Waking state is stressful and dreamy state during sleep is blissful oh dream i do not know how I will repay my debt?

Due to disturbed sleep at night  that gentle breeze from heaven embraces me during day time.when I start reading newspaper or a book or even I watch TV , effortlessly I get sleep while sitting on the chair..I know daytime irregular sleep that too in the morning is not a healthy one   but I am helpless.

But the lady love in kural  wants to be in a deep sleep for ever in order that she will have sweet dream and her lover will visit her.She says:

Oh my beautiful black eyes ! I beg you  with all fervor ,to rest and sleep:

If only you close your eyes and sleep I could see my lover.

My dear friend! Shall I tell you the truth and the secret,

Why and how I am still alive when my lover is gone

In pursuit of gainful job elsewhere and has not  bothered

To return back as promised at the appointed hour

And fulfill my desire….and yet I am fortunate enough

To see him in my dream at least,

And that alone sustains my life here.

Dreams alone bring me the bliss and happiness

While that is denied by my beloved,

During the waking hours.

Oh dream ! In what way I shall repay my debt? She laments,  and that is the reason why she begs her eyes to fall into sleep and the dream will restore her lover and that will make her to live.

The last minute invitation revives my spirit and where did the energy come from?:Thinking of the good old days the days which will never come but all the memories will linger for ever

By divine intervention I got up at  3 30 AM and  in the next 15 min   started  living with  the subject breathing it effortlessly . The compulsion was  the two day lecture programme arranged by my dept currently headed by Prof Lazarus.All my laziness and accumulated stress vanished into thin air; I prepared for some time and got energized by it  I needed diversion to go for a walk   but it was  still 5 and the weather was chill  the alternative was to write a blog now itself as I will not have time  in the next 2 days.I felt that I should recollect  my  journey.

 All through my life even for class lecture I used to have this kind of butterflies and more importantly when I was taking calculus segment for MA students at PG centre I would have hardly spoken to my wife or kids .That might have affected the equilibrium at home a little as they got used to it but the professional satisfaction that I got  and the inner peace that I obtained   I can hardly put down in words.Gentlemen, please understand this is  sambandhan’s trademark  of having fear like the actor Shiv aji Ganasan to do the work better  and not to rock like a monkey drunk with wine,and becoming  supremely arrogant. I was lucky to have  the company of Professors  like Dharmalingam,Gopalakrishnan Muthukumarasamy and Lakshminarayanan  in the PG centre (1989-1994) to provide a competitive environment.  ie. Our team was good and  no one wanted to give A MEDIOCRE LECTURE

RE  with less pay pocket  at that time.All seniors  well experienced  could have   managed with little effort  although least cost combination in the class.My intellectual encounters In PUNE ECONOMICS CONCLAVE  AT  my alma metre gohkale Institute(2014),an international conference at IPE,Hyderabad(2015) and the more recent IIM K  Indian Econometrics.were made possible thanks to my students  who are accomplished scholars now and also Prof kamaiah, the Dean of the School of economics Hyderabad.

Currently I have been selectively engaged  in encouraging  my students to be my collaborators depending upon the convergence of interests. The crucial academic partner(New delhi) who is also my MIM  student is also taking care of my burden but asking me to slow down keeping the health in mind.  He is an understanding guy,  more scholarly  and more keen that I should not stop writing  and my reading should not go waste  .In the past we tried  but could not take things to the logical destination: now we are working hard  sometimes 24 x 7  without any trace of tiredness given the synergy and enthusiasm in doing work .We are confident that  at least we will  get our minimum wages for our efforts.

To use cricketing analogy I am no Gavaskar or Tendulkar but  Krishnamachari Srikanth  who was  an aggressive batsman and always kept the score card moving and my students saw that  old young cricketer cricketer in me.I am still aggressive but talk without much aggression   sorry  I am not fully right   One of our boys form Pondicherry university currently at Christ university made a candid observation: Sir Prof Sambandhan has not changed .That is the best compliment I can ever get inthis life.

