Bharathiraja (1941-2026): The earth remembers its own

The poet whose name Bharathiraja took for his own once sang of finding his dark god everywhere the world had taught itself not to look – Subramania Bharati, in “Nandalala,” discovering Krishna's colour in the black sheen of a crow's wing, his touch in the scald of fire. And 2,000 years before Bharati, a singer of the Kurunthokai, remembered only by the eponym his own image earned him – Sembula Peyaneerar, “the poet of red earth and pouring rain” – had already given Tamil its founding image of love: two hearts mingled past all parting, as red earth and pouring rain.

Between those two poets – the ancient voice of the red soil and the modern voice of the disregarded – runs the entire cinema of Bharathiraja. On the morning of June 10, 2026, at his home in Chennai, after a prolonged illness, that cinema came to rest. He was eighty-four.

“Poongatru Thirumbuma” – will the soft breeze turn back this way? – his most haunted song had asked. On Wednesday, Tamil Nadu learned the answer of all elegies: the breeze does not return; only the fragrance stays.

The Tamil Film Producers Council, which he once led as president, confirmed the news; the state announced full honours; an...

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