Blogging One's Own Trinkets

2006-05-10T02:35:00.000-07:00

JEALOUSY

MAN imitates god in art
He tries and fails
And beaks his heart
Left only are the cries and wails

It is his will and whim
That in his whole domain
He should only win
In his own game

Multiplication is
A creator’s art
Cloning is his
Favourite craft
He put some of him
Into all of us
Held back some
Why, he alone knows

What is sure:
He is a narcissist
His ego must
Must it reflect everywhere

Yet a man called Gandhi
A regally naked dandy
Defied God and gravity
And soared up with levity
Spiritual muscle he did flex
Gave the Almighty a mighty complex

Paramatma felt
The Mahatma’s threat
In Him he saw a rival
And decided to play a prompt devil
Decidedly mean, utterly mean
He too hired a meaner assassin
Pushing himself to the side-wings
The Lady Macbeth had taken wings

If he could mastermind a heinous crime
Why blame his clone, a readymade demon.
‘If I can’t be visible to eyes mortal
Nor should a mortal be allowed to steal
A march over me and hog the limelight
In his years of dazzling twilight’
- Petty logic of a petty god.

The mean-minded god
Had once again played
The spoilsport, gave short shrift
To a piece of heavenly art.
His own creation fell victim
Call it the recreation of the power supreme.

VIJENDRA RAO

2006-04-20T09:33:00.004-07:00

Some random quotes from

Run of the Mind

The more the ego is sought to be dressed with the robes of exclusivity, the more naked it stands.

Why does wisdom elude us? Just when we have felt we are ascending, we slide. It is a tempting need of the soul to fly free of the body that has got habituated to harlotry. All of us are accustomed to hosting such transient nobility as our mind’s guest. It is he in whose mind nobility has found a permanent home that gets through the life’s examinations. Is it any wonder than that the number of candidates succeeding in this tedious examination is so few? The examination is undoubtedly tough, but it is an examination where we are allowed to be accompanied by the guide.

Belief in the mortality of doctors is a sure way of gaining freedom from the fear of death. In this state of fearlessness, love of life sustains the will to transit into non-life.

Rat race for power has wiped out the ideological distinctions of our political parties and reduced their leaders to one mangled mass of unidentifiable bodies without life, soul or character. … the need felt in secular circles (of intellectuals, not politicians) for propagating secularism has the similar potential to reduce India to a land of cultural zombies, uniform in their lack of distinctness.

Mysteries appear most enchanting when not disrobed of the shroud of non-inquisitiveness. Probing quest of the senses and the mind divests phenomena of their element of mystery and parades them shamelessly as naked facts, insipid shreds of information and commonplace knowledge.

Greed kicks reason out of its habitat.

Mangoes don’t seem to smile any more. Or, do they? They pluck the fruits and incubate them. Why young mangoes, even children hasten to maturity prematurely these days. They are plucked from their childhood and subjected to treatments with a view on the yield.

Absence of commercial activity means not only innocence and longer life, but also no knowledge or need for arithmetic. Where there is no arithmetic, there is no counting. No counting results in birthdays not being kept track of. Where there are no birthdays, there are no annual reminders of the wear and tear of life. The time one gains by merging with nature is both relative and absolute.

Time, like light, exists as both wave and particles. We don’t feel that the person who borrowed money from us has done us justice in returning the amount in instalments, whereas his timely repayment in one large chunk – just the way he borrowed it from us – gives us immense satisfaction. This is the difference between living in a city and living on the countryside. Time, broken into so many fractions over the day, and over a life span, does not mean the same when spent in a village in its undivided whole.

LIFE, the eternal journey through space and time, also seems a race against them. Much of man’s inability to be elsewhere when he wants to be, and his sheer mortality, are both absolute limits that space and time place on his existence.

Man, in turning the middleman in celestial transactions, has put a spoke in the water cycle’s wheel.

Knowledge is the veil of the ignorant.

The torch that the heart holds out to light memory lane is not bright enough to illuminate the path. It is like an arduous drive in insufficient light through an unpaved way on a moonless night.

Sorrow has lost its intensity. The mind pathetically attempts to relive those intense moments. Like the woefully futile effort of the lover to maximise the benefit of coition; like the banal attempt of an incomplete soul to reap a higher quality of meditative yield.

How we crave for solitude and when solitude is granted, we take liberties with ourselves! We drop our guard and shed all inhibitions. We become our true selves. When we are alone we have nobody before whom to guard our image. The heavy payload of sin is launched on to the space vehicle of solitude and with the power of our greed as the fuel, is dispatched on to another orbit, outside our mind. But, the guilt is all the time circling around us like the satellite propelled by the negative energy that we keep emitting all through our lives. Thievery is a very private act. Solitude is its only accomplice.

Modern existence has left us with malnourished sorrow, a peculiar state characterised by a sense of latent incapacity for feeling. It is not happiness alone that we always feel is not enough; the shallowness of our experience of sorrow leaves us unfulfilled as well.

New Year resolves are marked by a pronounced denial of warranty. The dead weight of the discarded resolutions is lighter only than the guilt that their discarding induces. Drinks are gulped less in celebration of ushering in the New Year than in downing the guilt associated with the celebration of nothingness which, every preceding year, to most of us, would mean.

2006-04-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

The gone guru

THIS moment, there is a stirring compulsion within to reject the perennial need to practise journalistic duplicity of making politically correct statements. Realization of this need appears to be no more than a cat-on-the-wall posture struck for the limited purpose of achieving a banal goal of myopic pragmatism. It is appalling to see the way the information age of today has ended up creating such huge oceans of ignorance which are threatening to submerge the few remaining tiny islands of knowledge. The present phase of mankind’s collective existence, characterized as it is by an abundance of information, is churning out more information than what the intended recipients can ingest, leave alone digest and assimilate. Information of gargantuan proportions was therefore only expected to be strewn all around like the overfed garbage bins in our cities. It is in the very genetic quality of information to be treated without regard because of its free availability. Books are not parted as easily as newspapers and magazines are, their cover-price not really being as much of a consideration as their content while being disposed.

