After a long time, I felt so good at the level of an intellectual debate we had on a seemingly fleeting and trivial issue.

Scholarly Tamil, especially those works that date back to several centuries, always need some probing to understand. Most of those words are seldom used in the contemporary Tamil dialects. Therefore, I decided to start learning at least one maxim a day to understand and share the same with my friends, thereby critically expounding some of these great puranic works of Classical Tamil. I am a mere Tamil aficionado and do not have any scholarly exposure to Tamil. I may be consulting informally with my parents, books, or friends, if I have problems in deciphering the meanings for these maxims. Therefore, should you observe any errors in either my translations or ruminations, kindly do let me know and I will make suitable modifications. Please do jot down your own thoughts and critiques so that it will truly be a learning experience for me. It was composed by the great old Tamil Poetess Auvaiyaar, who belonged to the last Sangam era. Her devotion to Lord Vinayaka (Elephant God) and Lord Muruga (Tamil God) is well known. Her many other works appear in the great epic of Tamils' bravery, namely புறநானூறு ('puruh-nAAn-OOru'), roughly translated as the 'Four Hundred Great Anthologies of Tamils' Bravery.' Through ஆத்திச்சூடி (AA-thi-chOO-di) maxims (which were part of her 'Ethical Books' collection) she wanted to captivate and inculcate moral and ethical thoughts in the younger minds. These maxims are still being taught for the kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade kids in India. However, my audience for this blog is not kids rather it is their parents. Therefore, I want to present content in a way that would be more appealing to parents so that they can present it in a way pleasing to their kids. I will present one maxim a day for the next 108 days. A relevant or random quote for the day.Rumination or discussion on the maxim itself.Translation of the Tamil maxim in my own English.Original maxim in Tamil (transliteration in parenthesis).Therefore, I will blog each entry with four portions.

You need to have Unicode support in your browsers and Operating Systems to view Tamil content. The last time, I did something of this sort was my, ' Dhinam Oru Kural' (A couplet a day) e-mail service that I started during my days at University of Florida between 1997-1999, through a simple Unix e-mailing PINE program. Many of my friends are baby-boomers a few of them are in the family way.

Aathichudi in tamil