August 18, 1969.......flying high, in the Bethel sky......

Hi all, hearing the uproar outside my room door today in the morning put me in mind of my legendary exploits two years ago, come Holi day, outside Sarayu and Sharavati. That of course, put me in a good mood for the day. Reading up on how woodstock happened and how Michael Lang got all the credit and Roberts and Rosenman had to do all the dirty work.....and how Jimi acted like a pompous cheapskate.......well this one was a bit of a no-brainer, what! I hope the Hindu believes its incredibly profound though (boo hoo ... just 800 words again!). Here you go,

The annual Indian Woodstock

Every year, to the eye of the untrained observer, a large portion of the normally staid Indian population goes crazy for a day. To Caucasian eyes, one of the reasons why India stands apart as a distinct culture, as opposed to the colorless stereotypes that engulf other Asian countries, is its under-current of passion and joie de vivre, unparalleled save in the Hispanic nations. The Indian festival of Holi, set in the back-drop of prudish rural North India, is a perfect showcase for our study.

Recently, a law passed in Delhi has made it ‘illegal’ for couples to hold hands while in Connaught Place, the shopping heartland of the Capital. In the nearby satellite towns of Western UP, police raid restaurants, hotels and cybercafés regularly, serving up details to a drooling, salacious local press. In staid university campuses, wearing shorts in public is considered unseemly. Public opinion places drug usage at almost the same level of debauchery as paedophilia.

Contrast this, if we may, with the sights and sounds that are almost synonymous with Holi in the North Indian hinterland. Gangs of semi-naked youths roaming the streets, overwhelmingly physical displays of affection, pitched mock battles, ubiquitous eve-teasing and coquetry, and of course, the openly public confection and consumption of bhang.

Quid?

The sheer scale of Holi makes it difficult to assign it any psycho-social parallels from world history. How does one explain a humongous explosion of spontaneity and liberality that occurs at a fixed date every year? The paradox would be trivial were we to explain it to be merely a question of cult theology and religious beliefs. Only the very naïve, however, would refer to Holi as a ‘Hindu’ festival. The vast multitude that celebrates Holi does so owing to a continuous reflux of cultural conditioning.

By most estimates, more than half a million people gathered in a field at Bethel, New York for three days beginning August 16 1969 – to watch the largest rock concert in the history of mankind. Woodstock – as the event has forever been immortalized as, was the apotheosis of that psychedelic tapestry of youthful angst that was the 60s USA. The mental archetypes of the hippie culture finally passed into the mythology of American culture with this epochal, cathartic pogrom – 3 days of the flower people and their quaint anti-war, pantheistic philosophy.

Gangs of disheveled, semi-clad youths, sexual tension in the air, hallucinogenic drugs sold over the counter and partaken of with impunity, color running riot – ’69 USA or present day India? The similarities are extremely striking. Professor Joshi, I am sure, could unearth an erstwhile unknown Sanskrit text that conclusively proves that it was a venerable Indian ‘rishi’ or deity who invented rock ‘n roll millennia before Elvis walked the earth.

Should such a helpful text not exist, we are forced to look for less simplistic explanations. What do the hippies of the American cultural Golden Age have in common with the Indian common man?

The first step, of course, is to realize that most of the hippie pioneers looked to India and its pantheistic, Ego-effacing culture for spiritual nourishment and took back their own conceptions of it to their subsequent followers. Secondly, hippie culture following music as its religion, the impact of Indian collaborators in the 60s served to reaffirm the exotic Indian stereotype, adding to its mystique.

The remarkable difference lies in the fact that whereas the hippie movement was but a monument to iconoclasm, to be replaced by consumerist fads in American consciousness by the early 80s , our indigenous chaotic festival occupies pride of place in an extremely prudish mainstream consciousness.

It is here that the power of tradition and culture is evinced in its entirety. American culture, itself a subset of the largely Protestant European culture, has been built largely in cycles of growth and destruction. Conspicuous by its absence is a continuity of tradition, each succeeding cult repudiating and rebutting its predecessor. The adjective ‘brittle’ comes to mind, particularly when juxtaposed with the Indian mentality.

Through countless millennia, cockroaches and Indian culture have survived by absorbing the fundamental tenet of beating natural selection – ‘anything goes’. ‘Anything goes’ - ‘chalta hai’ in the vernacular – is the life-blood of Indian society. It is evident in our chronically corrupt public offices, in our chaotic public transport systems, and in our inefficient public infrastructure. It is also evident in the vitality of our festivals, the controlled spontaneity of our celebrations, the universal spirit of bonhomie that engulfs us all, around this time of the year.

‘Amorphous’ is the best possible description. The stubborn continuum that is Indian culture and society; smoothened and ground down by the passing of time has learned to accept, to incorporate, if one may quote Orwell, “to change out of all recognition and yet ever remain the same.”

Greetings on Holi to everyone, appreciate the uniqueness of our heritage.

The Gospel of Krishna Yogi....

Hi all, I think I will introduce you today to this friend of mine who is an extremely intriguing personality. I think of him as the most interesting reclusive iconoclast on campus. He comes from a family with a history of spiritualism, witness his middle name. The first thing that struck me about him, even before I knew him, was his physique - unadulteratedly Aryan. The similarities of our experiences in the spiritual path are a big confidence-booster for me in my experiments with Sufism and Zen. And our conversations about the meaning of God and the relevance of tokens and symbols in spiritualism have afforded me more food for thought than most other people I know on campus. He wrote this at my behest as an insight into the mind of a born spiritualist and a practitioner of Kriya Yoga. I then took the thing up and filled it out and fleshed it up and rewrote it and added chunks to it, the usual bag of tricks. So, this is my second co-authorship post in a row. I present to you, "An introduction to Kriya" and my good friend Krishna Yogi Kolluru.

ROADS TO PERCEPTION

GOD

God is the most beautiful concept in all of philosophy. God is the ultimate paradigm of creativity. Witness the seeming incongruity of universes within universes. And yet the structure of the universe evinces considerable similarities at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. If this universe is created, then how infinitely creative is the mind of the Creator!

There was never a beginning, witness the insurmountability of Planck time: nor, by symmetry, shall there ever be an end. This essay takes for an axiom the active involvement of a ‘Divine Intelligence’ in the creation of chaos and its time-evolution into symmetry and order.

In Indian spiritualism, this is called ‘Leela’, a Sanskrit term. ‘Leela’ is the nature of God, vast beyond the farthest stretches of our imaginations, yet intricate beyond all hope of deterministic inspection. It is He who gave us life, He who plays with us, and He who eventually stows us away – for future use, if re-incarnation were to be admitted as valid. And yet, for all our seeming insignificance, every sentient entity, says Hindu pantheism, is equally important to the show. Going even further, it would not be too much to say that a single electron spinning in the wrong direction might lead to a collapse of the universe, as we know it. Such is ‘Leela’.