My lover resides in my eyes and will not leave me

Translating kural:

The steamy love affair spreads like a fire, and a few village folks make the lady nervous by saying that the boy had abandoned her and gone once and for all. The girl’s friend brings home this news. But the lady is determined not to believe this scandal. She  says to her friend :

My lover will not leave my eye,

Even while eyelids move and strain him

He will not suffer for he is such a

Gentle, subtle fellow.

He has just entered into my ethereal body

And fused himself  into my soul.

He always resides in my eye.

she is my love and light of my life;She is my fire and soul of my life.:how can I think about you when i hardly forget

Parental duty will keep me away from blog writing  for a few days and quickly I would like to go back to the lover who treats his beloved as his life force. Yes…    She is not just life mate  but a soul mate:

I can think about you and ruminate over all the pleasant attributes

Only when I can afford to forget you but I can hardly do that;

When she is with me it is as if the very life force is

United with me, triggering  and invigorating life.

If she moves away from me I feel the very life force is

Abandoning/leaving the body.

It is only when I am with her, there is life;

In case I am away from her there is only death.

Yes my dear,how can I think about you,when i can hardly forget.

Revisiting kural:while leaning on the slender shoulder...there is supreme pleasure.

 One of my students who has more possessive and blind love towards me, sent a message : Sir,why no post today ? I replied that I had to work on the china paper and send it to the editor . Earlier Prem  used to put pressure on me to write  and once in a csual way remarked  (to tease me ?) and also tell the truth  that my extempore comments as a reaction in the Face book  looks more good than the blog writing .I was pleasantly shocked by her quick wit . As if to prove she is right I wrote a detailed comment yesterday for her comment, recalling my Pune Gohhale Institute days  and she must have been happy to read that.

Thirukkural is a treasure house of wisdom.It has been  translated into many languages  and there is no  dearth of it in English .And yet I have chosen to do  my own interpretation to add more richness and beauty. This is a field where more one reads the more he or she realizes the limits of his or her  ignorance.

All the 1330  couplets  encompassing Aram ,porul ,Inbam are pregnant with deeper meaning and greater insight.There are different interpretations and language play is also visible ;   slowly,  gradually  I will attempt to present a unified and holistic picture about the life game which is now forgotten  by mankind  fully seduced by materialistic culture mostly triggered by the process of globalization and the resulting capitalist civilization.we shall come to transltation:

# Is there any supreme pleasure in this materialistic world

During earthly existence other than leaning on

The slender shoulder of my beloved

And get tossed and turned by that intoxicant like a

Lotus flower bloom, following the sunrise.

Before I conclude let me say….Be yourself;make an appppointment with yourself;and have date with yourself.Relax and enjoy  and do not forget to laugh

get energy and feverish enthuasism to work from Rohit Raghuram Rajan and many more honest and hardworking souls;People cannot be taken for a ride,R

I am neither a player nor an  admirer of cricket game. I watch sometimes and also look through  the economics lens. In this edition, let me  make some reference to Rohit Sharma the evolving cricketer and Prof Raghuram  Rajan our RBI chief.

On the fast pitches abroad , India has been consistently losing and the ongoing series against Australia  is not an exception. The redeeming feature however  is that  India has made a decent total around 300 in all the three matches played  thus far and neatly washed out… it is an honourable defeat. If only Shikkar Dhawan had played some responsible innings and Aswin also included  India will not find itself in this awkward situation .

Going back to the player who had the guts and luck I must hasten to add that Rohit Sharma is increasingly confident after registering a few hundreds against Australia which normally does not give an “opposition an inch”; he was humble enough to admit that he has never thought he was talented and could achieve anything like this.It is not talent but hard work has given him this status.

He has made a point rightly that the top order batsman has the responsibility to stay long and build the innings in order that the middle order and tail end will not be subject to any crisis situation. His revelation that after scoring hundred, he does not want to play any reckless game but instead begins from zero again to start another worthwhile innings build another century if possible is worth emulating by players of his similar caliber .

More  recently Our RBI chief made some plain speaking that the staff of RBI should imbibe good work culture and that enforcement of compliance is much to be desired and said: WE DO NOT PUNISH THE WRONG DOER- UNLESS HE IS SMALL AND WEAK “.

