Today is the last day of SWF. We couldn’t attend any family sessions as we had other appointments. Later we had a panel discussion ‘Challenging conventions in Tamil Literature‘ with S. Ramakrishnan and two other Singaporean writers Shanawaz and Jeyanti Sankar. Shanawas is good in story telling. This is the first time I had a chance to listen to Jeyanti Sankar.

From my perspective, S.Ra participated and ran the show. I was so specific about one of the questions raised, which tried to portray as Thirukural has expired backward ane expired concepts. I thought when a Tamilian can come to this kind of conclusion. We have been discussed in the past, about the damages of explanations given to Thirukural, political agenda of Thirukural without knowing its background. This question justifies as it is asked from feminism context. I like the reply from Jeyanti (I think so), Thirukural has to be explained in latest context. Kannan raised his hand for mic. I stopped him as usual.

We had 2 hours of break. We had a late but tasty lunch with 4 chat items!

Later, we joined in our final session for Tamil ‘Literary Ethics: The Writer vs the Work‘, which is the exclusive speech by S. Ra moderated by Sidharthan Maunaguru. It was spontaneous delivery with a fine blend of wits and quotes.

One of the point made by him was, Tamil is the one & only language, which has provided two females who implemented Aram – Kannaki and Manimegalai. Whats so important  about females talking about Aram? He justifies that, Aram is always dictated (Is it the right word?) by males. But females are the ones on the ground who implement it, by introducing virtue to their kids. But they were never appreciated for this.

Moving males and females aside, why not government capture the implementing power of aram?

Can time’s sickle influence Aram?

Is there any Aram that can not be changed?

The speech touched upon these concepts before audience took part in the discussion.

During this debate, Kannan wanted to sit in the front (or, he wanted to sit away from me). he requested for the mic and started questioning about Aram. I was terribly worried, as he may embarrass the gathering, which was luckily tolerated and managed by the author. He gave the boy a use-case. When someone has two pencils, lending one to others is Aram. What will happen when you have only one pencil? That is how complexity of Aram (அறச் சிக்கல்) arises.

While SWF chooses Aram as its theme this year, it wraps up itself leaving the question to us.

The end