Proverbs of Tamil Nadu
Proverbs are repositories of wisdom. Those who want to
study a foreign culture often study their proverbs. A work like Thirukural is famous all over the world. Its
great wisdom is found in the proverbs of the land.
The joke about the proverbs is, “Wise men wrote them; fools repeat them
now.” Proverbs go to the secret depths of life and enshrine the secret in
a short pithy saying. However great the proverbs are, they are confined to Life
which is presided over by karma.
Proverbs of an alien culture are striking when they voice a new aspect. So is
the English proverb, “If you want to be happy for one year buy a house;
if you want to be permanently happy, be a good man”, and the Chinese one,
“Today's friends are tomorrow's enemies”.
My interest is in the Spirit and how it disproves the age-old wisdom of the
proverbs. One proverb says, “Even an elephant will slip sometimes.”
It is true. No one is infallible. When the Spirit is on the surface, life
cannot fail because that which fails is NOT Spirit.
The conflict between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is age-old. At least
I know one mother-in-law who treats her daughter-in-law as her own daughter. This
is so because both have chosen to live by The Mother. Once I tried to write
down over a hundred proverbs of Tamil Nadu and think of their version in
Spirit. That made me appreciate the role of Spirit more. I give a few of them
here.
1. Moments of danger brush aside rules of orthodoxy. There is no moment of
danger in Mother's Life. 2. Money in the hands of a woman is lost. Women
are better preservers of cash than men. 3. One does not know one's own
back. The Spirit knows both sides at once. 4. The crop that is not sustained by
rain will not be sustained by the dew. The crop grows better in the dew if
Spirit is there. 5. A labour of a mountain yields the result of a rat. In Spirit,
a rat can damage a mountain.