“Kanthan’s humorous speech and booming voice are enough to grab everyone’s attention,” says a group of youngsters, who visit the Venkatesaperumal temple at Mugalivakkam regularly.
Not just them, many residents here at Porur seem to be fans of Rama Tamil Kanthan, who delivers spiritual talks at local temples.
Kanthan, who is a resident of Subasree Nagar at Mugalivakkam, has been rendering his works in various formats for the upliftment of Tamil language. For this Tamil New Year, News Today catches up with the 77-year-old scholar to know more about his work.
Talking about the initiation, Kanthan says, “Although I worked in the transport department, my real passion was reading and researching ancient Tamil literary works. After a point in life, I felt this valuable knowledge that I had gained should be shared with the current generation. These days, youngsters are too lazy to go search for books and read them. So, I thought of sharing whatever I have read in an innovative and humorous way.”
The 77-year-old says, “I have been taking upanyas classes and giving devotional speeches for the last 40 years. I have conducted over 1,000 spiritual upanyasas and about 30 Tamil debates, contributed many articles to several magazines, written 15 spiritual books, six novels and many poems. Currently, I am writing articles for the magazine Kaamakoti.”
When asked about his inspiration, he says, “My role model is Bharathiyar. I rendered a speech during the Bharathiyar centenary function held in Kolkata, and I consider that as one of my achievements. As years passed, I started focussing more on spiritual works. Now, I give speeches on Skandapuranam and Kambaramayanam, among others.”
GRABBING YOUNGSTERS’ ATTENTION
Most of my audience are youngsters, and the present generation nowadays demand proper reason and proof for everything. They are not ready to accept facts blindly and demand scientific justification. So, I do a lot of background work and research before I make a speech.
Every time I give out a speech, I approach it as if it is my first one and work for it accordingly. Giving the same kind of speech all the time will leave the audience bored, so I keep myself updated and add in humour content also.
We cannot promote Tamil language by just keeping it preserved. Rather, we should practice it. Youngsters should read and explore our literary works more, stresses Kanthan.