A book in translation in Tamil which I like is 'manidan eppadi pErARRal mikkavan AnAn'. I bought it some decades ago, in street pandalled book shop of Russian books in translation, (into English, into Tamil, on various subjects Science, History, Literature etc). The book I mentioned is one written by M Ilin and E Segal. In English translated by Beatrice Kinkead. Who translated in Tamil I do not remember. But the get up of the Tamil book was so aesthetic, that you wanted to read it just because you take it and open it. Not only that, how the Tamil translator was able to capture full tones of the original is something amazing. In Beatrice Kinkead's translation the theme of the book is on the following lines:
"There was a time when man, too, lived in just such an invisible cage and was bound by just such an invisible chain. If we want to find out how he succeeded in breaking the chain and getting out of the cage, we'll have to go to the woods and see how our relatives there, who are still prisoners, live.
So we must begin this book about man with a walk in the woods and a talk about wild animals and birds.
You've often heard people talk about being "free as a bird." But do you suppose a woodpecker is free ? If he were a "free" bird he could fly anywhere he happened to take a notion and live wherever he pleased. And that's absolutely not the case. Just try moving a woodpecker to a treeless prairie. He'd die, for he can live only where there are trees. It's just as if he were chained to a tree by an invisible chain which he can't break."
But can we appreciate this sentiment just at present moments? Then are we caged by our own blindness of the haughty ahankara? Knowledge can liberate but perhaps wisdom alone can maintain freedom from the great onslaught ever possible, that is, from our own selves.?
Srirangam Mohanarangan
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