Naan Shweta Pesaren

The title of this post is dedicated to my favorite podcast speaker, Kavitha Jeeva. I stumbled upon a Tamil podcast a couple of months ago. This was when the Covid-19 lockdown had started. I love listening to music while cooking or doing chores. This podcast had me hooked. She starts with "Naan Kavitha Pesaren". I cannot tell you how much I love that start. Her soothing voice and all her references to movies and stories will help you relate to the characters. I am a Tamilian who studied Tamil as a 3rd language. My grasp of the language is not great, so I struggle to read sentences and give up in between.

I have heard of this book Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki, however, never was in a circle of people who had even read this book. Too bad no one had read it. Well, it is never too late to discover something extraordinary, right?

Things I love about this podcast :

Kavitha's beautiful voice and enthusiasm brings out her love for this magnum opus
I have felt the same pain, anger, amusement along with her while she narrated the story
My imagination is just as it would have been while reading a book
The characters are brilliantly written
This book, written in the 1950s, has more depth of characters for the female leads than any recent story
There is comedy, tragedy, romance, politics, revenge, regret
I could never have gotten myself to read the book in Tamil(thanks to how slowly I read), so this medium was the best way to consume such a great story in my lifetime
Beautiful cliffhangers at the end of every episode
Did I mention Kavitha? I can listen to her narrate all the Tamil stories for hours together.
Kavitha Jeeva - Brings out the Jeeva(life) in the characters and story
I hope I mentioned Kavitha, this would definitely not be the same without her narration

I had conversations with folks and found that there is a children's book with this story. The characters are drawn more like Greek Gods and do not help us visualize a more realistic character sketch. So this is what I have visualized in my head. My casting for each character, don't mind me picking people from different eras. This is how I imagine them!

Vanthiya Devan -- Jeeva
Kundavai -- Kasturi
Nambi -- Sivaji Ganesan
Ponniyin Selvan -- Surya
Nandini -- Samantha
Umai Rani -- Amala
Aditya Karikalar -- Vikram
Sundara chola - Sivakumar
Villain Brothers :) -- Ashokan and Muthuraman

I am done with episode 206 as of today(5th July). I finally caught up and now I cannot wait for the next one.

And I am definitely hoping to hear her narrate "Iravu". She definitely got me interested in that one!

If this post interests you, you can get started here: https://ivmpodcasts.com/kadhaipodcasts-ponniyin-selvan

Happy Reading! Stay Safe and Stay Happy!

Comments

c g balu said…

Naan Kavitha
Pesaren

Very good reaction to the podcast.
Well done.

July 6, 2020 at 10:44 AM

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