"Take all my grand slams just give me wimbledon" Ivan Lendl once said. "Take all my oratorical skills away give me the gift of creative writing in Tamil" I would cry out in his lines. What sadness it is to be able to think only in Tamil and write only in English. If only writing in Tamil was as easy as speaking in Tamil, I would have written on reems of paper. What does the trick? I am trying to figure out, reading a lot helps you write better yourself people say. So... yes I don't read creative works in Tamil. Most of my Tamil reading is confined to the Bible and the Thirukural. I love and relish the depth of Tamil is just those two books. Just the number of synonyms in Tamil and the etymology of every-day words in Tamil is mind blowing. The variety of words that come to your rescue when you want to express fragile emotions is astounding.
As I speak broken Kannada everyday, my brain constantly finds out Tamil roots for Kannada words and I marvel at the beauty of the language and how what may have been just a dialect many centuries ago has now become a new language. I see words that have scanty use by Tamils today find their real value in Kannada. Two small words 'ஓது ' and 'சொல்ப்பா ie 'சொற்பம்', beautiful words that mean 'study' and 'a little' both in Kannada and Tamil, but words that Tamils world over have replaced with the mundane படி' and 'கொஞ்சம் '. Yet all this research and the exictement that comes with it has not helped me write in Tamil.Someday soon I need to read a lot of writings in Tamil, and let the language flow out of my mind in chaste form. Then I will pen in Tamil. What a wonderful day that would be for me!
Lendl's wish never came true, what will become of mine is really in my hands (pun intended).
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