It would be a consummation devoutly to be wished for if we would all take our noses off our self-inflicted grindstones and ponder upon the wonder of it all, savor the magnificence of this moment, all the parameters that happen to be just right for it to exist!

SELFLESSNESS

Personal reflections: rising early in the morning, I see the sun, feel the cool breeze, hear the sleepy piping of birds as they arise, like me, to face what we collectively perceive as a new day. But who is it that sees? Who is it that feels? Is it I? Who am I? What am I? Try as I might I cannot answer this. What am I? What am I?

Have you ever felt the same way? Are you too all too familiar with the mental block that results? Forget about meditation, religion and Divinity. What if I do not exist? More accurately, what if whatever I think I am does not exist? Hint: think ‘The Matrix’. Now, the Matrix theory, if we may call it that, makes some kind of sense. It is not a phenomenal stretch of logic to theorize perceived reality to be illusory and the actual ego to be dormant.

Vedanta however, categorically negates the existence of the individual Self. ‘I’ – ness, ‘You’ism is the highest or the beginning of ‘maya’ – illusion. One may view the world as imparting the primary illusion of ‘being’. The illusion of identity is the most deeply-seated of all such. And once established, it leads very easily to the others.

It is when one abrogates the delusion of identity that one is faced with the real nature of Consciousness. That is when one realizes the true significance of pantheistic philosophy, the appropriateness of the fundamental credo of Vedantic thought, ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ – ‘ ‘thou art that’.

Whither the distinctions between good and evil, sin and sacrifice, black and white? Nothing exists save the Cosmic Consciousness. All discriminatory power vanishes with the individual identity. You are the ‘One’. (This, however, has nothing to do with Keanu Reeves!)

THE PATH TO PERFECTION

Vivekananda held that to walk the path to perfection was harder than walking on a sword’s edge. However, with swords being in rather short supply these days, used solely for the purpose of political gimmickry as they are, it behooves us to be more pragmatic in discussing methods of attaining perfection.

Basically, eradicating the thought of imperfection from our minds is the road to perfection. We say the earth is not a perfect sphere. But, my friends, the earth IS perfect in having its own shape. Who is to say which shape is better? Likewise, the realization that everything is perfect is concomitant with the realization that ‘This is it’. This is possible only by getting rid of illusion.

It is my contention that, after identity, the besetting illusion that plagues humanity is the concept of relative worth, things being better or worse. Why call anything good or bad when all things are truly manifestations of the One, the Divine – You.

You are the one who created this world, its transient images, its ephemeral sensations. And then you are the one who mesmerized yourself into believing that your creation is disjoint from your own Self. Therefore, you and you alone can transcend the entrapments of ‘maya’, melt all illusions in the fire of spiritual knowledge and realize your true identity. As Vivekananda said, ‘ Not a sheep thou art but a lion. Arise, awake, and roar.’

MEDITATION

Now, the only way, vouchsafed to us by five continuous millennia of spiritual quests, is by awakening the ‘Kundalini’, and causing it to ascend to the ‘thousand – petal lotus’. This can be achieved most effectively by meditation. The guiding precepts are simple. Concentrate your will on perceiving the universe as containing just two elements – you and God. Soon you will transcend this duality and attain the realization of Unity, which is the highest state of meditation, known as ‘Nirvikalpa Samadhi’. Even after setting aside the dubious claims of charlatans, we are still left with examples such as great sages like Ramana Maharishi of Tiruvannamalai, Sai Baba of Shirdi and Ramakrishna Paramhamsa of Dakshineshwar, who had attained those towering spiritual heights, proving thereby, to twentieth century cynics, the truth of the Vedantic doctrine.

SHAADCHAKRAS

The following is a brief exposition of the theory of Kriya Yoga, a powerful shortcut in the arduous spiritual trek. The ‘Shaadchakras’ and the ‘Sahastrakamalam’ together constitute the life-force. Under waking consciousness, they remain dormant. They are activated in increasing order of magnitude by:

• Sleep (Sufficient, one may note, to induce loss of spatio-temporal orientation)
• Deep concentration
• Overwhelming positive emotion
• Sex
• Hallucinogenic drugs, notably heroin
• Volitional activation via meditation/yoga

Osho’s advocacy of free sex as a spiritual practice shocked moral sensibilities around the world . It is true however, that outside of Yogic practice and drug abuse, the most perceptible rise in Kundalini is observed during the sexual act. This, however, is marginal as compared to the extreme rise experienced during meditation. In proportion, the bliss of orgasm is dwarfed by the ecstasy of meditation. Osho described the bliss of ‘Samadhi’ as a state of continuous orgasm. Not even Hugh Hefner can match that!

To continue with the theory of Kriya however, the ‘Kundalini’ present in the ‘Muladhara’ travels through the spine and reaches the ‘Sahastrakamalam’. There it ‘melts’ the ‘lotus’ causing the subject to experience an extreme state of ecstasy, followed in most cases by a blissful realization of the true nature of reality.

This process may happen, as in some historic cases, spontaneously. In most cases however, the subject is required to rigorously follow a particular Yogic practice (Raja yoga, Hatha yoga etc.) until the mind is subdued sufficiently to allow Realization.

The Indian system of Yoga is thus a far more systematized method of spiritual practice than other systems with concurrent aims. In all other cases, be it Gnosticism, Sufism or Zen, though the intellectual theory is the same, the practice is highly individualized, causing Realization to be a hit-or-miss proposition.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I would appeal to you to give yourself a fair chance at understanding the fundamental unity of the universe and the essential purpose of existence. Of course, mindsets ossified in a colonial distaste of all things indigenous would find it unpalatable to accept the relevance of Vedanta and Yoga. My only request is that meditation and Indian spiritualism should not be dismissed as hysteria driven hoaxes. While the ultimate bliss of Realization is almost inaccessible to us common mortals, even the intermediate stages of meditative absorption are far more satisfying and fulfilling than corporeal pleasures. I leave you with one last nugget of information, which explaining the title of the essay allows me to conclude aesthetically satisfactorily: who do you think has written the introduction to ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’?

Aldous Huxley. Huxley who? Ask any druggie worth his brown sugar.

Gee! (wish people) had (more sense)

This one happened in a very familiar manner. Noemaun brought his article on 'The Prophet who fought wars" to me for a proofread, then it turned into an editorial session, following which it metamorphosed into a rewrite, following which...... well, this is what ensued. Certain sentences and passages are his and so I think I may claim but co-authorship of this essay. The subject, as may be seen, is extremely close to my heart (ref. buying a stairway to heaven). Here you are

Militarism in Islam

In today’s new-found neo-Conservative morality, it is so very fashionable to berate Islam and its practices as being primitive, brutal and anachronistic. While it is impossible to irrevocably refute all such allegations in such a short essay, it is endeavored here to take issue with supporters of the Huntingtonian school of thought on one alleged aspect of Islamic culture – militarism and Islam’s concept of Jihad.

