Poems ✍️

The story of 'Silappadigaram or "The Killer Anklet" has been
attracting me for several years for two reasons.
(1) It was written some 1400 years ago by a Prince-turned-Jain Saint,
Illangovadigal in the Sangam age Tamil poetry, which reflected the culture and
the life style of the people of that time in the Southern parts of India.
(2) The story was filmed in black and white more than 50 years ago. It touched
my heart to see the sufferings of Kannagi, a chaste woman faithful to her
husband Kovalan, despite his extra relationship with a dancing girl, Madhavi,
which broke down later on due to a misunderstanding between the two. He
joined back his wife to restart his life by selling one of her anklets, but he was
killed by the king on a false charge of theft of a queen's anklet brought on him by
a cunning goldsmith, who actually stole it. Kannagi proved that the king was
wrong by breaking her second anklet. The king died for the miscarriage of
justice, followed by the queen, who also died on the spot. One anklet was the
root cause for several deaths and so, the story revolves around this killer anklet
that happened at three places, Pugar, Madurai and Vanchi of those ancient
periods in Tamilnadu, South India.
This book was well appreciated by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the then President of
India. He wrote to me on 6th July 2006, saying that he liked the book very
much, and in particular, the stanza (Verse-14 Page 275 of the Book) .
''She's like a daughter of Pandian,
Now settled with him in the Heaven,
'Pandian shall die, if justice is broken,
She made this rule, let us sing about her.'
The Late American Poetess, a Fowler of West Virginia, USA, gave her liberal
comments on this book, (about 10 pages) , which I shall post later on to show
how she liked this story in simple verse format.