The information age has thrown up challenges at different levels. The deluge of information has obscured knowledge. While making information easily available, it has made the choice of information ever more confusing, and the one way that modern man has found to stay out of this confusion is to stay free from the burden of exercising this choice. That is to remain insulated from the bombardment of information. This is probably somewhat similar to the problem the television viewer has of making multiplicity of choice and, because he has to make a simultaneous choice of different programmes, he goes channel surfing and ends up watching no programme to any degree of satisfaction. To a certain extent the damage wreaked by the information explosion – knowledge being its first casualty – is mitigated by the due precaution that (at least) some people exercise by staying away from the area of occurrence of the blast.

The second problem, which is more severe than the first, perhaps, is that, it is spawning in droves a breed of neo-illiterates, who are easily manipulated for commercial gains as a matter of routine.

Thirdly, the eradication of thought from the mind – the fertile and necessary condition for manipulation – is making people completely insensate. Let us, for instance, consider poverty. The informed were never more glut with information about the underfed. But, the very availability of so much information about the prevalence of poverty blunts the mind to this manipulated human misery. Why wasn’t Arjuna similarly blunted by the prospect of an impending tragedy of similar dimensions?

The roots of Arjuna’s diffidence were not in non-violence, but in a certain abdication of duty, which found an ideal companion in confusion, if not in cowardice masquerading as vacillation. Krishna, his true companion, pulls him out of the rut through his sage counselling, delivered as a song.

If the imminence of war could spur Krishna to sum up the essence of living in that one long song, what more would he have created if only he had sung the same after experiencing the momentum of the colossal tragedy, the course of which saw a tantalizing interplay of emotions and time? Since the song flowed spontaneously from the flautist, could he be credited with its authorship, or was it divinity that expressed itself through Krishna and hence the appellation Bhagavad-Gita (God’s own hymn)?

Endowed with the power of reasoning, why do we still go wrong? Why does wisdom elude us? Just when we have felt we are ascending, we slide. It is a tempting need of the soul to fly free of the body that has got habituated to harlotry. All of us are accustomed to hosting such transient nobility as our mind’s guest. It is he in whose mind nobility has found a permanent home that gets through the life’s examinations. Is it any wonder than that the number of candidates succeeding in this tedious examination is so few? The examination is undoubtedly tough, but it is an examination where we are allowed to be accompanied by the guide.

The guide is none other than the Gita, but like the incompetent pupil, for whom the best of textbooks cannot help in getting past the examination, we are hopelessly unable to see the solutions to all our problems in the Gita.

The need of a teacher was never more badly felt than now, but his rejection was never so complete as now. In a desperate attempt to get out of the existential angst, we have allowed ourselves to be enamoured with the modern ideal of inaction. All that we do is fatalistically woven to that one objective of blissless inaction. The futile pursuit of this unattainable goal has sucked humanity into a tizzy of mass inertia. Yet, we desire it, thinking it gives us freedom. The importance of action as a way of liberation is little understood. We have all become like the pre-battle Arjuna.

2006-04-13T10:31:00.011-07:00

Rich portrait of India

By Maya Khonkhaje

Run of the Mind is a collection of ninety essays –most of them already published in The Mysore Mail - by Vijendra Rao, journalist and essayist, about a subject he knows and loves well: India and its highly idiosyncratic people. It is also any journalist’s dream. Who has not dreamt of writing a daily, or weekly column on any subject, however banal or lofty, and of being assured of its right to publication? The author himself informs us that he had the privilege of publishing his own work in his own newspaper while being the paper’s editor, without having to subject it to peer review. But he is honest and explains in his preface that he doesn’t consider “the essays anything more than mere ramblings of an editor that enjoyed unbridled freedom.” Moreover, his intellectual honesty has compelled him to seek the opinion of a complete stranger on the other side of the world. That stranger happens to be me, a stranger who knows and loves India both as a stranger as well as an old friend.

I would disagree with Rao when he dismisses his essays as mere ramblings. They are much more than that. They are keen observations on life, mores, traditions, modernity, self-delusion and much more. We all go through life thinking apparently random thoughts, not daring to put them down on paper, as Rao has done. But our thoughts are never really random, because they are a composite of our daily lives, the values inculcated by our parents and the formal education we have been exposed to. Vijendra Rao has had the courage to put down on paper many of the observations that have resulted from his encounters with daily life in a country where chaos is sustained by the natural order of things whose machinations are not always clear to the casual eye. We can imagine the author walking, cycling, riding on a tonga or a rickshaw or as a passenger in a taxi or perhaps driving a battered Maruti recording the smells and sounds and sights of this chaos that is modern India, as well as the wonder that it was, to paraphrase noted British historian Prof. Basham.

Rao touches upon subjects as varied as rape (the victim should not be stigmatized), the cloning of gods (i.e. Ganesha), profanity as self expression (it diminishes human dignity and demeans women), the nature of sympathy (it is not a democratic emotion), the impending demise of literature (Rao challenges V.S. Naipul’s ridiculous claim) and most importantly, the essence of Indianness (difficult to describe in a nutshell). And he does so with a deep knowledge of Hindu traditions and curiosity about the modern world. He also muses on the follies of his fellow human beings with compassion and understanding.

