POEM FROM TAMIL LITERATURE - ELEGY OF A CHAINED WARRIOR KING

ABOUT THE POEM:The poem ELEGY OF A CHAINED WARRIOR KING contrasts an ancient code of honor that upholds valor even in death with the king’s own humiliating reality. While society ritualizes courage—granting symbolic heroism by slashing with a sword even to lifeless infants—he laments that he is denied dignity in life, dragged in chains, stripped of inner strength and reduced to begging merely to survive. The poem mourns the loss of self-respect and questions the cruelty of a fate that offers ritualized honor to the dead but degradation to the living.ELEGY OF A CHAINED WARRIOR KINGEven if a newborn dies,even if a child is born as nothing morethan a lump of flesh,they believe it was not born without valor.To grant it courage,they slash it with the swordand perform the final rites—such is their custom.But I—I was dragged herelike a dog bound in chains.With no mettle in my heart,I was reducedto begging for a sip of water,to quiet the hunger in my belly.Was I bornonly to inheritthis shameful state?PURANANURU - 74POET: CHERAMAN KANAIKKAAL IRUMPORAI