Modern Purananooru

Purananooru is an ancient work in tamil. It is a collection of 400 poems by different authors. Poem 192 by 'Kaniyan Poongundran' is the most famous amongst the 400. It famously states 'yaathum oore, yaavarum kelir' i.e. 'all towns are my hometown, all of humanity are my brethren'. This work is a modern adaptation of that work. Unless you know that poem, the following will not make sense. Apologies if this does not make sense to you. The translation is given below but the attempted humor might be lost if you don't know tamil and the original poem.

yaathum probleme, yaavarum supervisore
proofum resultum pirar thara vaara
vetti time passum super workum avarro ranna
aapu puthuvathu anre
result inithu ena magizhthandrum ilame
neervazhi paduvum punaipol
gradlife supervisor muraivazhi paduvum
enbathu pazhutha grad student kaatchiyin thelinthanam aagalin
publish seitha periyorum grad studentae
publish seiyatha siriyorum grad studentae


Everything's a problem, all are supervisors
Proofs and results don't come from others
False work or true work is a personal choice
Being scowled at by all and sundry is nothing new
Results don't make us go overbaord
The river predestines the path of the boat
Similarly, supervisor predestines the path of the grad student
Thus, have we seen in visions of experienced grad students
Hence, thou art a grad student if thou publish
even better, thou still art a grad student if thou publish not