And since Rao has been so honest in his appraisal of his own work, I will be equally honest in my own appraisal, for all it is worth. It took me a long time to get through the book because, even though I have lived in India for eleven years and visited it many more times, I have lost my ear for Indian English after having lived most of my life abroad. Some of the author’s use of archaic terms or “liberal” ideas expressed within the context of a very traditional mind-set have struck me as sometimes naïve and often plain outmoded. His views on women, which are highly respectful and considerate, might be deemed too liberal by ultraconservatives in India but condescending by Western feminists. However, these are just the views of a stranger from the other side of the world who does not know the country as thoroughly as the author does. Some turns of phrases which sound just right in India might sound quaint, if not downright ungrammatical, to a reader attuned to the language of modern media and literature. But these are minor blemishes that do not mar the very rich and complex portrait of India painted by Rao.
If you want a polished account of India as seen from the outside, read Dalrymple’s books. If you want a raw look from the inside, read Rao’s Run of the Mind and … enjoy!

This review first appeared in the South Asian Women's Forum website (www.sawf.org). It was reproduced by www.nripulse.com.

(Maya Khankhoje is one of the talented new voices in the evolving literature of science fiction and fantasy. Long dominated by Western-centric technological positivists, speculative fiction has become more complex today --- it asks more difficult questions, takes less for granted and includes more diverse voices than ever before. However the so-called Third World is still under-represented in speculative fiction, not only in terms of setting and subject matter, but also in terms of writers and points of view that are unique to its many cultures. Maya Khankhoje's writings help fill a great void. Her bilingual (Spanish/English) anthology for children A Panther in your Dreams, will soon be published by Gyldan Edge Publishing).

2006-04-13T10:31:00.010-07:00

What you see
By B.S. Srivani

Deccan Herald » Book Reviews

The author makes no bones about writing exactly what he feels on various topics. In these days of consumerism, it is becoming increasingly hard to find values, principles, institutions et al in society. The ones that we come across are usually hidden deep behind a layer of uncertainty, caused by boorish responses. This way, valuable ingredients that make a society a civilisation are lost to future generations. Those that eventually surface come to be regarded as rarities and are hailed as such. In this context, penning one’s thoughts on a diverse range of subjects comes in handy at least to catalogue the growth of a society with all its changes. Doing so, most often is not an easy task. Run of the Mind, a compilation of essays by Vijendra Rao is an attempt at preserving some of the human values and institutions for posterity and remind us of our responsibility towards nurturing and preserving our culture.

A major portion of the book has been culled from various publications to which Mr Rao, a prolific writer, contributed under various capacities as a journalist. It’s no surprise then that his essays cover a vast area whose existence most of us would have forgotten. Be it about a mother’s unconditional love or the questionable standards of a Brahmin’s mess run in the bylanes of good old Mysore, Vijendra Rao makes no bones about feeling what he did and subsequently writing what he felt was right. While most of his essays are nothing but ruminations, the author has a stricture or two to pass on the current degenerated state of a particular topic. Vijendra Rao with his journalistic background brings in a sharp mind that misses nothing, and his analytical skills. Therefore, it comes as a surprise to find a cynic who is no longer bothered about events over which he has no hold, but has the tendency to allow a touch of condescension or superiority to get the better of him. These are minor aberrations for, Vijendra Rao’s concern for his fellow human beings and restoration of human values and principles overrides any kind of objection one may have. Run of the mind, can however be measured only by those with similar intent.

Run of the mind By Vijendra Rao Publisher : IOU India

Copies of the Indian edition may be obtained directly from the author. For international edition contact: lulupress.com

2006-04-13T10:31:00.009-07:00

Mind matters
By Bhasyam Iyengar

AS you sit looking at Rao's Run of the mind on your coffee/lunch/dinner/bedside table you can't help reminescing about Nanporia's Diary of a Recluse column that brought a satisfying reading experience to the thoughtful readers of Deccan Herald (perhaps in their Sunday version) down memory lane, albeit, a slight variation - Run also passes off as a good beach read, travel read or in fact an anytime read.

This book is an interesting compilation of short and brisk essays that hop from one subject to another, nay, from one thought to another and you can pick and choose from the title(s), read a bit or two, throw back if you are unhappy/unwilling with the contents or continue browsing, chasing your favourite thoughtlines. It is like a 'hop on hop off' tourist busy with uptown, midtown and dowtown loops. Yes, basically the compilation is a loop of stray and uninhibited thoughts, most of the times, placing certain inference before the readers after the refreshingly brief and inquisitive search of a non-conformist mind, letting you to ponder about the possible extension of the streak of thought in conformity with your beliefs and non-beliefs.

Rao doesn't preach and that is the most likeable feature of Run. He picks up a ray of thought, puts it in a language of dextrous texture, flowing with a silky humour be it motherhood, holy shit, perfect party, beauty queens, cricket players, political gaffe, philosophical musings, art and science, sublime extracts from things mundane, things/issues ranging from abstract to stark realism, well, you name it, you have it. Wheter you agree or not with the contents/thoughtlines, it is fair to say that it is a voice worth listening, rather a compelling one at that.

(Bhasyam Iyengar, generally a resident of New York, is a writer and art critic)

2006-04-13T10:31:00.008-07:00

Interesting read
By Vimla Patil

Most editors and mediapersons have a rare advantage - they can express their reactions to people, events and happenings through their writings. They can analyse these and not only learn many truths of life at first hand and become wiser, but they can also share this knowledge with their readers. They are fortunate to meet people from varied professions, walks of life and can enrich their personalities if only they make a sincere effort. Vijendra Rao's collection of editorial essays shows the wide spectrum of interests he has followed in his career. His analyses of various events in Indian society reveal the resonance of his receptive mind and sensitive nature. His uncanny observations about human nature and foibles make this book an interesting read!