Right up to the late 90’s, the Russian stereotype of the “godless Communist aggressor” was so firmly entrenched in American mindsets that successive Conservative administrations and pulp fiction authors like Ludlum and Forsyth managed to keep making money out of flogging the Commie horse.

Interestingly, as a quick perusal of any best-seller list and current affairs paper will show, the interests of both have shifted to a new target, the older one having been rendered obsolete by the internal collapse and democratization of the Soviet Republic in 1991. The Conservative laser-sights sought a new target and found one. Thanks to the hypotheses of academician Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory, circa 1995, their gun-turrets are now trained on Islam.

To this effect, the story of the spread of Islam is embellished with improbable stories of cruelty and debauchery, the current separatist movements in Chechnya, Palestine, Serbia-Montenegro etc. are highlighted as being manifestations of Islamic militarism. Also, socio-political observers of the woolly-headed Right make incredibly presumptuous proclamations of stirrings of malcontent in the Middle East. A state of paranoia, with reference to the past, present and future of the role of Islam in geo-politics, is being consciously and unambiguously generated.

Our case in defense rests on the unanimously held Orthodox Sunni premise that the path of Islam lies in the emulation of the intentions and deeds of the Seal of the Prophets, Mohammed (pbuh), the founder of Islam as we know it. To know Islam one must know of the life of the Prophet – a figure incomparable in the history of the world save to that other Semitic miracle, Jesus.

Irrespective of your political, religious or societal persuasion, any attempt to understand the Islamic ideology with a modernistic perspective will fail. Your quest for knowledge of the modalities of Islamic geo-politics and social stratifications can not even begin without a comprehensive biographical review of the personality of this man. To place the purported militarism of the Islamic creed, let us view the Prophet’s (pbuh) views regarding warfare.

“The most senile thing ever thought about man is contained in the celebrated saying 'the ego is always hateful'; the most childish is the even more celebrated 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. -- In the former, knowledge of human nature has ceased, in the latter it has not yet even begun.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims

To any reasonably pragmatic reasoning individual, it is evident that war is a necessary evil, which must be carried through, in order to solve social and political problems which cannot be resolved peacefully. Human communities have plunged into fights not only for the mere accomplishment of material aims but also for achieving social justice. Case in point, one wonders if Luther King could have accomplished so much had he not stood on the broad shoulders of Lincoln and Ulysses Grant.

Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah (pbuh), the founder of Islam, led his community to battle on innumerable occasions. And yet, one can unearth no records of his having benefited materially from any of these military conquests. His bearing ever remained the same, for all the prosperity and dominance of the Muslims by the time of his passing. It was thus neither lust for gold nor glory that led the Prophet to take to the sword but a burning sense of responsibility towards his fellow Arabs wallowing in ignorance and misery. It is a fact that does not really require mentioning that it was the unifying power of Islam that allowed the Arabs to establish the strongest, most magnificent empire that the world has ever seen this side of the Dark Ages.

Also, 1300 years before the West thought of the Geneva Convention, and 1360 years before the Imperialist West breaks its regulations with impunity, the Prophet of Islam imbued martial codes in Arabia with a sense of humanity and compassion. The total number of casualties in all the wars that took place during his lifetime, when the whole Arabian Peninsula came under his banner, did not exceed a few hundreds.

Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors .

[Quran 2.190]

To the aggressive Arabs, who were used to fighting forty years on the slightest provocation, say of a camel belonging to the guest of one tribe having strayed into the grazing land belonging to other tribe, which ended up with both the sides fighting resulting in the loss of thousands of lives, the Prophet of Islam taught submissiveness and discipline; Discipline so rigorous that congregational prayer during wars was common. Even during the heat and fever of battle, whenever the time for prayer came, and it comes five times every day, the congregation prayer was never postponed.

In an age of barbarism, the battlefield itself was humanized and strict instructions were issued not to cheat, not to break trust, not to mutilate, not to kill a child or woman or an old man, not to hew down date palm nor burn it, not to cut a fruit tree, not to molest any person engaged in worship and those who sought quarter were escorted to a place of safety. One can but wonder at the emotions of the confinees at Guantanamo Bay who are informed through the American popular media that it is THEY who are barbaric!

On the conquest of Mecca, the Prophet (pbuh) stood at the zenith of his power. The city which had refused to listen to his mission, which had tortured him and his followers, which had driven him and his people into exile and which had unrelentingly persecuted him even when he had taken refuge in Medina, more than 200 miles away, now lay at his feet. By the universal law of retribution (“we’re gonna smoke them out!”), he could have ‘justly’ avenged all the cruelties inflicted on him and his people. But what treatment did he accord them? His heart flowed with affection and he declared, "This day, there is no reproof against you and you are all free." "This day" he proclaimed, "I trample under my feet all distinctions between man and man, all hatred between man and man."

¨Jihad¨ is a generic term for concerted effort or struggle against major obstacles, such as injustice, disease, or poverty. It’s meaning is much broader than ¨holy war¨, and can only be understood within the context of Islamic teachings. Jihad is a very powerful pillar of Islamic faith. Unfortunately, it is misused by terrorists to rationalize their actions, much as the Nazis hijacked the teachings of Nietzsche, Fichte and Hegel to propagandize their Aryan supremacist theories. Blaming the Prophet (pbuh), Islam and Muslim culture for terrorist activity around the globe is much the same as blaming the Lutheran Church for the Holocaust, or J D Salinger for John Lennon’s assassination.

In view of the aforegoing, it is to be hoped that the next time you hear the Prophet (pbuh) being referred to in acrimonious terms, you will accord it the same amount of gullible acceptance that we cunning Indians have cultivated for official government pronouncements – nil.

Tales of horror and misery....

Hi all, I think one has to be an Electrical Engineering Undergraduate taking the Transmission Lines course to really feel this poem to the core. Yes, this is the story of how I waged my war against the terror of the parasitic capacitance and the impediments of impedance matching in E Slot last semester. Read and shudder...

A night of tribulation

Wandering in tortuous labyrinths
Of mathematical logic
Palpitating in dread of the morrow
Hiding in its folds, a paper dagger

Drooping lids, mind overdriven
Greedily, the waters of Lethe
Drain the dregs of my fading brain
The ticking clock contrives my doom

And yet stay, here lies a taste
Of Paradise, yet unsullied
As cheek and ear touch
The gentle, cool wood

Away, evil thoughts of vile grades
Avast, perfidious lunges of Ego
A prosaic Hamlet resolves his dilemma
Sweet nasal music permeates the air

We got mail no more ...

The Mailman won't deliver any more. He just retired at the age of 41. And with his passing has finally come to a close the age of the 80s that saw the meteoric rise of the NBA into public consciousness in the US.