Kindly recall some time ago I had drawn attention to his classic statement that more than 1.6 lakhs crores of NPAs are due from the rich and that in an opportunity cost sense we could have built more schools and toilet facilities for the entire population With that amount

He not only predicted the global financial crisis 0f 2007-08 but also talked many sensible things about the debate on tolerance and droves home the important point that political stability is more important for managing the economy.That means  the nonsense of interference in many central universities in the recent past must be a thing of the past. Will the academicians follow Rajan and Rohit? Ie focus on the task at hand  avoid caste based and religion induced and region based bias in deciding the issues.Let bloody dirty and divisive politics take the  back seat or no seat and the problems of the poor and weak  occupy the attention of the rulers. More importantly , let our PM  take a long break from foreign travel  and concentrate on domestic issues of vital importance.

Interpreting kural by translating:She has a strange fire....and both the cause and the cure of the sickness inflicted on me

Fortunately I could buy some sleep and it is nearing quarter to five. Having lost the habit of walking  I must restart today. There was an affectionate  fiat from  a friend yesterday  that I must come to beach   Before the sun rays  come and clothe me  let me complete a few kurals and type:

#She has a strange fire, indeed, believe me

When I go closer it’s just cool and pleasant

But if I get separated from her for a while

I am scorched like a sun

Where did she get this strange fire?#

#For all the diseases there is a cure

The girl who has added beauty

To the jewels clothing her body has inflicted

The love sickness into my heart and for that

She alone is the cure. See how strange it is!

She is both the author of the ailment,

And provider of the medicine.#

Translating kural:She is a reservoir of five sense pleasure and her eyes make the words redundant and useless.

The feverish enthusiasm to be in an intimate relationship with kural and romance with it in on a daily basis makes me to get up very very early  (not at all good) and it was 2 58 am today. For the first time in my life I want to rearrange the kitchen shelf- the domain of non-males until recently. Physical work is good and unfortunately the age is not on my side. Forget about it. Reading of kural gives youthful energy and translation  a focus and purpose. Unlike many creative writers who have written more and read more and hence they do not feel like doing the same  I feel that even hundreds of birth will not satiate the academic greed.So long as eyes and knees have a coordinated interplay,  I will be in the3 game.

Everyone seeks a shoulder not only to cry on but also to slumber over and taste all the five senses of pleasure .valluvar says in a poetic way and let me dramatise it.By looking at her infinite beauty hearing her sweet words,and experiencing the sense of touch and smell unraveling thus all her territory  I do realize that the girl is the reservoir of all the five sense pleasure fully embodied in the bangle adored  girl.

Again he adds:when the pairs of two eyes meet and paint the picture of love,there is no need for words.Absolutely they become redundant and useless.

To play with words they use less words as their role has been hijacked by eyes.I will add further in tha situation I and MY will disappear  eyes alone dominate the atmosphere.

translating kural;She is in deep love and her fleeting look conveys it however hard she attempts to conceal

Tomorrow sunday.there is a higher degree of probability that i might get up late.for many weeks i have not visited sunday book market .i should make it .sleep is also not favouring me.Let me translate a few kurals.

 My heart is devoured by her fleeting look.That simply conveys her love(1092)

she  is so much infatuated with me and finds it difficult to look through my eye.do you know what she does? she narrows down the brow and through sideways ,she sees again and again and laughs.

I know she is in deep love,but outwardly it would appear as if it is not when she attempts to speak:.neverthelesss her expression on her face can not help but reveal that abundant love.(1097)

happy that during the festivities og pongal i have started tasting the elixir of kural and on a daily basis, i will try my level best share with my friends.enjoy the sunday by reading a book/watchina a movie/or walking in the woods and listening to chirping sound of birds.T

Translating kural.The farmer is in trouble and the lover is scared of the eye of the girl ;causes pain but also cures

