Beyond Borders

In old Tamil Nadu, where the heavens yawned wide over softly swelling hills and rivers sang their way through villages, there lived Kaniyan Poonkunranar, a respected Tamil sage-poet. Neither king nor warrior, yet his voice was louder than any king's proclamation.

Each morning, he would sit under a large banyan tree in the town square of Aasoor, writing lines on palm leaves as farmers went about their daily business, traders unloaded goods, and travelers hurried by. To most, he was merely a silent thinker. But then, one morning, a foreign merchant from the North walked in, dressed in an unfamiliar tongue and garment. He was derided by a few locals who considered him an alien.

Kaniyan rose to his feet and, with a soft-spoken voice that stilled the market din, declared, "To us, all nations are one, and all men are our kin." His words fell on parched ground like rain. The crowd quieted. Even the mockers had their eyes cast down.

He asked the stranger to share his leaf plate and take some of his own food. That evening, under the starry sky, the village heard the poet recite a world without walls—where only an understanding heart was the border, and love, the sole law.

Years later, those same lines would go beyond Tamilakam, chiseled into the heart of the nation and written on the United Nations' walls.

Moral:

There is no border to genuine wisdom. All people are one family, and any stranger is yet another sibling waiting to be discovered.

Inspiration:

To us all countries are one, everyone our relatives. - Kaniyan Poonkundranar