He leaves behind a legacy of consistency and endurance of a magnitude almost beyond credulity. In 18 seasons of 82 games each (not counting the Playoffs that the Jazz went to every one of those seasons) he missed a grand total of 10 games! In his final season, with the Los Angeles Lakers, he demonstrated a level of physical fitness and stamina that put even LA's superstar center, 32-year old Shaquille O'Neal to shame, relentlessly competing against players half his age.

Malone leaves the game 1,539 points adrift of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's all-time scoring record of 38,387 points in second place, above both MJ and Wilt Chamberlain. He is also 6th all-time in total rebounds collected and 2nd in total minutes spent on the court. Over 19 years of banging down in the low-post and setting picks on top of the key, the Mailman's scoring average was a solid 25.0 ppg, good enough for 10th place all time.

People may drool over the shooting skills and big-game temperament of Larry Bird, or the dominant scoring of Elgin Baylor, or the sheer physicality of Sir Charles, or the Celtics' John Havliceck and Kevin McHale.

But if there is one player who defined the power forward position, it has to be Karl Malone. What with the plethora of talent at the 4 spot these days, Duncan, Garnett, Nowitzki, O'Neal and Stoudamire all possible HOFers, it is easy to forget the impact that Malone had on the game in his 19 playing years.

While his supremacy as a power forward may be questioned, none may surpass the place in history, as a forward-guard duo, that Malone and Stockton occupy. Over 50000 points and 20000 assists and 18 back-breakingly consistent years of on-court heroics later, the two veterans have both now moved on, Stockton back in May 2003, Malone now in 2005.

We will all miss Malone, the Utah Jazz not least. His legendary work ethic, his freakish fitness regimen, his great heart, and lastly the tragedy of his fruitless quest for a championship ring over 19 long years of toil shall form a part of basketball lore forever.

Farewell, Karl Malone. Michael Jordan denied you the ring twice, and Kobe Bryant once. But all the Jordans and Kobes of the world can never deny your place in the hearts of millions of basketball fans the world over.

All luck to you, wherever you go and whatever you do, Mailman.

Palestine: an allegory

hi all, this is one of my favorite pieces of poetry - short, unpretentious and hopefully profound. i wrote this a little after 9/11 and also at a time of deep personal turmoil. i never could figure out if this is more of a socio-political statement or the catharsis of existentialist crises. anyway, here it is , for all its worth,

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty was about to fall
Quoth the King, 'Thou errant egg!
Desist at once, lest thee break thy leg'

"How long do I my woes do hide?
My future is scrambled or fried
No hope remains, weary am I
My destiny is omlette or pie."

"Foolish egg! Cease thy perfidious chatter
Thou dost appear mad as the Hatter
An egg to the end eggness must uphold
So come on down, O round one bold!"

"No King, seek thy repast elsewhere
My shell shall break to fragments here
I leave my word to the rest of my race,
Crack, do not stew in this horrible place"

Humpty Dumpty slid from his wall
Humpty Dumpty had his great fall
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again

Birthday wishes for two mascots

hi all, it has been my long-lasting ambition to work in basketball into my blog. This is the first draft of an article i am writing. i am putting it up because i don't have MS office on my comp anymore so the formatting wouldn't come out well. A big thank you to Shashi for comp time. Here it is folks,

It is the time of the year again where we take our collective hats off to two of the most influential marketing coups in the youth product market, to have ensued in the past fifty years. If the loose purse-strings of the Generation Next are to be placed in a cultural perspective, the most seminal contributions in this regard stem from two personages whose birth-dates enjoy a fortuitous propinquity - St. Valentine and Michael Jordan.

Opinions differ as to the actual personage of St. Valentine, the Catholic Church recognizing at least three martyrs of the same name. It is undisputed though that the celebration of Valentine's Day is a custom that incorporates vestiges of pre-Christian and early Catholic beliefs. The Valentine culture has ingrained itself, with almost archetypal psychic strength, in European culture. The patron saint of love is honored more unreservedly than the Savior himself in places.

Nevertheless, public attitude towards Valentine's Day remained conservative up to the post-War boom of the late 1940's. It was then that, endeavoring to capitalize on the burgeoning 'teen' consumer market, the mass marketing of Cupid's bower began. By the late 1980's, Valentine's Day was a more integral part of the American culture than Yuletide.

Around the same time, Valentine relaxed its Caucasian base and invaded other cultures, India not being the least of its conquests. The Valentine Day fever, unlike most Indian cultural imports, was contagious at the grass-roots level rather than forced from above by the glitterati of Bollywood. In fact, foreigners often remark at the scale of celebration of the event in India. The immense popularity of the Valentine concept is a beautiful vindication of Vivekananda's, and to an extent Gandhi's, conception of the Indian as an ingenuous purveyor of affection.

Born on 18th February 1963, Michael Jordan stands alongside Pele and Muhammad Ali as a global ambassador of the unifying power of sport. As an emblem for marketing savvy however, Jordan stands in a class of his own. By far the highest earning athlete in the history of team sports, Jordan's meteoric rise in the context of product endorsements was totally unprecedented in magnitude and heralded the beginning of a new era in brand marketing. The global entertainment sports market is a vast agglomeration of parochial interests. And yet, they all owe their success, in some part at least, to the man everybody thought could fly

The 'Be like Mike' campaign was so very effective in the playgrounds and gravel courts of suburban USA that it spawned innumerable replicas all over the world. Be it David Beckham or the Williams sisters, or even Tiger Woods, the primary reason these athletes can demand and are offered obscenely high endorsement fees is the shadow of Jordan and the legendary success of Nike's Air Jordan campaign. In his first year under the Nike logo, the Air Jordan line topped $153 million in sales. His presence elevated Nike to a position of global dominance in the field of sport apparel manufacture.

In India, a land where the utterance of the name of a sport other than cricket is considered snobbish effrontery at its worse, Michael Jordan's impact is still pervasive. If nothing else, the ganjis hung in village markets with number 23 and "Street Bulbs" blazoned across the front would bear testament to the fact. The pampered Indian cricketers have but MJ to thank for their fat endorsement pay-checks.

What is it that unites a 2000-year old legend and a 42-year old icon? In a word - Capitalism.

It is nobody's case that love is found on a specific date of the Gregorian calendar within the folds of a greeting card or the petals of a rose. It is, likewise, nobody's case that wearing a particular brand of shoes named after a phenomenon will cause one's physical prowess to improve beyond bounds. And yet, the plethora of advertisements streaming past the public consciousness through all avenues of mass media insistently reiterates the same theme.

The media's projectivity and the audiences' gullibility both combine to create a market-space that is all but dictated to by the rise and fall of individual personalities in popular perception. Which is why brand ambassadors are picked and dropped as the law of averages works in its remorseless grind. And sportspersons jump out at us at the drop of the hat proclaiming their undying affection for particular brands of colas, candies, hair oils, laxatives, the works.