(Vimla Patil served FEMINA, the leading women's magazine, with distinction.
www.vimlapatil.com)

2006-04-13T10:31:00.005-07:00

The stillness of time

ONE of the magnificent bounties of nature is time. There is so much of it to be had: lifefuls of it. There is certain stillness to nature. When you are part of it, you feel time has come to a standstill. When you are away from it, like we modern men have, we become unaware of its motion. Like one does not realize the movement of the aircraft when one is inside it. In the huge spaceship that carries us along eternally, we need a frame of reference to understand the relative motion of time. Modern life has provided us with such a frame of reference in the sense that we have removed ourselves completely away from nature that we are able to see time’s hurried motion like those outside the speeding train are able to see its fast movement by remaining outside of it.

Living in the modern world involves breaking eternity into small packets of time, which we divide for purposes of computation of how much we should be paid or getting paid for filling those packets with saleable merchandise. We call this exercise occupation, which is nothing but occupying the divisible packets of time with endeavours and meanings that either fetch us our livelihood or contentment.

To occupy time is a way of totally distracting oneself from time. When our attention is distracted from time, we don’t notice its passing by us. We don’t realize its loss. We feel we have been adequately compensated for it with money. The satisfaction over this adequacy fills us until such time that we begin to grow aware that so much time of our life has elapsed and we cannot buy time. The time gone by was too precious for us to be ever compensated by money. That is when we start looking for ways of filling our time with meaning. The search for meaning of life is essentially a search for meaning of time – the time that we demarcate between birth and death.

What is it about countryside that makes us feel we have gained in time when we have spent a while there? It is the absence of activity. We have nothing to fill the big bucket of time with. The emptiness of the bucket stares us in our face. We are left with all the time. We allow time, in the countryside, to manifest itself in its waveform. The same time, because we treat it differently by allocating different functions to ourselves in a given time frame, appears to us as a stream of particles – like the photons.

Time, like light, exists as both wave and particles. We don’t feel that the person who borrowed money from us has done us justice in returning the amount in installments, whereas his timely repayment in one large chunk – just the way he borrowed it from us – gives us immense satisfaction. This is the difference between living in a city and living on the countryside. Time, broken into so many fractions over the day, and over a life span, does not mean the same when spent in a village in its undivided whole. All other things being equal between a City dweller and his rural counterpart, life has to offer a greater degree of fulfillment for the latter. There is so much time to do and so little to do in the village, whereas it is just the opposite in the city.

Then there is the fresh air, the lap of mother earth, the innocence of nature, and what more, to be savoured in the village. You also have the added bliss in the form of absence of commerce. Absence of commercial activity means not only innocence and longer life, but also no knowledge or need for arithmetic. Where there is no arithmetic, there is no counting. No counting results in birthdays not being kept track of. Where there are no birthdays, there are no annual reminders of the wear and tear of life. The time one gains by merging with nature is both relative and absolute.

2006-04-13T10:31:00.004-07:00

Superior suffering

I WAS preparing the mix for making vaangi bhaat. The diverse ingredients – red chillies, dry copra, cinnamon, mustard, lentil, etc. – were getting tortured in the pan, getting roasted in the burning heat of the radiant glow of the flames. I found a kind of rare unity among them. A unity in adversity. They were blending so well, a process facilitated by the lubrication that a spoonful of oil provided. The individual members were all so distinct in their appearance and character yet, were blending so well. Their sorrow brought them all together and they were releasing their essence into one medium. The uplifting aroma was pervading the kitchen. Sorrow is knowledge, said poet Byron.

Suffering, which is common to all life form – look at the chillies that are plucked, dried and roasted; what comes out of them at the end of the torturous process is their true nature, their essence – has the potential to similarly bring out the best in us. The torrid heat of living and its testing circumstances give us all, the constituents of the huge cauldron of life, a chance to redeem ourselves. Knowledge should be getting released from us. Knowledge is liberating. It reduces wants. It liberates us from wants. To want is to suffer. There is nothing called freedom from suffering. There is no such escape route. The benefit of knowledge gives the suffering body the strength to withstand the pain. It is the form that suffers the pain while the soul stays outside of it. Knowledge detaches the soul (the taste, the essence of the chilli has got discharged) from the body. It is a stage where pain disappears and what happens to the body becomes immaterial to the soul. This is true detachment.

The arduous training that life imparts on us burns the ego alive. It happens in the case of a true artist. Art flows directly from his soul. The consummation of art is achieved when the ego of the artist has melted completely. That is the stage where the artist and his art become one. The meltdown. The stage of complete bliss. Look at the Buddha. The complete artist. So complete that art can get talked about only for its redundancy.

Not everybody touches this point of perfection. One classic example of unfulfilled art is Balamurali Krishna. (I left out the prefix “Dr” inadvertently, but realize that it is blasphemous. If he read this piece, it would hurt him, I guess). He is a conscious singer.

What keeps the artist awake from the gentle Buddha-like slumber is his ego. It spoils art with its discordant presence. The performer ends up playing to the gallery in his artless awakened state. The fans, as distinct from connoisseurs, are jubilant that the musician has smiled at them in acknowledgement of their appreciative nod of his gimmick. The musician exults victoriously and gets ready for the next gimmick. The orchestra of the mutual admirers is complete. The auditorium echoes with sounds of disharmony.

This noise is familiar to us. It is the noise of the unbaked ego, of the inexperienced. Such an ego sees an opportunity for itself to manifest in suffering.

The exclusiveness that we all want to drape our deeds with is not restricted to the house we build, the clothes we wear, the spouse that we select; it extends to our agony. Post-agony, we are there to boast before the world that the trauma that we underwent was unlike any other. We create a need for the ego to celebrate our triumph over a difficult phase. We go about vividly describing the trauma that we underwent. ‘Anyone else in my position would have ended his life, or ‘Nobody else would have experienced my traumatic circumstances’ are stock ego statements that are thrown in during the narration. The more the ego is sought to be dressed with the robes of exclusivity, the more naked it stands. In giving an account of our trying times, we seek a superior status for ourselves.

