Sumathi Sataka - Its relevance for modern living

Sumathi Sataka is a set of 100 four line poems written in Telugu around 800 years back. The poems were widely quoted even by commoners in their day to day conversations up to 60s and 70s. With the growing importance of English language studies over the past 3-4 decades, very few popular poems are now part of the language studies in the lower classes for students. Naturally most of the poems are not known to the current generations. This is a small attempt to introduce these poems to the current generation and their relevance to the current society.
Each of the poems end with a word "SUMATHI" which is generally known as makuta (header). Sumathi can be broken into two parts su - good, mathi - mind / nature. That is good nature / good minded. Sataka means hundred. This book contains one hundred (it will be 108 actually) poems in Telugu which deal with the happenings in the society which are compared to some examples which are again from the common happenings. The third line of the poem sometimes contain a common sense solution to avoid the effects for the happenings mentioned earlier.
We will examine some of the most popular poems initially and go on to the others
The original poem in Telugu (rewritten in English script) is
"Akkaraku raani chuttamu
Mokkina varameeni velpu, moharamuna
daa nekkina baarani gurram
grakkuna viduwandavalayu gadara Sumathi"


The literal meaning of the above poem is


"One should stay away from or leave
A relative who cannot come to your rescue in need
A god who does not give a boon after worship
A horse which cannot run during a war"
Does the above poem relevant to the current?? I believe so.


The first line of the poem which talks about a relative who does not help you or come to your rescue in troubles. A relative (not friend) is part of the family. If the family members does not stand by one another then there is no point in continuing the relationship. Helping in in Indian thinking includes physical, financial and through guidance. A person who is not on socially acceptable path will initially be counselled by the close relatives. Similarly there may be requirement of physical involvement in organizing functions etc.
The second line talks about a god who does not give a boon even when worshipped should be left alone. In modern day context, we do not have any gods. There is another meaning for this a ruler is a god for the commoners. A ruler who does not help after electing to power should be divested of such power. One needs to understand that this should happen in the commonly acceptable way. For example, if a modern day elected government is engaged in wide spread corruption and laws which go against the citizens should be voted out of the power in the next elections (as we do not have the power to vote them out earlier than that). There are many examples for this from modern society from many countries.


The third line talks about leaving a horse which cannot run faster in a battle. If a horse is not quick in battle then it will be fatal for the rider and can result in his getting severely injured or in death. In a modern society one needs to upgrade the skills regularly and be agile to spot the opportunities and take them. A person whose skills are not up to date will be left behind in the career race. If we look at the change in the nature of clerical jobs over the period of time during the last 40 years we can clearly see the difference. Initially the skills required for a clerk were that the person should be able to read and write, passed high school and with a smattering of English. They were desk-bound updating the details in big ledgers. Now this job is out of fashion. The same person is now known as a data entry operator who should be able to enter the data into a computer with good English knowledge (unfortunately language skills are pathetic in India). A clerk who joined in mid eighties and who could not upgrade to computers need to leave the job or only will be assigned odd jobs which are unimportant. That is one needs to constantly upgrade the skills. This applies not only to individuals, this applies to corporates as well. Nokia is a best example. When every other company has started manufacturing the smart mobile phones, Nokia delayed entering into this market even though they were the world market leaders in mobile phones. Ultimately this resulted in them going out of reckoning from them No 1 position.
One can see from above that these four lines from a poem which was supposedly written 800 years back is still relevant to the modern society.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anna Hazare’s Janlokpal Bill – Are we looking at Orwellian type of society?

India is in frenzy for the last 10 days with the anti-corruption rhetoric of Mr Anna Hazare. This is similar to the one witnessed sometime back over the issue of bringing back the black money from Swiss banks. The black money issue was first coined by Bharatiya Janata Party and later taken up by Mr Anna Hazare and Mr Ramdev Baba apart from sundry others. What we are witnessing now is not dissimilar to the earlier issue. Anti-corruption rhetoric is not new either in India or abroad. It was Mr Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India who declared that a corrupt person should be hanged from the nearest lamp post around 100 years ago. We are yet to see a single hanging. It was taken up by the successive prime ministers but nothing has happened. In fact, all the governments starting from the first government post-independence have seen some scandal or other. The lamentable fact is nothing has happened in any of these cases be it the Jeeps scandal (of the first government) of th...
Read more

Sumathi Satakam - Lessons for Modern Management

“Erakumi Kasugayala Durakumi bandhujanula doshamu summi Parakumi ranamuna Meerakumi guruvunagna medina Sumathi”   The English translation is something like this Do not collect unripe fruits Do not point out errors of relatives Do not run away from battle Do not go above the order given by your teacher   This is a simple poem taught to the young students in Andhra giving them four important principles in life.   The first line asks the students not to collect unripe fruits when collecting the fruits for immediate consumption. Many types of unripe fruits taste different from the ripe one. For example a ripe mango tastes totally different from a raw mango. By collecting the unripe fruits one will be wasting the resources as they may not be useful and may be thrown away.   The second line talks about not pointing out the errors of relatives as this will alienate them. By alienating the relatives we may not be able to expec...
Read more

Let Us Celebrate Justice for Celebrities - II

Image
Within days from the suspension of sentence of Mr Salman Khan, we witnessing one more controversial thing - Acquittal of J Jayalalitha, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. This happened on appeal in a case where she was sentenced after 18 years of hearings in various courts (some of them were regular in Tamil Nadu itself and some special courts either constituted by Tamil Nadu Government or Supreme Court). The case is about assets disproportionate to the income of Jayalalitha and her associates (Sashikala, her son and some companies) by an amount of around Rs 66 Crores. In current days of where people talk about hundreds of Crores of rupees as loose change, the amount stated looks like a pittance. But remember around 18-20 years back this is a substantial amount. Even the much celebrated Bofors case involves a total amount of Rs 130 - 160 Crores only. A display of personal adoration which characterizes Tamil politics. In this picture people are pouring milk on the wall painting...
Read more