While back, I posted about this as an intro – click here to read. Yesterday, on an auspicious guruvaram, mama had sent me the full book.

Mummanikovai is not easy to write. It needs to be written in three styles –

• 1st poem using Vembavai,
• 2nd using “Kattalai Kalithurai”
• 3rd using a “Vritham”

Three poets are identified for this. Sri Ayyarappan was chosen to write on Adi Acharya, Sri Ilanthai Ramaswamy for Mahaperiyava and Sri Mathivannan for Sri Pudhu Periyava. While they an be independent poems, the start of the poem has to be using the last word of the other poem – kind of “anthakshari”. Words are chosen, each went in different direction to write the poems. In Kattalai Kalithurai format, each sentence is very tightly measured on how many vowels etc!! Writing such poem is difficult. To give a comparison, Abirami Andhathi is written using this format, as I was told!

Sri KVJ rocks in his “Vaazhthurai”!! “Kaapu” is short and sweet!

This book is like a trick to read for me – for instance, I was tempted to read about Mahaperiyava first and then the rest. If I do that, I will not appreciate the anthakshari-style continuations from previous poem..Anyways, I settled myself to read it in the order it was written 🙂

Beautiful poems – we don’t see such quality poems nowadays often..Lines about all three acharyas are touching our heart….Poems 8 & 23 about Mahaperiyava are my favorites…9 & 12 about Pudhuperiyava are spot-on!

Our sincere namaskarams to these three great poets!

Thanks mama for this wonderful book…

Click here to download

Categories: Bookshelf