This is naked, ruthless capitalism at its finest. And this is proof of why the Soviet Republic is now late and no longer lamented. St. Valentine, Michael Jordan and their promoters are out to make as quick a buck as possible. And yet, in doing so, they ennoble humanity in very different ways. For one day, it is now societally acceptable for youth to shake off their shackles and express the tale of their hormones. Thousands of youngsters, instead of releasing their energy in destructive ways, spend hours at their neighborhood courts trying to 'Be like Mike'.

There is beauty in the spirit of bonhomie that the energetic efforts of Valentine Day sponsors have inadvertently created. There is grace in the spirit of competitiveness and raw physical exultation that the Jordan myth has unleashed upon contemporary youth. Both these cultural icons are two major triumphs of the Free Market economy, erstwhile so badly maligned in socialistic paradigms.

If personal expenditure and expressiveness were to be subjugated, the good saint Valentine would stand a strong chance of being excommunicated. If all men were to be equal, Michael Jordan would be pumping gas in Brooklyn. Capitalism can be soullessly ugly and demeaning. But it has its coruscations of nobility. Let us grant to the 'Ugly American' his due.

Fine and Dandi

Some parochial flavor at last! I had been thinking of putting up something India-centric for a while now and yesterday's Hindu article was a godsend for my cynical pen to start moving again. I wonder if the Open Page guys are going to indulge me , because this is a bit stronger than the usual platitudes. Here it is then, "Dandi is redundant"

Dandi is redundant

It is no great feat of the imagination to conjure up an image of the Mahatma sitting at his rickety charkha, spinning slowly, determinedly, a vision of India as a macrocosm of a self-sustained village community. It would be equally facile though, judging by current political events, for one to imagine him spinning in his grave at the continual defilement of his legacy by his very own political progeny – the Congress.

The AICC headquarters informs us that the Congress, to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the historic Dandi March, seeks to ‘re-enact’ it for a period of 26 days, beginning March 12. The ostensible purpose is to apprise the younger generation of the “great legacy the country has inherited from the Father of the Nation”.

The Salt March, as it is usually called, is one of the finest examples ever, of the power of symbols. Gandhi’s determined rebellion against the perceived injustice of the British administration galvanized millions of heretofore apathetic Indians to join the ranks of the ‘Civil Disobedience Movement’. The march to Dandi was a call to arms for a people long inured to suffering iniquities uncomplainingly. Concomitantly, it acted as a rite of passage for M K Gandhi, allowing him the psychological leverage to become the undisputed arbiter of the direction of the freedom struggle for more than a decade.

The Salt March was a deliberate attempt to subvert the power of the administration, an orchestrated act of anarchistic demagoguery. While unqualifiedly a stroke of political genius in its own context, one ponders over the possible significance of a ‘re-enactment’ of the same 75 years hence, by none but the ruling party. Why should a democratic, civilized, and developing nation want to relive anti-establishment activities?

The Dandi incident was one of the barely half-dozen occasions in Gandhi’s political career where he welcomed the Press. His intention, en route to the Gujarat coast, was quite simply, publicity for the statement of his resolve to persist with the freedom struggle. And yet, even though his scheme was incredibly successful in vitalizing the masses, he did not resort to publicity stunts like this one save as a last resort. And, more importantly, he would carry through each and every one of his public resolves irrespective of physical, mental or political cost.

It is perfectly acceptable for cultural heroes to be glorified. Gandhi, in this respect, probably deserves an exceedingly higher pedestal than the usual assortment of skilled murderers and raconteurs that populate the Hall of Fame of popular perception. It is therefore, understandable, in the typical Indian hagiographical context, for the nation to pay homage to the great man on the anniversary of his achievement.

But then, how much of the soul of the march to Dandi does the Congress hope to encapsulate for the benefit of the younger generation? Can they, or anyone else for that matter, even dream of empathizing with the fervor of dedication that those earnest followers of Gandhi felt as they walked alongside his frail form? What is it that they hope to ‘re-enact’? The physical aspect of the march – the 241 miles from Sabarmati to Dandi? Paula Radcliffe would probably do it better.

How do you celebrate the occasion of one frail, loincloth-garbed ascetic’s gesture of revolt against the might of the British Empire? Well, if you are the Congress, you start by forming an organizing committee with patrons-in-chief and patrons-of-programme and chairmen and vice-chairmen running around primping for the cameras. For a month’s duration, you spend money on pomp and splendor that might have come in very handy indeed for the starving poor in AP or the tsunami-hit destitutes in TN.

One may choose, alternatively, to be incensed or baffled by the cavalier use that the Congress makes of its rich legacy of upright statesmanship and homogeneously nationalistic ideation. It has, thanks to the internal collapse of the Indian far Right, been able to rid itself of its minority-appeasement policy but is now in danger of drifting back to the old days of toadyism to the ‘dynasty’. The megalomanic charisma of Indira is yet to wear off the senior cadres and insofar as the rejuvenation of the party is concerned, the sooner it is past, the better.

Which is why it is painful to find the leading lights of the Congress indulging in anachronistic jingoism at a time when India, both as a society and an economy, is preparing to take wing as a power to contend with. It would be a far grander gesture of political maturity should the Congress from this embarrassing prospect.

It is almost excruciatingly clichéd to point out that Indian politics, for uniquely indigenous reasons, is extremely corrupt and decadent. It is also palpable that political stunts like Advani’s Rath Yatra affect large, extremely gullible segments of the voting population. To ask our worthy representatives to refrain from manipulating the populace for electoral gains is akin to praying for snowflakes in Hell.

How, then, do we convince our leaders that, with all due respect to the Father of the Nation, we, his descendants, need to move on?

Portrait of a non-artist as an old man

Hi all. don't have time for the cheery introductions. This is a short story I wrote for a contest by the British Council. In an hour's time I'll be in Anna Salai, listening to a reading of the same, and I hope I win, although it isn't very spectacular, so far as literary merit goes. Anyway, here it is

Into each life…

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day, U__ S______ decided, as he ponderously rearranged the window curtains. He closed his eyes, turned around, then opened them again. “You are a foolish old man”, he muttered to himself reprovingly.

He looked at the cushions in disarray on the sofa. He looked at the children’s trinkets obscuring his Air Force awards on the walnut mantelpiece. He looked at the life-sized stuffed toy orangutan, who returned his stare with enamel-polished eyes.

He was an old man, older for being surrounded by youth. “You are old,” Ishaan’s Spiderman remarked from the settee. “You are old,” Medha’s colorful little sandals caroled from under the sofa.

“What nonsense”, he shook his head, “ Grandchildren are a gift from God. I am not unhappy. I am perfectly alright.” He made his way to the bedroom. His son’s Pink Floyd CDs nodded gravely from their racks, “We understand and sympathize.”

“Would that the fates were to be kind enough to allow me a cup of tea”, he said as he entered the room. The old woman looked up from her book. Her voice was always gentle, reproachful.

