Ponni's Beloved - An Introduction

It has always been my dream to translate Ponniyin Selvan, the great epic story by Kalki Krishnamoorthy. It has the right mixture of everything that is needed for an epic story - History, romance, adventure, battles, treason, secrets and sacrifice.

My interest in Ponniyin Selvan started during the summer holidays from school. I guess I must have been 8 or 9 years old then. During those long summer holidays we used to sit in the verandah discussing everything under the sun. And whenever my father came home early from work we (my sister and I) used to make him to tell us a story.

First he told us stories like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and later he proceeded to interesting epic histories like Ponniyin Selvan. The characters of Ponniyin Selvan captured my imagination. I wanted desperately to read the book. At that time I didn't even know to read Tamil. My father told me that my aunt had the entire 5-part novel in her possession. The next time I met my aunt I sweet-talked her into giving me all the parts of Ponniyin Selvan promising her that I would return them the very next week. (I never kept my promise though. They are still with me. Thankfully she seems to have forgotten about it!)

I had the novel with me but I did not know to read. I somehow managed to learn the alphabets from an elementary Tamil book and proceeded to read through the novel. My first reaction was that there was so much my father had omitted in his narrative. And the second was I wanted to read it all over again. So I proceeded to read it all over again and again and again. I still am not sure how many times I have read it! You can say it is a bit addictive. One does not want to come out of that era.

For the past few years since I began to write for a hobby I had wanted to translate this epic history into English. Hope you enjoy reading this epic history as much as I enjoyed retelling it.