Perhaps, the chillies need some more roasting.

2006-04-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

Subsuming universalism

LOVE creates a win-win situation for both its dispenser and its recipient. You can conquer anybody with love and the conquered does not complain. Music does the same. The musician conquers and the listeners willingly surrender. How does it happen? There is a subtlety to the way love or music winds its way into the heart. They don’t conquer, really, but permeate. “Conquer” hints external aggression, whereas “permeability” is effusive suffusion.

The musician’s soul emits a certain frequency and the listener attunes himself to the same frequency and the intercourse of the souls is complete. The way both love and music pervade their recipient is distinct as, although they also represent power, a benign power, allowing to be conquered is not the same experience for the recipient as to be subjugated to power of authority. Love is a hemorrhage of the heart. It is caused by an infection. Hence the term love-bug. The bug worms its way into the heart. Subordination to the force of a higher power, though produces an intense feeling of hurt in the heart, also amounts to being conquered, but has a difference. The feeling, in one case, spreads from the core of the heart, while in the other, the injury moves into the core from the periphery.

I constructed this theory while trying to understand the concept of universalism. At the just-concluded seminar at Dhvanyaloka on The book of my life, high profile orator V. Siddharthacharry, the former Indian ambassador, was talking about the influences of his grandmother, his first book, the Gita, and the works of Sankara. Then, he recalled his days as Ambassador to France, where, his French counterpart suggested to him that he might as well represent France. Little wonder, given Siddharthacharry’s awesome conversancy with matters French, besides his felicity with scores of other subjects. Just when he was majestically attributing his spirit of universalism with the fact of his being Indian, a member of the audience interjected. It is one thing to propagate universalism, but quite another to deny the other man his French identity, the member said, in a deliberate attempt to register his discord. A staunch Siddharthacharry admirer myself, I couldn’t help lapping up the note of dissent. In fact, I must credit that person for inspiring this article, at least its title.

I think the love of a lover has the permeating quality, while the love of the universal man is the conquering type. It threatens to crush the identity of the recipient, if the gloves of ego are not removed from the embracing hands. (Speaking highly about India in a way as to conquer France!). Since I also spoke about music at the beginning, I would like to recall what I think I wrote in these columns earlier about the power of music. The power of music, to the musically inclined, is not the same as the power of music to the copywriter. Whereas the first talks about the way it can liquefy the soul, the second talks about the high intensity, high wattage of music.

It is not unusual to find seclusion as the favoured destination of most universal men. Seclusion as a way of life because living – even the most harmonious living – to a certain extent entails the prospect of denting nature’s wonderful creations, is all right. But rushing toward the exit from the crowded centre-stage of life for reasons of inadequacy to perform may not be an entirely honourable path to inwardness.

The view from the side-wings, where the universal man has landed in a hurry, does not afford a clear view of the centre-stage. He gives a sort of kind look to the actors, who have now been reduced to abstract entities. He does not have to act any longer; he does not have to deliver the dialogues any longer, because he has forgotten his dialogues and retired. And because his role was a minor one, the play was quite unaffected. Acting may have tired him, no doubt.

The hero is still in the middle. It is not unusual to find people who talk about the equality of all religions still have a lingering bias in favour of a particular religion, which, according to them, is more equal. These people are not harmful the way our politicians are, yet, can be considered to be capable of influencing division by sowing the seeds of uneven equality of a certain religion. These people may be described as universal men-to-be. They occupy the middle rungs of the evolutionary ladder, and chances are they remain there till the end, un-evolved.

These universal men-in-waiting, in their urgency to complete the climb, go about propagating that man is one. This is just not true, unless by that they mean that the spirit is one, or that human beings are all equal. While recognizing the spirit of oneness, it is easily forgotten that the spirit manifests itself in a billion ways and so the manifestations are different.

Music and love are two aids that can dissolve the differences that lack of understanding of the nature of the spirit breeds. It was this that Siddharthcharry was hinting at. He was not trying to subjugate to his own identity his French counterpart’s. There was no threat of conquest there.

There just cannot be a goal that will lead to the disappearance of the differences between the various manifestations. It is an impossible goal. Unlike the goal of peaceful living accompanied by a universal understanding of these differences. Mankind keeps moving towards this goal very often. The latest example is the way Noor Fathima, the cute girl from neighbouring Pakistan, has been showered with love by Bangaloreans. The spirit of Fathima has a Pakistani manifestation and that cannot stop the same spirit in Bangalore to become one with. National, religious or caste identities are necessarily permeable membranes through which love cannot stop flowing.

2006-03-29T22:16:00.000-08:00

Blogging One's Own Trinkets
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2006-03-27T22:41:00.005-08:00

Toilet musings

THE water situation in the City is precarious. The impending crisis this summer is already creating a scare. It will easily be the worst ever crisis for Mysoreans, going by available indications. After a sweaty workout in the morning, I feel it is criminal to have an elaborate bath, no matter how soothing it is to the body and soul. My colleague, Rajgopal, as much exercised over the matter, tells me that he has immersed a sizeable stone in his flush-tank. Hailing from water-starved Salem, his concern for water economisation in these times of distress deserves praise. Since the tank is much bigger than what is of ideal size, his rationale is to see that the volume of water it holds is reduced at least by the volume of the stone.

Let me make a slight digression. There are two things Indian that seldom work: the flush tank and the urinal. The flush tank of the olden days used to be mounted so high on the wall that pulling it, even when there was water in it, made me think off myself as an athlete who was balancing on a pair of Roman rings – a kind of Puppet on a Chain. If I had used such a tank over a certain length of time, my biceps would today be like Arnold Schwarzenegger's. The modern day flush tanks don't test your muscular strength, but they definitely try your patience. The longest that these sleek tanks last is three-four months, no matter what premium brand one has chosen. Independent India has failed on two major counts: In honouring the privacy of the poor, particularly the womenfolk, by making available latrines (the blame for which rests solely on the politico-bureaucratic class, and it is of little comfort to realize that it is not its only failure); while the greedy private enterprise has chosen not to design a workable flush-tank or a urinal.

