For the famous Tamil film actor Sivakumar, echo was something dreadful that got registered in his memory when he was a boy. His Periyamma(Aunt) Rangaathaal and Sivakumar would visit the weekly Sulur shandy to buy provisions and vegetables and return home by foot on the lake's bund. Read more
When you walk on the bund of Sulur lake and reach a railway bridge, say something aloud standing at its underpass and you can hear 'someone' repeat the word. The reflection of a sound, which everyone calls today an 'echo', no doubt, in the history of mankind, has influenced different groups of people across the world to create interesting mythologies on it.
One such interesting tale is found in Metamorphoses, a Latin mythological epic penned by the Roman poet Ovid. The story centers around how the 'talkative nymph' Echo was cursed by Hera, the jealous wife of the Greek God Zeus. The curse is that Echo could only repeat the last word of a sentence uttered by another. Later, Echo falls in love with the handsome hunter Narcissus, who rejects her proposal point blank. As a result, the heartbroken girl pines away and becomes just a voice to 'echo' the words of others in the woods.
Echo, if not a mountain nymph described by Ovid, was a thing of amusement to the children in yesteryear Coimbatore. For instance, the little ones living at Kinathukadavu, a village then, would ascend the hill temple Ponmalai with their parents and play atop the rocks uttering the names of their playmates aloud and getting amused by the echoes of their words.
However, for the famous Tamil film actor Sivakumar, echo was something dreadful that got registered in his memory when he was a boy. His Periyamma (Aunt) Rangaathaal and Sivakumar would visit the weekly Sulur shandy to buy provisions and vegetables and return home by foot on the lake's bund. Holding his Periyamma's Kosuvam (Back folds of the saree) the little Sivakumar would walk home, enjoying the beautiful flow of river Noyyal, the snake-residing bushes of the fragrant Thazhampoo (Pine screw flower), the green paddy fields and coconut groves on the way to his Periyamma's home at Kulathur.
On one such occasion, as the two reached the Moonukannu Paalam (Three-eyed railway bridge), what Sivakumar's Periyamma told him about the construction of the bridge is a different myth on echo.
She narrated to him the myth that an Englishman, after several vain attempts, built the railway bridge sturdy by a human sacrifice of as many as 50 children and embedding their heads into the base of the bridge. She also told him that he could hear the voice of those 'dead” children under the bridge, as they would repeat the words uttered by others.
Now, standing inside the underpass of the bridge, Sivakumar cried “Ammaa!” and the 'children' too echoed it!