scribble pad

Because He wanted to apologize for making relatives

- Dr. Wayne Dyer

I’ve talked a little about Tamil historical novels in my previous two posts. Below is a small list of the best novels that I’ve read and enjoyed immensely, and would gladly recommend to anyone.

Sandilyan:

As mentioned in my earlier posts, his best works are

• Kadal Pura
• Yavana Rani
• Raja Mudhirai

He wrote quite a few historical novels. From memory, the following ones are also good, though not as great as the above three

• Moongil Kottai
• Vijayamahadevi
• Jala Deepam

Kalki:

These are the best of his works (I’m not sure how many he wrote)

• Sivakamiyin Sapatham
• Ponniyin Selvan
• Parthiban Kanavu

Akilan:

I’ve read only Vengaiyin Maindhan, not sure how many he wrote. This is a very good novel.

There it is, my list of great historical novels in Tamil. Anyone wants to add more?

Update

Please take a look at this post too

Till my 3 rd grade, I didn’t know to read or write Tamil. I did know how to speak, as I had spent about one and a half years in Chennai when my father got transferred to a small town called Tiruvarur, near Tanjore. I had to learn both Tamil and Hindi, as my second languages. Thats when I started reading Tamil books and I came across a book called Ponniyin Selvan, by Kalki. Now thats a pretty big novel, split into 5 parts. I started reading it one word at a time (hehe, I must’ve had too much time on my hands). It was pure ecstasy.

Kalki and Sandilyan are the foremost historical novelists in Tamil. There are other authors too, but they simply can’t measure upto the standards set by these two. They have their own strengths. I’m not a scholar or critic, all I want to do is write a bit about them and kindle some interest, amongst the two or three readers (!!!!!) of this blog.

Sandilyan has written very many novels, historical or otherwise, though I have only read his historical novels. His most famous ones are Kadal Pura, Yavana Rani and Rajamuthirai. Vijayamahadevi and a few others can be termed as his second best, but the above mentioned three are his best (at least in my opinion). His dialogues are short and sharp, his pace is very very good and the twists and turns in his tales make them a pleasure to read. He is particularly exceptional in creating war scenes (tactics etc) and describing them. Each of these novels appeared in magazines (kumudham especially), and one irritating tactic he used was to create a suspense at each and every chapter, every week (kumudham is a weekly). But I think its understandable, probably he was forced to do so, to keep readers’ interest. He wrote way too many historical novels (i’ve myself read at least 25-30 of his) and hence there is a sharp drop in quality in most of his novels, except those mentioned above, which are exceptional. He wrote more explicit love scenes more often than necessary in most of his novels, which quickly becomes irritating to read. Plus, one simply can’t keep writing these kinds of novels as often as one writes romantic or detective novels. These novels require indepth research and take time to write. Kalki is said to have spent more than 12 years (yes, 12 years) researching for Sivakamiyin Sapatham.

Kalki is in a different league altogether. Unlike Sandilyan, his dialogues are lengthy and poetical in nature. If you want fast paced stuff, you’ve got to read Sandilyan, if you want to sip coffee and have all the time in the world to enjoy beautiful prose, lengthy and thought provoking dialogues, then you’ve got to pick Kalki. As far as I know, he wrote three historical novels - Ponniyin Selvan, Sivakamiyin Sapatham and Parthiban Kanavu. Just read through the letters that Mamallan writes to Sivakami, in Sivakamiyin Sapatham, its Tamil at its best.

Have you read any of these novels and enjoyed? Have you read any other novel of the same genre which is as good as these or better? Please do leave a comment if you have.

Update:

Please check out this post too

“sarithira kadhai” - translated literally, it is “historical novel”. Heard of “Ponniyin Selvan”, “Sivakamiyin Sapatham” or “Kadal Pura”? All these novels fall in the category of historical novels. What exactly is a historical novel and whats the purpose of this (and a few more to follow) post?

Basically, a historical novel is a story set in a totally different era, usually in the era of kings, hundreds and sometimes, thousands of years ago. Facts are retained (as much as possible) and a fictional story is woven through facts and incidents. Of course, there is no such rule as you should write a historical novel this way or that way, its entirely upto the author. But usually, extensive research is done before a good historical novel is written, and most authors take special care to make sure that they don’t distort the facts. They might add extra characters though, to make the story interesting.

One such example in English is “The Seventh Secret” by Irving Wallace (its set relatively in the recent past, as recent as the second world war period). This post is about some of the extraordinary historical novels, but in Tamil. I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed a few of them.

I’m not sure if anyone is writing historical novels anymore, but they used to be a rage when I was in school. Even today, a huge number of people are interested in this form of fiction. I remember specifically two authors, in fact three - Kalki, Sandilyan and Akilan. I’ve read at least three of Kalki and one of Akilan (not sure if they wrote more than that) and Sandilyan’s, I’ve lost count. I’ll write about some of them in the following posts, if any of you reading this post have similar interests, please leave a comment.