It won't be an exaggeration at all to say that the durability of men's shoes in India is cut short by our urinals. The receptacles, wherever they are located, have poor retention and half of what you pass, they also pass out immediately, and through the wrong duct. I don't know if the makers of these sanitary wares are under the mistaken impression that the prevalence of auto-urine therapy in India is widespread. They would do well to put an end to this diversionary tactic and spare our footwear of urea depositions.

I cannot help quoting here from Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying: “I once even attempted a classification of people on the basis of toilets. 'The History of the World Through Toilets' (I optimistically wrote at the top of a clean page in my notebook) 'an epic poem???'

British: British toilet paper. A way of life. Coated. Refusing to absorb, soften or bend (stiff upper lip). Often property of government. In the ultimate welfare state even the t.p. is printed with propaganda.

The British toilet as the last refuge of colonialism. Water rushing overhead like Victoria Falls, & you an explorer. The spray in your face. For one brief moment (as you flush) Britannia rules the waves again.

The pull chain is elegant. A bell cord in a stately home (open to the public, for pennies, on Sundays).

German: German toilets observe class distinctions. In third-class carriages: rough brown paper. In first class: white paper. Called Spezial Krepp. (Requires no translation.) But the German toilet is unique for its little stage (all the world's a) on which shit falls.

This enables you to take a long look, choose among political candidates, and think of things to tell your analyst. Also good for diamond miners trying to smuggle out gems by bowel. German toilets really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything.

Italian: Sometimes you can read bits of Corriere della Sera before you wipe your ass on the news. But in general the toilets run swift here and the shit disappears long before you can leap up and turn around to admire it. Hence Italian art. Germans have their own shit to admire. Lacking this. Italians make sculptures and paintings. French: The old hotels in Paris with two Brobdingnaigian iron foot-prints straddling a stinking hole. Orange trees planted in Versailles to cover cesspool smell. ll est defendu de faire pipi dans la chambre du Roi. Lights in Paris toilets which only go on when you turn the lock.

I somehow cannot make sense of French philosophy and literature vis a vis the French approach to merde. The French are very abstract thinkers - but they could also produce a poet or particularly like Ponge, who writes an epic poem on soap. How does this connect with French toilets'!
Japanese: Squatting as a basic fact of life in the Orient. Toilet basin recessed in the floor. Flower arrangement behind. This has something to do with Zen."

2006-03-27T22:41:00.004-08:00

Say it all, show it all

WHAT is common between alcoholism and nudity? Under the influence of the former man tends to pour his heart out, while the latter is all about showing it all. One is baring out one's heart and mind. The other is baring oneself. Call them purgation, if you please. Art and alcoholism have the same mother root in dissatisfaction. Well, it may not be an extraordinary observation in these days of growing urban griping about practically anything and everything. In fact, drinking may be just an excuse for the drinker to have his swigs.

Artistes, as much as artists, are self-effacing by nature. So when they have to perform before an audience/camera, they need to overcome their inhibitions. What better way to do it than by imbibing the brew. A great artiste, on the contrary, may want to have alcohol in his bloodstream in order to liberate himself from the overbearing presence of his audience (virtual or real), which could be welcome and irksome, at once. He wants to hide himself from their distracting presence. He wants to become one with his art.

Alcohol is just for the starter; his main menu is his own art, sufficient to make him go high on it. It is not my contention that inebriation is a necessary condition for art. There can be flow of art without a flow of liquor having preceded it. Some may start on their main course straightaway. Getting acceptably tipsy only helps the artiste to remain focussed on his art (as opposed to performance to which, anyway, he is impervious). In this sense, alcohol is the local anesthesia that the artiste administers on himself in order to bridle the riotous mind. The anesthesia prepares the musician for the torrent of heavenly music, the dancer for the invocation of divinity, the dramatist for performing with aplomb. Alcohol lubricates the frictionless union of the artiste with his art.

It is as if the intake of wine displaces the creative juices out of the artiste, who, anyway, is not alone in taking recourse to drinking. Rowdies in India are known to down a couple of drinks by way of preparation for a ghastly crime. There is a mistaken belief that gulping spirit emboldens them to commit felony. It is just not so. The fact is that the spirit only shears off the distractions of the mind. It divests them of the capacity to reason. Depriving themselves of the drink might even deter them from their chartered course, a prospect they dread. The dividing line between right and wrong is erased by the drink, which kills any inhibitions imposed by reason.

Making this comparison, I fall prey to the inevitable temptation of straying into the familiar territory, but let me gloss over the well-discussed parallel between creativity and criminality. There is also a close similarity between creativity and creation. Self-perpetuation is an attempt at fulfilling the primordial instinct for immortality. The barrenness that most childless couples experience is the result of this lack of fulfillment. This may well stimulate violent behaviour, if not smothered by creative occupation. Impotent rage finds its source from this behaviour. That automatically brings us to the most famous case of frustrated creativity turning into destruction on the barbaric scale: Adolph Hitler, whose sheer lack of fulfillment as an artist, torture and decimation of the Jews, and his own suicide – all fall into a psychoanalytically predictable pattern.

