Solomon Pappaiah passed away at 90 in Madurai
The voice that first began to ring out in that school has travelled across every town and village — indeed, across the world — for 60 years, conducting more than 8,000 pattimandrams.
Please wait one minute, I beg you,” said the man from Tamil Nadu. With a Thirukkural every day, he was introduced to children as “Thirukkural Thatha” — Grandpa of the Thirukkural. Once, when we were at an airport abroad, a janitor came running towards us. “Ayya! The rest of us didn’t want to wait. But Ayya insisted we stay. The man returned with dates he had bought with the little money he had, gave them to Ayya and fell at his feet. When people hear the name Pappaiah, they think of pattimandram. But he spent more time delivering lectures on Tamil literature. He provided an accessible commentary on Thirukkural and published a scholarly study of Akanaanooru. He founded the Madurai Kamban Kazhagam to organize celebrations honouring Kamban, the emperor of poets; Avvaiyar, the revered grandmother of Tamil; and Subramania Bharati, the poet who gave every song its soul. This ‘Vaigai Vallavan’ (name by which he was known in his early days) made the common man fall in love with Tamil. It happened that one day a young boy, terrified after being chased by a bull, sought refuge in a school. When it came time to admit the half-pants-wearing boy into primary school, the teacher gave him a simple test: “Sing a song. He sang a film song by P U Chinnappa and earned the teacher’s praise. He travelled by plane, bullock cart, sand lorry, cycle rickshaw, tractors and overcrowded buses. In college, he got an award from people’s leader M G Ramachandran for his performance as a stage actor. It became a mark of his mastery of Tamil arts — literature, music and drama.