Kannadasan - An Interesting Piece of Information

Date: 01.01.2008

Today I wish to share an interesting piece of information with you all on Kannadasan(1927 - 1981). For the sake of non-Tamilians, let me give a small introduction on him. He is a famous Tamil cine lyricist of yesteryears. He has penned several thousand Tamil cine lyrics. I won't be justified, if I refrain from mentioning his multi-faceted personality. Apart from penning poetry, he has also penned several Tamil short stories, dramas, essays and has also acted in and produced some Tamil movies. One ironical thing which everyone should note here is that eventhough he was a drop-out in middle school, his writings were equivalent to that of an erudite. The following piece of information is actually an epitome of the irony. Long time back, I came across it in a Tamil weekly.

Let me start narrating it to you all now:

Once the daughter of the reknowned English poet William Wordsworth (referred to as Nature Poet and he was the one who said that poetry is a spontaneous over flow of powerful feelings), who herself was a poetess paid a visit to Chennai and was staying in a star hotel. Kannadasan, who came to know about her presence in Chennai, wanted to call on her at the hotel. Consequently he went to the hotel but there he was denied permission to meet the distinguished guest by the authorities of the hotel. Kannadasan then kindly requested one of the room boys to just hand over a bit of paper, in which he wrote something in English for her, and get back to him with her response post that.

The room boy obliged to do so and after the poetess went through the contents in the paper, she forced the room boy to take her to Kannadasan. The conversation between the English poetess and the Tamil poet then lasted for hours together. Can any one guess what there was in the paper which forced the English poetess to meet Kannadasan? It is as under:

"An Outstanding Tamil Poet is Standing Outside"