There is also the typically Indian example of distressed drainage workers desensitizing themselves to the task of clearing clogged manholes, by emptying a sachet or two of arrack, the crude alcoholic drink which is popular among the poorer sections. They take an advance from the contractor, which they spend on numbing their senses to the repulsive job, which is sadly not mechanized in information technology-washed India, a full fifty-four years after Independence. They lower themselves into the brimming manholes. They are amply aided by alcohol in lowering their dignity. Work-induced drinking extends to those similarly involved in other menial chores like those facilitating burials and funerals, men who chop dead bodies for post-mortem and, of course, the post-mortem doctors themselves. Those who are constantly exposed to life-smothering endeavours need to coarsen themselves in order to stick to their jobs. (On the other hand, those engaged in assignments that nurture the spring of life are the ones who don't generally need to hit the bottle). They may all soon reach a point in their lives that the coarseness needed for executing their chosen work may come to them naturally.

To sign off with a flourish, let me try to analyze the psychology of the two young models – Milind Soman and Madhu Sapre – who shocked the conservative Indian milieu by posing together without clothes or inhibitions for a controversial ad promoting a shoe brand. Nudity before camera is as yet to gain wide acceptance in India. Did Soman and Sapre drink before posing themselves before the camera to fight their shyness? (The only thing that broke the monotony of their bare skin was a serpent that wrapped them together! I don't know if the ad had any relevance or symbolism, but I found it reasonable to presume that it must be a symbolic understatement that this brand of shoes helps their wearer to stamp out their culture and tradition!) Trying to understand the psyche of the two Indian models, I reasoned out that it was the sheer absurdity of the ad, which gave them their privacy in nudity.

To elaborate, even in India you would find an odd streaker or two who accepts a bet that he would disrobe himself and sprint in public in broad daylight. The leitmotif of this ludicrous act is not nudity, but ludicrousness itself. The absurdity of the action clothes up the nakedness, which is totally out of focus in the entire exercise. It is not the attraction of the stakes that propels the streaker – for, it is invariably a piffling amount – but the eagerness and determination to rubbish the contention of his friends who grossly underestimated his potential for the extreme. It is very pertinent that the label that the streaker earns at the end of it all is not one of shamelessness, but one of heroism. The embarrassment that is caused by the process of the private parts becoming public during such a laughable exercise is perhaps overcome by disowning them during their public exposure. Not to be conscious of one's nudity means not to feel that one's assets are one's own. This, applied to Soman and Sapre, would mean the negation of their intent. They wanted to flaunt their endowments, but in order to achieve that end, they had to parade their wares in a state of mind that seeks to disown them, albeit momentarily (during the time they were required to pose before the camera crew). Exhibitionism achieving an unintended (perhaps, even unsatisfactory) result! The situation is very different on a nudist beach; the nudes find company in one another.

That brings me to mind yet another area of nudism – religion. In India, there is a sect whose belief in non-violence is so deep and complete that their doctrine, among other things, forbids clothing. They move around stark naked in full public view. Here, too, it is a process of disowning the body, but with a lofty motive. Here the body undergoes complete devaluation in the eyes of the wearer (!) It is total sacrifice and surrender to the supreme. What makes it possible for them their total detachment from the material world?

Lastly, there is one more place where nakedness does not touch off a debate on its morality. It is the operation theatre where the patient is stripped for a major surgery. Here, the modesty of the patient has the protection of not alcohol, but anesthesia, as well as the distraction of the trauma. It is surrender, too, at least in India, where the doctor is equated to God himself.

The nakedness of children is offset by their innocence, just as that of a mad person is warded off by his mental derangement.

2006-03-27T22:41:00.003-08:00

Rape does not alter the victim’s status!

THE present milieu has thrust woman into the vortex of a virulent desanctifying process. Man Superior, responsible for her rapid secularization, himself, is undergoing a role change from son to lover. If one could afford to assume a moral tone, there is a simultaneous degradation in the status of both woman and man. Technology is increasingly sorting out for man his mother-whore muddle that he has so frequently found himself in from time immemorial in his role as suitor; it is making it so qualms-free for him to pull the woman from her high pedestal down to the couch. Just an effortless push, technology-aided push, to make womanhood tumble from the vertical to the horizontal. The innumerable opportunities that the multimedia revolution offers in harlotry! That too without gender bias. No other technology in the post-industrialized world could boast being an equal opportunity provider the way this IT spin-off does.

The rising crime against women can only be explained in the background of the ongoing e-revolution. It is an explosion. An explosion that is breaking all barriers. The strong fort between immorality and otherwise has been shattered, too. The hymen of culture has turned out to be too weak against the onrush of depravity vitalized by pervasive sleaze. Researchers have it that about half the web content consists of pornography. What is perhaps left unquantified is the porno-traffic, a measure of which can be obtained by a perfunctory peek into any cyber café where the only item that is not provided to the avid male browser is a tissue roll. (What is not provided is what is not needed. Privacy, for instance. Erotica lost its need for privacy in the Victorian age, perhaps).

Young Prahallada told his tormenting father that Hari is everywhere. Today, not Hari, but Hymen, the God of Marriage, or Eros, the God of Love, will more easily emerge from any PC at the click of a button. Titillation was never so uncontrollable. En masse. (“Once you decide to titillate instead of illuminate . . . you create a climate of expectation that requires a higher and higher level of intensity” (Bill Moyers).

Titillation was never before so isolated and so completely unaccompanied by thinking. The pounding from the plethora of hedonistic channels has become ever so constant and sustained that it has beaten the hell out of our wits and ground the tall and thick wall of reason into fine dust. It has spawned a widespread ravenousness for unadulterated kitsch.

The assault from the cyberspace has long made us forget the potential dread of Ronald Reagan’s phantasmagoric designs in outer space. Thoughtless waves of tsunamic intensity are lashing the shores of human sensibility. Sanity is running neck and neck with shame to shed its last remnants everywhere.