Imagine the world’s most creative people gathering at one place and talking about things that they are most passionate about. These are the best people in their chosen fields of profession and they’re absolutely passionate about what they do and most importantly, all of them want to make the world a better, much better place to live in. Thats precisely what happens every year at the TED. I’m not sure how I came across the TED site, but thank God I did.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. Every year, they bring the best and the most creative people (any field - philosophy, science, music, business….you get the picture) together for four days in california. Each speaker is allotted around 18 mins (just 18 mins !!) and the result is four days of brilliant sharing of ideas and amazing show of talents. You’ve to get an invite to go to the conference and it’ll cost you $4,400 (yeah, $4,400, you read that right). Every year they also award the TED prize, which again is as unique as the event itself. Each of the recipients (three every year) can make a wish, which TED will strive to fulfil. They’ll spend huge amounts of money and do everything in their power to fulfil the wishes.

TED has started releasing audio-video of some of the talks (six of them, so far, with more to come). Wow, they’re amazing - each one of them. If you want a sample, check out this presentation by Hans Rosling.

Enough of my ramblings i guess, go check out TED. Here is the site, presentations and the blog.

PS: Just don’t listen to the audio, download the videos and watch them, awesome.

While cleaning my inbox, I came across this forward. Its so good, how can I not post it? 

“I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.”

Notice something amazing about this sentence? In this sentence the Nth word is N letters long (e.g) 3rd word is 3 letters long, 8th word is 8 letters long and so on…

Man, that is damn cool…

Yesterday, one of my friends sent me a SMS. It was about a recently released Hindi movie. It was so bad that she was asking her friends not to watch it (spending her own money to do so). This reminded me of the session on Pinko Marketing by Tara Hunt, which I attended at the Bangalore Barcamp. The gist of her presentation was “Build a kick ass product, create passion among the early adopters and they’ll do the rest for you”. Building a great product is the difficult step, getting people excited about your product is easy, if your product is good. If your product is good, you can be sure that people will tell others (friends, relatives, colleagues etc) about it, at the same time, if your product is bad, you can be equally sure that people will tell others about it. Its the latter, in the case of this Hindi movie.

These days, the common man is bombarded with ads everywhere - on the television (we rarely see a full over during a cricket match, its always 5 ball overs, thanks to ads), bill boards, mobiles and on the internet, every available inch is filled with ads. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against advertising, or making money through ads if you own a blog or website. I’m just wondering the effectiveness of advertising these days. For example, I rarely click on Adsense ads, I’ve become “ad blind”. Thats why word of mouth marketing is such a poweful tool. Personally, I would give more importance to my friend’s opinion, than that of a cinestar or cricketer, simply because they are promoting a product for money, while my friend would give me a honest review (good or bad, either case). If a blogger writes a good review about Riya or Shopify, its not because (s)he got paid to do it, its because (s)he genuinely liked the product. Big companies can no longer think they can crush smaller companies, just because they have huge budgets for marketing.

A few days ago, I watched a program on skywalking. Actually, I missed a great part of the program, but what I saw, was amazing. Today, I saw another program on skywalking on the Guiness show at AXN. Jay Cochrane, 54 years old (at the time of the record)

skywalked a distance of 600 feet, at a height of a 30 story building (according to the show). You think thats scary? Listen to this, he walked the whole distance blindfolded, without any sort of safety device - no nets, no ropes tied to his body, absolutely no chance of surviving in case something goes wrong. And a lot of things could go wrong - wind could affect his balance, the people who are supposed to hold the wire steady could make a mistake, the wire could get slippery due to moisture, a thousand things could go wrong. I was listening to a short interview of the man. Some of his answers:

I believe everyone has a time. When your time comes, noone can do anything about it. My time (of death) hasn’t just come, yet.

I may be crazy but I take calculated risks, I always wear my seat belt when I drive my car.

I want to be the most talked about skywalker in history.

Before becoming a professional skywalker, he was part of a circus team. He fell once, and was bed ridden for more than 2 years. Doctors told him he would never walk again. Not only did Jay walk again, he became one of the most successful skywalkers in history. Just have a look at his records, you’ll be stunned.

So what makes guys like Jay do what they do? Every step is filled with danger. Still, they love what they do and wont quit even for a million (or more) dollars. what makes them take such huge risks?

Photo Source: Jay’s Place

Sometime ago, I came across haiku form of poetry and since then i’m hooked.  I’ve been reading as much as possible on haiku poems.  When I was searching for information on haiku, I came across tinywords, a brilliant site dedicated to haiku.  They publish one haiku poem everyday, you can even subscribe to receive them in mail.  There is a huge archive (more than 1000 haiku poems), you can easily spend a few days browsing through the archive.  D. F. Tweney, who runs the site, needs help to edit the site and keep it running successfully.  If any of you is a haiku enthusiast and can spare a few hours to help edit the site, or if you have ideas on how to promote the site, head over to http://tinywords.com/help/.  Oh yes, submit your poems too.

This blog is just five days old and I got a chance to try live blogging, at the Bangalore barcamp today.  Quite a few people were blogging live.  I noticed two different styles of live blogging.  One is to listen to a session fully, take notes (either on a notebook or on your laptop) and once the session is over, blog about it.  Another style is to blog as and when the session is running.  I followed the former style, mainly because I found it difficult to concentrate on the session and blogging, at the same time (I tried to blog while Taazza session was going on but quickly gave up) - I wanted to grasp as much information as possible from the sessions I attended.  Have you ever blogged live?  If yes, what style do you follow?