Poet Thiruvalluvar's steel statue made of Tamil letters installed in Coimbatore

Coimbatore: A 25-foot-high steel statue of classic Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar in a sitting posture and designed with linguistic characters has been installed near the Kurichikulam lakefront as part of a Smart City project in Coimbatore.

The 2.5-tonne statue is made of 1,330 interlinked Tamil characters in honour of the 1,330 'Thirukkural' written by Thiruvalluvar, a top official here said.

"As part of our Smart City projects, we have rejuvenated seven old lakes of Coimbatore, including Kurichikulam. Its lakefront has been beautified with sculptures representing the Tamil culture and festivals. Near the lakefront, a huge statue of our revered poet Thiruvalluvar has been installed, made of Tamil characters," Coimbatore's Municipal Commissioner M Prathap told PTI.

Prathap, who is also the CEO of Coimbatore Smart City Limited (CSCL), said the statue as part of the Kurichikulam revival project is expected to be officially unveiled soon.

"We have sent a request to the office of the chief minister (of Tamil Nadu) for the inauguration of the lake project. We are awaiting a date for it from the Chief Minister's Office," he said.

The installation of Thiruvalluvar's statue and other artworks depicting Tamil culture are part of a Rs 50-crore project under the Smart City to revive and rejuvenate Kurichikulam as well as develop its lakefront with walking and cycling tracks and a central pavillion, another senior official said.

"Thiruvalluvar's statue is 25-foot-high, 15-foot-wide and 20-foot-long, and weighs 2.5 tonnes. This majestic sculpture has been created with 1,330 Tamil characters in honour of 1,330 'Tirukkural' written by Thiruvalluvar. Tamil has 247 'eluttukkal' (alphabets), so alphabets have been repeated," Baskar Srinivasan, general manager, Coimbatore Smart City, told PTI.

Thiruvalluvar was a celebrated Tamil poet and scholar, and is best known as the author of 'Tirukkural', a collection of couplets on a wide array of subjects such as politics, economics, ethics and love. Tirukkural is considered one of the greatest works in Tamil literature.

In the sculptural work, Thiruvalluvar has been depicted in a sitting posture, holding a 'panai olai' (palm leaf) in one hand and in the other, an 'ezhuththani' (ancient stylus) used for writing manuscripts, he said.

The uniqueness of the statue is that the entire structure is made of steel and designed with "Tamil characters -- 12 'uyir eluttu', 18 'mey eluttu', 216 'uyirmey eluttu' and one 'ayuta eluttu' for a total of 247 'eluttukkal' (alphabets)", Srinivasan said.

Each of the Tamil letters, made of steel, is interlaced and interlocked in different shapes to reflect the sun's rays on the statue.

"Engineers from various parts of India with statue-making expertise were tasked to design and execute the same. The statue has been designed with four 'secret' words, which need to be searched and found," Srinivasan said.

Prathap said the plan is to also launch a contest to spot these hidden words, once the statue is officially unveiled.

The statue of Thiruvalluvar in Coimbatore sits on a flight of wide steps in turn placed on a civil structure built in the middle of a water inlet connected to the 335-acre Kurichikulam. A bridge connects the peripheral walkway with the central structure.

On one side of the parapet around the statue, his first Tirukkural -- "Agara mudhala eluthellam aadhibagavaan muthatre ulagu" -- is written, Srinivasan said.

He said Agara is the first letter of Tamil language similar to the alphabet 'A' in English. So the Tamil couplet translates to: "As the alphabet 'A' is the beginning of all letters, God is the beginning for all the lives in the world", Srinivasan said.

Thiruvalluvar was born as Valluvar, sometime in the 1st century CE in a village near modern-day Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu. Very little is known about his early life, except that he was a weaver by profession, he said.

He remains one of the strongest and most revered personalities in Tamil culture and his Tirukkural is a cherished work of Tamil literature and held in very high regard, Srinivasan said.

This is the first sitting statue of Thiruvalluvar in Coimbatore, though there is a small statue of him in a standing position installed in the past near a flyover here.

The most iconic sculpture of the celebrated Tamil poet is the colossal standing statue of him in Kaniyakumari in Tamil Nadu, located atop a small island in a place where the waters of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean meet.

The total height of this giant stone statue and the pedestal combined is 133 feet (41 metres). It denotes the 133 chapters of the Tirukkural. The sculpture of Thiruvalluvar is 95 feet (29 metres) and it stands on a 38 feet (12 metres) pedestal that represents the 38 chapters of virtue, the first of three books of the Kural text, according to the website of Tamil Nadu Tourism.

The second and third books – wealth and love respectively – are represented by the statue itself. The statue weighs 7,000 tonnes, it stated.

Coimbatore Smart City officials feel that the new sitting-posture steel statue of Thiruvalluvar will also soon become a tourist attraction in this industrial city.