NAKULAN

Another year has come to stay .My resolutions to write more ,hardly seems to take off.Every year I make that resolution to write more and on a  regular basis but never keep it .Today once again Nakulan seems to inspire me as he has umpteen times in my student days. Going through his poems once again I was struck by his genius as I always have been. He was TKD sir (He was just T.K Doraisamy to many people) to us who used to teach (or should I say not teach) us American poetry .All he did was just make us enjoy the poems and never was there a lecture.In fact at that time (1979)I did not even know that he wrote in Tamil.I had at that time only read some of his English poems.His Ramachandran poem remains my all time favorite.

This is an ode to T.K.D sir                      

 Works of Emerson and Whitman

Became Bible and Bagavatgita to us ,

Not by what you taught ,

But by what you left unsaid.

Deep furrows on your forehead

And the sarcastic toothless laugh

Never failed to make us nervous

And resort to American literature

With more diligence.

How did the old man in the skies

Make you an objective human being?

Sense always ruled your sensibility.

Dry sarcastic bored humor 

Became your hallmark

You were like pebbles

Always related to water and moisture 

But never a drop on it!

Your eyes were never moist

But inside the pebble and you -

There was always a sea

of emotions and kindness-

A light that led many kindly.