Today, Narayanan and I wrote a couple of thamizh haiku while chatting over the instant messenger. While we have written many such haiku immediately inspired by chats, yet we thought this incident is worth noting.
N shared a haiku which he had written for the kigo “Kaarthikai”.
Kaarthikai is a festival celebrated in South India to commemorate the birthday of Lord Murugan or Skanda. It is celebrated around the month of September. Oil lamps line the window sills and verandahs of all houses. Lamps are also floated over ponds as a ritual (see links below for more information).
N’s haiku is as follows:
kolaithail kaarthikai vilakku
athai chuttri oru vandu
[ A kaarthikai lamp on the kolam
a bee comes around it ]
A kolam is a mandala that is applied using white rice-flour or coloured chalk on the verandahs of houses on special days such as Kaarthikai – to welcome Lakshmi and the gods.
When I read this haiku in thamizh, I misread a couple of words. Kolathil I read as Kulathil, which means “in the pond” not “on the kolam”. I also read vandu (bee) as nandu which is the colloquial word for crab.
My sleepy reading of this lovely thamizh haiku had put an entirely different picture in my mind to what N had intended. Here is what I had read:
kulathil kaarthikai vilakku
athai chuttri oru nandu
[ a kaartikai lamp
a crab swims around it ]
Once N had corrected my misreading, we noticed how the misreading was another valid haiku! In the linguistic gap, I had filled-in a different yet fully plausible kaarthikai scene: that of a crab swimming around a floating lamp. This imagined scene must have come from some memories and familiarity with the festival.
Now we were left with two neatly parallel Kaarthikai haiku, which brought out clearly the complexity of writing naturally in any language, and also the importance of the local flavour and cultural element intrinsic to a haiku in any language. Both have a common kigo (kaarthikai vilakku) but show different scenes. In both, the lamp is a mysterious object in a different creature’s cosmos.
—-
kolaithail kaarthikai vilakku
athai chuttri oru vandu
—-
kulathil oru kaarthikai vilakku
athai chuttri oru jnadu
end
Links
http://www.diwalifestival.org/karthigai-deepam.html
http://www.aryabhatt.com/fast_fair_festival/Festivals/Karthigai%20Deepam.htm
http://www27.brinkster.com/adhiparasakthi/sakthi2/DSC01250c.JPG
