to evoke the interest of the reader – history, thriller, romance, and undercover operations, except for the one which you can find in abundance in ‘Sidney Sheldon’ creations.

The drama happening in the period of 950 A.D gives a thoroughgoing description of the magnanimity and philanthropy of the Chozha Empire. Mind you, the thrilling nature of the story is absolutely phenomenal. It arouses your eagerness, travels beyond your expectation, makes you anxious and at the end of the day, you’ll find most of your presumptions to be completely shattered by the character itself.

The tale inspired by real life incidents, clubbed by interesting twists and turns, penned by the author with the help of historic researches and ancient monuments can easily beat most of the thrilling novels and cinemas hands-down. With my little knowledge in history, I had greatly admired chozhas (when compared to their counterparts – pandyas and cheras) for their bravery (their kingdom once existed from Himalayas to Sri lanka) , architectural vividness ( Kallanai in trichy and Brahadeeswara temple in Tanjore – to name a few marvels) and also for their generosity and foresightedness. But after reading this masterpiece, my respect for chozhas has increased by leaps and bounds.

It was sort of addiction, highly anxious to complete the novel at the earliest, gave it top priority, ignored other petty stuffs, and just like thousands of people who had read it, I was also dejected to see the novel getting concluded. The melancholy still prevails.

Al right, does that mean everything is perfect in this novel? Well, you can’t say that unless you’re from an elite group of tamil scholars who doesn’t know the slang like ‘Meyyaalumaa’, ‘ittukunu vanthiyaa’ (No offence meant to anyone). For a layman like me, it’s way beyond my capacity.

Quite a few tit-bits from my end (based on the novel),

1. If you think back-stabbing has its roots from IT industry, forget it. It seems to be prevalent right from the creation of universe.

2. This one is for Male chauvinists – the raconteur implicitly expresses that tears shedding from a woman has the potential to hold back the valour of great men, blunts their mind, his intelligence and thinking capability goes for a toss and ultimately makes him succumb to her cunningness. You can find umpteen numbers of such instances in the book.

3. Honestly if you’re exhausted of hearing taglines and punch lines for political leaders like ‘Tamizhagam kaatha annaiye’, ‘Kazhagathin kanmaniye’, I’m afraid you’ve to go through the same but a big ordeal (!!!) in this novel. The person who recites the panegyric is pitiable – poor fellow, he has to remember a lot.

The flow and narration of this novel is beyond the admiration of adjectives in English. Plethora of characters marks their appearance; make at least a subtle difference in the plot and stays in your heart as the character itself. If angels and demons arouse me the excitement of visiting Rome once in my lifetime, ‘Ponniyin selvan’ induces me to have a dream life in the ancient regime. At least, former is possible but where on earth will I find a time-machine that’ll please my latter desire?

Frankly, if you can read Tamil, I’d suggest you to give your precious time for reading this spectacular,mind-blowing, ‘never-miss-at-any-cost’ non-fictional entertainer. After all, it takes nothing but bestows a lot.

P.S: For all those exerting reactions like ‘Ennadhu Gandhi sethutaara?’ for reading a novel which was published in the middle of 20th Century, I’d like to say – “it’s better late than never”.