Do you want to know why there is a rape a minute reported from all over? There is a surfeit of stimulants all around, but without the necessary outlets. There is an ever expanding urge, but no ventilation. It is rapaciousness unbound. Perverse rapaciousness, abusing technology, to tear asunder the cloak of civilized behaviour. Whether technology is fuelling perversity or perversity is inspiring technology, is tricky as the chicken-or-egg-first riddle. An ocean of thirst-riven humanity, tired of chasing mirages for a lifetime, finding an evaporating oasis. This could be the definition of “carnalinflation”. Rape had to become commonplace. Age scarcely is a bar, neither for carnality, nor for its target.

Rape has a couple of meanings. One is what is known and is becoming increasingly wider known: The crime of forcing another person to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse. Another meaning of rape is: abusive or improper treatment. The Indian woman is being raped in both these senses of the term. Because she is routinely chosen for improper treatment in other ways, she becomes a lame duck for being targeted for the rape of the benumbing kind. The heroine that is chosen for the actual rape scene is chosen because she is already a recipient of abuse by the director and his crew. One form of abuse leads to the other, the more abusive one. Directorial passivity finds an ally – and therefore its raison detre – in audience passivity. Stage gets set for the next rape.

Rape is a ghastlier crime than murder, though both crimes seek to obliterate the existence, the identity, of their victims. The murder victim faces no stigma; if they do, they do posthumously, whereas the rape victim lives with it. In the socio-cultural contest that we live, it is not the dead alone that tell no tales. The raped tell fewer tales. (Don’t scream, tells the rapist. She complies with the order for her life). Rape condemns them to a life of hapless and stigmatized obscurity and anonymity.

Media projection of the female species fixates her role: to bodily pleasure outsourcing. Salacious after salacious film, lascivious after lascivious channel, lewd after lewd portal, bawdy after bawdy magazine all render woman to a uni-functional organism. A gadget of sexual gratification. A faceless being whose existence is fulfilled by the appropriateness of the size of her vital organs. The media prepares her for a rape the same way the chicken is shorn of its feathers before it is dressed. The woman is dressed and undressed similarly. To shear her of all other qualities which accord her elegance and dignity. A demonetized woman is more readily violated. In fact, rape is no violation (else, societal response to it would be more proactive and corrective). It is this non-entity that becomes the target of a potential rapist more easily. Rape does not really alter the victim’s status. She was a non-entity even earlier.

2006-03-27T22:41:00.000-08:00

Tsunami and the system’s sin content

MAN has been humbled all over again. What a colossal defeat it is for the mindless little children of nature! In one massive swipe, tumultuous Tsunami has rubbished thousands of lives. The deluge is matched in intensity only by the oceans of tears of the bereaved and, in magnitude, by the liberal flow of the milk of kindness from all over for those in distress. Isn’t there something peculiar about the way calamities generate extensive succour in their wake? It should be possible to argue that similar empathetic gestures shown during normal times have the ability to perhaps obviate such mind-numbing miseries as inflicted by Tsunami.

Haven’t we heard the common folks say of men of nobility that it is thanks to them that there are no extreme seasonal vagaries and the resultant scarce conditions? What have good-natured people got to do with rainfall and sunshine? Enlightened men have a thorough understanding of the need for harmony – both internal and external. They recognize that on their own harmony within depends the all-important natural balance. Simplicity of life is what they therefore endorse for the collective welfare of all living beings. At the very root of all natural calamities is the severe violation of the tenets of simplicity. It is an indication of the paradigm shift from belief to reason. Belief was protective, because it did not violate nature. Reason may be fine, because it inflates the ego, but it tore off the protective cover that belief offered man.

The dismantling of the system that sustained on ignorant belief in favour of mindless modernity has seen the growth of what may be termed the gross sin content (similar to, say, entropy, in thermodynamics). It is when the sin content crosses a certain critical mass that catastrophes of the kind that we have witnessed ensue. Ayurveda has a concept called parinamavada. It says that there is a direct correlation between the essential qualities of man and those of his environs. If the negative qualities in him are on the rise, there is an automatic and proportionate increase in the negative qualities (tamas) in the world. It is the sum total of these negatives that precipitate disasters.

The negatives manifest themselves in myriad ways, so much so it becomes impossible to pinpoint any one of them as having been the root cause of a calamity. (The ghastly occurrence is being attributed in some quarters to the Kalyug ways of disrespect being shown to seers. What is easily forgotten in the bargain is that seers too have fallen prey to the sinful attractions of the same Kalyug). The collective negative energies – the sin content – have it in them to provoke nature’s fury. To nurture the positives in a way as to always outnumber the negatives is mankind’s immediate need. It is a need that has to be rediscovered and fulfilled independent of the alluring advertisements for heaven. What better time to do it than now, the new-year-eve – time considered appropriate for resolves?

Of course, any attempt to segregate one single unit – the new year-eve – from the endless stream of time itself is repugnant. We all know that it is done for gains. It is an attempt to market revelry. The first citizen of the country, Abdul Kalam, has set the right example for the country by announcing that he is not going to herald the advent of the new year. It is a measure of the sensitivity of the man. It is unimaginable how one can get into the boisterous mood that is otherwise associated with the occasion at a time when the odour of death, of mass cremation, the cries of distress are all still in the air. It is important to realize that we are judged for our civilized behaviour on the sobriety we maintain tonight. Yes, we have doled out our bit for the cause of the suffering multitudes, but it is not enough. It is important that we are empathic, too. Then, we must also understand that it is our voracious consumptive patterns that have led to the imbalance of the kind referred to above. Let this holocaust, this New Year set us into thinking. Let it mark the beginning of our conscious effort to strike a balance with nature. Not out of fright, but out of respect. Let us make a massive effort to keep the sin content in check. Yes, it is true that no matter how we live we all die. But, depending upon how we live we can ensure that indignity does not accompany us in death.

The union of all those that perished in death has one more symbol. The oneness of spirit could not have been more tellingly, though chillingly, brought out. It is a unity that we human beings have not struck during our lifetimes.