UYAR VALLUVAM - It's a beautiful life...

When we set out to learn something from a book, we should learn to absorb  it from the point of view of the author. We may have many ideas ourselves about the topic, but all of that should be kept aside. We should attempt to see what the author’s viewpoint is.  But, how can we make sure that we are indeed looking at any book from the author’s mindset? We should understand the basics of written communication. Our ancestors had a deeper understanding of communication. There are three levels of communication: Words, Meaning, and Unarvu . Words are used to communicate ideas. When we read (a story book, a newspaper or this blog) we go from the words to the meaning behind them. From the meaning we must move to the emotion and/or the concept ( Unarvu in Tamil). Unarvu is a Tamil word that refers to a holistic understanding of the concept including the feeling and the emotions. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent word in English (Maybe essence ?). When we move to the Una...

We experience life by way of sensations that we receive through our sense organs. Any interaction with the world happens thorough our sense organs. Living things can be classified based on the number of ways in which they can receive stimulus from the external world. Broadly, living things have a minimum of one way and a maximum of six ways to experience life. Plants have only one way to experience the world. They have only a sense of touch. They use it to respond to light and find water. We can see that  plants will bend towards the sun and the roots will grow towards water. Worms have two senses (touch and taste), head lice has three senses (touch, taste and smell), snakes have four senses (touch, taste, smell, and sight) animals have five senses (touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing).           What about humans? We also experience the world through five sense organs. Then what is the difference between a human and a cow? ...

If a person decided live a solitary life in an isolated place, without interacting with anyone else, then there is no need for any kind of social structure or rules. But, when two people have decided to co-exist in a place, then both need rules for peaceful existence. As long as I am restricted to my room, I can keep my legs wherever I want, I can be clothed or not, whatever, it’s my choice. But the minute I invite another person in my room, then both have to follow certain rules. Certain restrictions are necessary to have a peaceful life. We should understand that the restrictions apply to both people and both suffer a loss of individual freedom. Similarly, in ancient Tamil society, when people decided to stay as a group there was a need to formulate rules. As a society too, when a rule is made, some where some group of people are losing their independent freedom in favor of the greater good. For eg: Parents lose their freedom in teaching their children. Children pick up what...

The preface or prologue of a book is called as “Payiram” in Tamil. In those days, there wasn’t a library or a digital catalogue to categorize books according to the subject. So the preface naturally became an important part of any book, as it gave an overview about the contents. This allowed a reader to spend her/his time wisely. The reader need not read the entire book to realize that it doesn’t fit with her area of interest. There are certain rules to write a preface for any book. As per Nanool and Tholkappiyam (ancient books on Tamil Grammar) a preface should contain, at the least (a) the name of the author (b) the place or the conference where the book made its debut (c) the name of the chairperson under whose leadership the book made its debut, and so on. There were also criteria to decide who was qualified to write the preface. All books in Tamil literature have a Payiram in accordance to these criteria. Thirukkural also contains a section on Payiram with 4 topics b...

If humans must make their own mistakes in life and learn from scratch, every single time, then there is no use in our race being blessed with six senses. If fire is hot, then it is enough if one human learns it. Others must be able to benefit from that person’s experience. Aram refers to the rules of life embedded in Nature. But, how can anyone observe or learn these rules of life from nature? Only some things are obvious. It would be useful if someone who could observe nature, tell us what Aram is. But, more importantly, how do we trust that person? How can we know, what that person says is true? Our ancestors believed in accurately measuring things. Whether it was a piece of cloth or a basket of vegetables, things had to be measured. In order to measure something, we need measurement tools. They also measured truth, that is, how can we believe that “truth” is actually 100% true? They wrote books that dealt with measurements and these books are called “ Tharkka noolg...

Repetition of any work over a long period of time will result in developing a unique expertise. Over time we develop the capacity to observe mistakes and improvise, and that's how we become advanced in any field. Applying the same concept, it can be said that the advancement of a civilization can be measured by the length of their existence. Tamil civilization is one such old and highly advanced civilization. For eg: Tholkappiam is a very old Tamil scientific work on Tamil Grammar. It is still not clear when it was composed. Some say that it was written around 1st CE, which is nearly 2000 years ago. For the speakers a language to bring out a book on Grammar, the language should have been in existence long before 2000 years. Because, grammar is nothing but a set of rules, for its speakers, that has been formulated after observing a language over a long period of time. Some historians say that the Tamil language has been in existence for atleast 3000 years. When we say ancestor...