The eminent Tamizh scholar, novelist and litterateur, Sri Indira Parthasarathy and I exchange WhatsApp messages almost on a daily basis.
The nonagenarian intellectual even in spite of his physical frailty still finds such bubbly energy to correspond with me on a daily messaging App on such a variety of subjects ranging from Poetry, Philosophy, Religion, Politics and Current World Affairs.
His messages to me are short, crisp and no more than a few lines but are full of sharp commentary and insightful observations. I have greatly enjoyed striking up a WhatsApp connection with Sri Indira Parthasarathy since the last one year.
Yesterday, Sri IP forwarded to me a Tamizh essay of his with the thought provoking title — “kadavull enraal enna”? or “What do we mean by God?”. Please scroll down here all the way to the bottom to read the superbly written Tamizh essay.
I read through the 4-page essay in bed last night and was so delighted by it that this morning I immediately shot off the below WhatsApp message to him:
Dear Sir, I just finished reading your essay … I’ve no words to describe its sheer brilliance and profundity of thought …. When did you write this ? Recently or much earlier? Can I share it with others on my website ? Your essay must be read by every Tamizh speaking person who finds himself or herself intrigued by the question : where do astrophysics and metaphysics meet ? Sir, you have so well explained that intersection with very apt quotations taken from from Swami Nammazhwar’s Tiruvoimozhi paasurams …”.
Promptly, Sri IP too messaged back to me:
“I had quite a few of unpublished blogs that I wrote a few years ago written in old varying Tamil fonts that couldn’t get published because Tamil now is written in Unicode. My daughter Padma now got a few of them converted to Unicode. I am now sending them to serious Tamil literary magazines as my columns as requested. This is one of them. You are free to circulate”.
I am happy to have Sri IP’s permission to circulate his essay here for the benefit of all readers who like me too would be interested perhaps in this often beguiling and always bewildering subject-matter.
My critical appreciation of the essay was further conveyed to Sri IP via a few more short WhatsApp messages which too I share below:
“One passage, Sir, I quote below from your essay, particularly did catch my attention and helped me instantly recollect another Vedic passage that voices the same conception of Godhood or “KadavuL” :
Sir, to my mind, the above thought of yours is exactly what the very first line of the Rg Veda hymn, the “purusha sooktam” voiced, in fact, 10,000 years ago :
“He, the Cosmic lord, the Purusha, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand legs,
Pervading all the Universe. Still extends ten ‘inches’ beyond”. [Verse 1]
“Whatever is born now, and whatever is yet to be born in future, all are He alone, not only this,
Even for the Gods He is the controller; and hence He transcends the mortal state” [Verse 2]
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Sir, if one examines closely the Rg Veda phrase “he still extends 10 inches beyond”, one understands that it is precisely what you too have so well paraphrased in Tamizh as follows …
The Purusha Sooktham’s name for “kadavuL” is Purusha … and it is also what Stephen Hawking you say was hinting at being the “Unitary Universal Consciousness”.
“Purusha is thus the all-Transcendent Vedic Reality expressed in poetic, metaphoric terms what Science itself is ever seeking to unravel …. by trying to be able to grasp, define and describe in material terms what however eternally remains elusive and therefore is said to “still extend 10 inches beyond!” no matter howsoever Science is able to get near it.
Thank you Sir for permitting me to share your old essay/blog in the public domain.
Sudarshan Madabushi