“Darling, must you be so sarcastic all the time?”

“Oh! Very well, you need not bother.”

“No, no. It is just that the way you say it, it…”

Oh! Of course, it is always my fault.”

The old woman was already out of the room, moving in her assured, helpless manner. The conversation hindered the movements of neither. “It is a ritual almost”, thought the old man as he carefully placed various portions of his anatomy on the bed in order.

“Why does Grandfather act so grumpy with Grandmother?” the grandchildren would often wonder. “He is so cheerful with everybody else.” The old man looked at Ishaan’s dinosaur book lying, dog-eared on the play-bucket. “Are two Loch Ness monsters better than one?” he thought.

“I smile at my son’s guests till my jaws ache. And I laugh at the children’s antics when nobody else bothers. And every smile is a thread for my shroud; every laugh is a spar in my pyre. I am happy because nobody cares if I am unhappy.” He turned his face into the pillow.

“Let me be angry a little, Lata,” he whispered, “Because it proves I am still alive.”

“You are talking to yourself again” broke in the old woman, “ Here is your tea.”

“And about time.” said the old man gruffly.

A weak thing, he thought as he sipped, for a throat inured to cantonment whisky for so long. “But then, everything about me is weak, now.”

“I am getting worried about Guddu and Smita. They will be on the way home now. And it is raining like anything”, she said.

“Who asked them to go to Fatehpur anyway?”

What asininity, what irresponsibility, he thought. To go off on a vacation just like that. With all the bills to be paid… And the children, poor dears, missing a week of school. And heaven knows how healthy the food is in that little slum. And to go and leave us here, alone, on the Diwali weekend… “No, not that of course. The bills, the bills…”

N____ could never understand what the ‘bills’ were. As an adolescent, he could only perceive them to possess all the undesirable characteristics of Hanuman’s tail. You could never be rid of them. At least, Grandfather never could. He would either be fretting about a bill, or worrying about an installment due; or calculating income tax deductions on his pension.

“Callow youngster”, the old man would say. “Where would youth be were it not to depend on age to sustain the inglorious process of Life? Ah! How frivolous is youth.”

And so he thought still, the indomitable old man, sitting in his bedroom, in a three-bedroom flat in an E___ D____ settlement, sitting in the murky light cast by the copper-colored sky of a chilly, rainy, November morning.

“Suniye, I think we should call Baby today. The poor dear! With all that work in their nursing home, she probably can’t get time to call.”

The old man thought of turning his face to answer, then decided against it. His right shoulder ached. Rheumatism is but a euphemism, he grimaced.

“If she is too busy to call, won’t she be too busy to talk? Do you want to waste her time?”

The old woman sighed and returned to her reading.

At least, she still has her reading and her religion, he thought. Slowly, he had begun picking up her habits. “What a stupid suggestion…” he reprimanded himself, “…the silly old woman.”

There had been a time when he would call her by name, defining the limits of their relationship and her influence on his identity. Now, “I am getting soft in the head”, he was content to emulate her, hearing himself address her, “Sunti hain…” with but a slight jar of the ego.

Suniye – literally ‘listen’; representative of the ancient tradition of Indian womanhood of not referring to husbands by name, symbolic of the acceptance of a man’s supremacy over her own identity.

“Why do I say that?” thought the old man, lying beside the old woman under her reading light. He thought of the little flutter of the stomach that preceded addressing his children and grandchildren – the fear of the understanding, sympathetic smile, the terror of the supercilious, condescending glance.

And he turned over in bed to face her, whom he would not name, she who would not name him, and listened to the incessant patter of the rain. There they lay, two Rumpelstiltskins, and in the uncertain light, it would not be a feat of imagination to regard their gray, amorphous silhouettes to be one.

He was half-asleep when she had another one of her coughing fits. The old man moved nothing but his eyelids to watch her scrabble, wheezing, in her little blue bag for the inhaler. She found it and the old man rolled over in bed to face the door.

“I am not angry. Why should I be angry?” he thought. “ I am not angry at my entirely loveable son-in-law, whom I greatly admire and respect as an individual and who gives us all these medicines for free with that insolent, virtuous smirk on his face.”

“I am a feeble old man with an oversized ego,” he thought. He rose impatiently and stepped out of the bedroom, rubbing his shoulder gingerly.

“The air feels cold on my bones,” he muttered as he trudged across the dining room. He stopped and scratched his side. Then he went across to the mantelpiece to pick up his reading glasses.

He looked at the denture bowl and the two translucent mandibles suspended in liquid. “If all of me was as easy to replace, who would replace whom? I am no longer here. I don’t know…” he blinked, “I am rambling.”

He made his way across the drawing room to the door of the balcony. “This shall be my cave,” he had announced to all and sundry when the masons and window-workers had finished insulating it from the elements. The old man had moved in, replete with religious books and icons and mementoes from the past.

Now, he entered his cave again. “I am a restless sanyasi, though” he grumbled. The love of life ran strong in him still, carrying him through a career in the Air Force and three heart attacks to the age of 76. He still loved life, though there was nothing left in life that he loved.

Sitting cross-legged, even on an upraised divan was an imposition on his arthritic knees. But the feat was silently accomplished. He picked up a book at random, flipped through the pages, then abandoned this pursuit and looked out of the window.

This rain was a prisoner of war, pouring down resignedly on the concrete walkways of the apartment’s compound, marching to the obscurity of the sewers under guard of the ruthlessly efficient drainage system.

He sat there, the old man, as anachronistic and incongruous in the second floor flat’s window, as the cold November rain that beat down upon it on the other side.

“What is this piece of paper doing in my hand?” the old man mused. He looked at the children’s little play-field beside the car-park that was trying hard not to look like a pond. “I am a silly old sentimental fool,” the old man told himself as he started folding the paper.

“If arthritis is not the herald of rigor mortis, the world does not make sense,” he thought as his fingers protested against the unaccustomed exercise. But then he stopped thinking as he concentrated on the intricate task at hand.

“They go to origami classes enough. Where are all the little children with their paper boats?” he wondered. No matter, his would be the first.

He bent over as he contrived to pull the paper out into a recognizable hull, then subsided into repose as some of the paper came apart in his right hand. The old man sat there, watching the puddle in the play-field rise in tiny plops to meet the rain. He labored up and walked back into the house.

He walked back to the bedroom and painstakingly worked his stiff body into a jersey and shoes. The old woman, stirring from her light doze asked, “What is it, darling? Has the rain stopped?” Then she drew herself up against the bedstead.

The old man walked out of the room and the old woman followed him. He went out of the front door. She locked it behind him and went to the kitchen to set some water on boil. Then she went to the bathroom and switched the geyser on. She laid out the old man’s woolen dressing gown and socks.

