Half a kilometre to the southern side of the Therezhundhur Temple, is the memorial to the great Tamil poet Kamban. It is called Kambar Medu .
This spot, I was told by a local villageman there who was kind enough to give us a tour of the memorial, was once full of shabby encroachments and waste debris until it was reclaimed and restored by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) that recognized it a place of historic importance … only because of its connection with Kamban but also because it was the site of some excavations that had revealed the Iron Age provenance of what were its unearthed discoveries.
The spot however has come to be named Kambar Medu (Kamban’s Mound) since , there are local legends and other literary cues that strongly indicate that this was where Kamban was born . And the presence of a small, nondescript nearby Kali Kovil confirms what historically has been believed to have been the family-shrine of the Kamban ancestral family.
I was personally thrilled to simply gaze hard and long there … while imagining to myself that perhaps I was standing at the very spot where the great Kamban might have perhaps walked too!
Last year, on my 2024 annual pilgrimage, inside the famous temple of Tirukkurughur in Azhwar Tirunagari, I had similarly stood transfixed before and under the branches of the great tamarind tree under which it is believed that Swami Nammazhwar had sat in many long years of meditative seclusion. I had imagined then that I was standing exactly where the great Sri Vaishnava Acharya might himself have strode about…. I prostrated myself on the ground thinking of him.
It was quite the same emotion that I felt now at Kambar Medu.
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As I stood and stared on the barren grounds of Kambar Medu , suddenly I saw a lone peacock fly down and perch itself on top of an adjoining perimenter wall at a distance .
A famous Kamban verse describing a peacock’s beauty is:
“மயில் கண் உண்டோ? மதிக்கதிர் போல
அயில்கண் ஒளிரும் அலங்கல் முகத்து”
This translates to:
“Does the peacock have eyes? Its face, adorned with a shining beak, glows like the rays of the moon.”
This verse is from Kamban’s Ramavataram (Kamba Ramayanam), where he poetically compares the peacock’s radiant face and shimmering feathers to the brilliance of moonlight, highlighting its enchanting beauty.
It struck me that the sight of the peacock there in that moment was more than just plain happenstance.
(to be continued)
Sudarshan Madabushi