Tamils all over the world celebrate mattu pongal today remembering the contribution of cows and bulls to the farmers and all the elements of nature.Kural glorifies farmers by saying that only those who go behind the ploughs and cultivate crops actually live and the rest only follow the farmers for their existence.The earth is rotating non -stop but it is always marching towards the plough of the farming community and so on   ...
It is unfortunate that agriculture as the way of life is bristling with a variety of problems and the collaborative effort of nature is vitiated by man made barriers, fertilizers and stupid policies and regulations in the name of globalisation.The native indigeneous seeds and plants have been disappearing and the cor prates of the west have  taken firm hold over this activity. Machines and MNCs have distanced the farmer away from his land and made him a pauper and dependent,powerless and penniless
Coming to translation of a few kurals from  Kamathupal let me say:
The lover is so scared of her eye, which penetrates like an arrow into his eye for the simple reason that the brows could not stay firm and thus prevent her entry.(1086)

She has wonderful eyes.her look/stare has dual components;her seductive look makes me sick and nervous.To cure the resulting sickness she has a wonderful medicine  yes  she gently smiles upone me and the disease caused by her first look viz the love sickness  melts away. 

Translating kural;How the lover is hijacked by her eye? And devoured by her fleeting look!

Treatment of love in kural is something to be enchanted relished and savored in tranquility.everyday i will try to translate besides focusing on my subject.today is pongal and i am not sure in how many homes there will be financial wherewithal to celebrate and rejoice.But the great asset of many disadvantaged and dispossessed people is that like pongal overflows on the pot tremendous love and friendship overflows in their homes.with laughter and sense of humour they do live life with all fury and glory.If the couple becomes the soulmate and sexual gratification simply follows like a mathematical logic in a natural and normal way despite financial woes and absence of luxury what else you need?  pongal will be sweet

IN kural the focus is on eye-the powerful medium which draws the lover like a magnet.See how valluvar explains:
My heart  is devoured by her fleeting look.that conveys all her love!(1092)

She looked at me with all eagerness and expectation/concern;to be honest her eye was begging towards me.this is how she irrigated her love crop (1093)

When i look at her, she looks at the ground.when I don't she gently and stealthly blushes and smiles at me (1094)
we shall meditate on a few more tomorrow.

we are not only holding on to something in the past but held by something in the past

Pongal is a Tamil festival.It begins with Bhogi and ends with celebration of cow and the bull assisting the farming community and thus the broader economy.A non Tamil can hardly understand the festivities and the sportive games which play a central part and expecting them to understand our culture and feelings is little better than nonsense.Everything is reduced to politics and nature will show the way one day and that day is not far off

we shall respect the sun, the wind and water-bodies and also the farmers.we will not allow any non Tamil to bulldoze and molest our culture and heritage .on this pongal day I fervently request Tamils living in this country to learn and speak Tamil and also write.when we abandon our language everything is lost.Pongal greetings to all Indians who treat others as Indian.No region or religion can be bypassed to show the misplaced arrogance of a particular creed or colour or language.nature will not allow it in the long run.

Let me conclude from a sentence of Alice Walker in his novel:(we) are not holding on to something from the past,but held by something in the past.

Revisiting economics,waynad and meditating on wine and girl from kural

At mid-night  December 31 ,2015 I wrote a few lines in the FaceBook and translated one kural to remind myself that I have a duty to perform to my language and also my subject Economics.This is the first blog of the new year

And let me start by talking about love in a more symbolic way.It is not about the love in modern times but the poetic and pure love of sangam literature some 2000 years ago.

I seek the grace of the Almighty and my parents to read and write  to my heart content as that alone can keep me alive.

Coming to the translation of kural,she is a shy girl having the eye of a deer and her modesty itself is a jewel. Such being the case does she require any external ornament like gold to add more beauty to her? That is absolutely redundant.

The feminists must not mistake valluvar the author of the classic KURAL:

Only when you drink wine you shall get intoxicated. But here is a girl whose mere sight delights me and make me happy  oh is it kama?

The new year was inaugurated with a visit to the God’s own country to revisit economics and also Waynad.The estranged relationship for  long  very long priod was forgiven and  not forgotten for the good of the system.Spent quality time with great scholars and got some academic space to meditate on issues of international finance. Whenever I go to any conference I not only realize my hidden and latent energy in my subject but also the cruel fact that time is limited and I must make the best out of it.I hope I will and I should.R