The old man stood beside the puddle, rain dripping off his still abundant, snow-white hair. The little paper boat, bobbing slightly askew in the water, struggled to survive the spear thrusts of the rain. There he stood, a sinking old man watching his little boat sink, as the rain beat down on both, steady as the ticking of a clock.

The old woman went to the balcony and looked out of the window. She saw the valiant little paper boat in the throes of its watery demise. She saw the old man stumping stolidly out of sight. The old woman watched both, one after the other, afraid to lose sight of either. Then she fixed her eyes on his form as he trudged slowly out of sight. The old woman waited patiently, eyes fixed in the distance.

(1780 words)

…Some rain must fall

Making a stair way to heaven

Hi all. A combination of vacations and circumstances colluded to keep me from posting anything new for the last two months, i'm afraid. This is to make amends for the same. The nice thing about this article is that I wrote it in an end-semester exam. The bad thing is that the lack of polish is extremely palpable. Anyway, here it is for all it is worth,

There’s a lady who’s sure
All that glitters is gold
And she’s buying
A stairway to heaven

The concept of divinity and a Supreme Entity is fairly recent, dating back not more than 3000 years. The monotheistic Semitic religions were preceded, however, by a vast evolutionary span of religious practice, originating from the Animism of Chalcolithic cultures. The origin of God, thus, lies in the awe of Nature, the might of the mastodon, the fury of the hurricane, the raging sea, the tempestuous lightning.

And when she gets there, she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get
What she came for

But awe was soon replaced by respect, and respect gradually assumed anthropomorphic connotations. Thereby, primitive cultures, established elaborate rituals to commune with non-corporeal entities and entreat them to do their bidding. It is known that Neanderthal man possessed a very firmly entrenched and intense religion of this type as far back as the early Neolithic period. The time period when Cro-Magnon adopted these practices cannot be stated definitively.

There’s a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
‘cause you know sometimes
Words have two meanings

This was followed by the establishment of a separate priestly class, for the purpose of propitiating, on rigid ritualistic lines, the forces of Nature, now anthropomorphized as gods. The worship of gods was too important a task, it was now held, to be left to amateurs.

In a tree by the brook
There’s a song-bird that sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts
Are misgiven (sic)

It was now that, owing to various economic and political factors, the priestly class attempted to increase its influence on society. This was primarily accomplished by repeated reiterations of human incompetence and insignificance before the all-powerful majesty of the Being that was then born – God.

There’s a feeling I get
When I look to the west
And my spirit is crying
For leaving

At this stage, Semitic religion made itself apparent, insistence on elaborate rituals being its link to the past, monotheism the pennant of its novelty. The key new element in proto-Judaism was the concept of the Adamite fall from Grace and the consequent theological distaste for affairs of the corporeal realm.

In my thoughts I have seen
Rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those
Who stand looking.

This was followed by a period of turmoil in western civilization. The outmoded Greek pantheon, accompanied by Roman innovations, was fighting a losing battle against Father Time to retain its faithful. Apollo, Dionysus et al would brook no divided allegiance from their devotees. For the first time in recorded history, the State actively involved itself in favoring and persecuting religious creeds. The stage was set for a world-historical event.

If there’s a bustle in your hedge-row
Don’t be alarmed now
It’s just a spring clean
For the May queen

The advent of Christianity sealed the victory of monotheism and hence, God, over the vast pantheon of Greek, Nordic, Egyptian and Hindu lore. Christianity, with its simple message of universal love and brotherhood, its powerful symbology and most importantly, its cohesive political vitality, stormed all bastions of ‘heathen’ thought and beliefs.

Yes, there are two paths
You can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change
The road you’re on

There remained but one modification to be made. The somewhat abstruse concept of the sacrifice of Christ, and the consequent Salvation of mankind was substituted by the concept of a totally anthropomorphic just Providence, requiring model behavior in daily life and perfect submission to the will of the one God – Allah. This was the seal of Semitic religion; this was the end of the evolutionary road for the anthropomorphic Semitic God. This was the inception of Islam.

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold

And so we wind up to the modern Semitic milieu, walking down a lonely narrow road, encroached upon by an incredibly materialistic culture. And it is palpable to most that life is naught but strife and that the human spirit needs a beacon to guide it onwards. That beacon, for want of a better description is the 20th century God.

And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll

The future, it is being claimed, belongs to pantheism. Judging by the popularity of Zen and Vedanta in non-Catholic communities in Europe and America, one would be obliged to concur. Is Vedanta the one true world religion of humanity? Time will tell.

All hail Sir Vidia!

hi all
i remember Naipaul having some unflattering things to say about the IQ of the average Indian woman. I decided to take a shy at one aspect of her behaviour a couple of weeks ago, when Brandon Routh was announced as being Christopher Reeveś successor. Unfortunately, I had the Hindu at the back of my mind and so restricted my verbosity to 800 words. A pity really, I had some nice, caustic remarks to make.

Will the real Superwoman please stand up?

After long deliberations, the mantle of Superman (at least the cinematic version) has found its successor. In which case, speaking in a figurative sense, will the real Superwoman please stand up?

It is a strange, though to socio-anthropologists interesting, fact that whereas Indian culture has managed to throw up a certain number of ‘cultural heroines’, in other words feminine archetypes, the same are conspicuous by their absence in the history of European civilization.

Where do women figure in Caucasian, Greek and Semitic mythology? As Harpies, Valkyries and river nymphs? As witches, priestesses and fortune-tellers? The woman is ever the unknown; the woman is ever the mystery. In consequence, the woman is ever the snare; the woman is ever the temptation.

The mistrust of the feminine character is innate to Semitic religion. It originates with the fanciful tale of Genesis and Eve’s foibles and continues to this day to haunt the fabric of our society. In all of Semitic religion, women are simultaneously vilified as being harbingers of ill-fortune and marginalized as being inept with regard to worldly concerns.

So, with the rise of mass education, where do women seek their archetypes? Of course, in ‘pseudo-men’. Hence Boedicea and Joan of Arc, thus the Amazons and those cartoon superwoman in bikini suits, thereby Halle Berry in a ridiculous leather dress no sane person would be found dead in a ditch in!

The point is that, it is imperative, in the Western ethos, for the feminine principle to be ruthlessly suppressed if an individual is to garner any modicum of respect in society. This particular prejudice is so very deeply and homogeneously ingrained in the Western psyche that any attempts to view it as such are will in all eventuality be viewed as bigoted ravings of chauvinistic puritans.

The mythical Amazons were a tribe of fierce women archers who, to facilitate the pulling of the bow, would cut off their right breasts. This myth, as we shall soon see, is deeply symbolic, and in a way, representative of the argument aforementioned. The price a woman pays for competing in contemporary society is the loss of a very large part of her femininity. “Sacrilege!” scream the ranks of feminists.

And yet, for all the bra-burning of the 1920’s and for all the emancipated life-styles of the 21st century, where is the Superwoman? The successful corporate executive, juggling responsibilities confidently both at home and at work? Is she not yet another Amazon, as a person a self-made hermaphrodite; as an archetype simply a substitute male?

