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!