Why? Why is it that in contemporary society, a woman is required to prove herself as being ‘equal to a man’ to attain any semblance of self-worth and societal recognition?

Western society has developed, by virtue of its evolution through incessant warfare, on lines wherein the masculine principle has acquired overwhelming dominance. If a woman chooses to establish her individuality in this phallus-driven society, she must, to use a vulgar but effective analogy, procure a dildo for herself. Such are the rules of the Western game.

The East, it is immediately evident, has attained a more equable equilibrium as regards gender-discrimination in society. This, of course, is a direct consequence of the fact that these civilizations have seen a shorter history of militaristic brutality. It is a fact that the East has managed to reconcile the difference between the sexes and created a much more wholesome paradigm of existence, with regard to gender, than the West. In the bargain, it is devoid of the purely masculine instinct of aggression and in consequence has been imposed upon on the geo-political scene since time immemorial.

China owing to its racially segregated existence for long centuries has probably the most balanced of gender philosophies, as expressed on a very fundamental level by the concept of yin and yang. India, owing to the incessant onslaughts of invaders from the North-West in the past millennium, has begun to acquire some Semitic traits.

But even so, we still retain some civilizational memories of a more sophisticated mode of societal existence. The deities of Knowledge and Wealth, for instance, both passionately sought after and both notoriously fickle, are represented as women. Touché! In Durga, the embodiment of the rage of destruction, the Indian archetype matches the post-Freudian view of the libidinous nature of passion. Of course, even here, the qualities ascribed to the feminine principle are not very flattering to Westernized ears.

But bringing the discussion to more mundane realms, in the light of the aforegoing, it is rather piquant to find Indian women (even more than Indian men) desperately eager to adopt Western modes of lifestyle and expression. If in spite of all, Indian women find the idea of sacrificing their feminity for their individuality appealing; the popular opinion of the meagerness of the feminine intellect will stand profoundly vindicated.

Blood is thicker than water

hi all
readers of my blog are here accorded the privilege of reading my article for the magazine 'Bharati' before its out in print. Due to some obscure relation between the two clans, my relatives on my father's side of the family are fiendishly enamored with 'Madhushala'. Well , its good enough to go a little ga ga over. Here , I continue the family tradition, but with a slightly more balanced perspective. Readers may suggest titles for the work, the author cannot think of any at the drop of a hat. Here goes,



The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam occupies a unique place in the literary firmament.The magnificence of Baghdad, the splendor of the Islamic Arab empire,are reflected in Omar's insouciant exhortations to the world. This compilation of quatrains of the famous 11th century astronomer-poet first burst forth into the intellectual sphere through Edward Fitzgerald's brilliant English translation back in 1865.Fitzgerald's literary reputation rests almost entirely on this monumental work, culminating in the publication, over a period of 11 years, five slim editions comprising of verses culled from the original.

'Awake, for Morning, in the Bowl of Night,
Has flung the stone that sets the Stars to flight.
And lo! The hunter of the east has caught
The Sultan's turret, in a noose of light.'

The task of translating Omar's mystical metaphorical flights into a more accesible language, Persian gradually becoming defunct, required an Oriental mind acquainted with medieval Persian culture at an intimate level. The task was accomplished, in part, by a personage uniquely suited for the purpose. Ladies and gentlemen, Harivansh Rai Srivastava.

'Madiralaya jane ko ghar se, chalta hai peene wala,
Kis path se jaoon, asmanjas mein hai yeh bhola bhala.
Alag, alag path batlate sab, par main yeh batlata hoon
Rah pakad too ek chala chal, pa jayega Madhushala.'

Harivansh Rai Srivastava was born in Allahabad on November 27, 1907. He graduated from the Benares Hindu University. During his college days, he acquired his celebrated nom-de-plume, 'Bachchan'. In later life, by virtue of his son's exploits onscreen, he was known exclusively as Harivansh Rai Bachchan. He went to Cambridge in 1952 , where, in 1954, he became the first Indian ever to complete a Ph.D in English.

'Sun kal kal chhal chhal, madhughat se girti, pyalon mein hala
Sun run jhun run jhun, jal vitran karti madhu-saki-bala,
Lo aa pahunche, door nahin, kuchh char kadam ab chalna hai,
Chahak rahe sun peene wale, mahak rahi le Madhushala.'

'Madhushala', earned Harivansh Rai instant fame upon its publication in 1935. However, it must not be assumed that, as in the case of Fitzgerald, Bachchan's work was a simple translation. He himself acknowledged his inspiration to the original. But that was as far as he went. This technicality essentially absolves him of any liabilty corresponding to liberties in translation , the bane of Fitzgerald.

'Ek baras mein ek baar hi jalti Holi ki jwala,
Ek baar hi mane Diwali, jagmag deepon ki mala
Duniyawalon, kintu kisi din, aa madiralaya mein dekho
Din ko Holi, raat Diwali, roz manati Madhushala.'

As is evident, Madhushala is not meant to be a translation of the Rubaiyat, as the poet uses Omar's medium to communicate in a very different cultural milieu. To clarify his position, he later published a literal translation of part of the Rubaiyat, which unfortunately, does not live up to his usual high standards. Madhushala, it is contended, is not a linguistic translation, but a mystical translation of Khayyam's philosophy.

'Lal sura ki dhar lapat si, kah na ise dena jwala.
Phenil madira hai, mat isko kah dena ur ka chhala.
Dard nasha hai is madira ka, vigat smritiyan Saki hain
Peeda mein anand jise ho, aye meri Madhushala.'

Thus, the hiatus in Fitzgerald's is complemented by Bachchan's Indianized rendition of the same theme. In metaphorical terms, Fitzgerald provides the body, and Bachchan provides the spark of soul to enliven the translation. It is a matter of dispute as to whether Bachchan was influenced by the English translation to a very great degree. Some verses in Madhushala hint at the likelihood of this being the case. Contrast, for instance the following :

'Yama will then be thy cup-bearer, and bring thee the dark cup,
Drink, and know no more consciousness, O carefree one.
This is the ultimate trance, the final Saki, the last goblet.
O traveller, drink well, for you will never find the tavern again.'

'So when at last the Angel of the darker drink
Of darkness finds you by the river-brink,
And, proffering his Cup, invites your Soul
Forth to your lips to quaff it - do not shrink


Bachchan succeeded where Fitzgerald failed for he inherited a rich and vibrant culture of Urdu poetry, that, to an infinitesimal extent, kept alive, as it still does, vague memories of the forgotten days of Islamic world domination. To describe Omar's poetry is to describe the revolt of a fertile mind against the decadence fomented by rigid fatalistic doctrines that pervaded Persian society for the entire period of its decline, beginning in mid-11th century. It is the rebellion of a free spirit against dogmas perpetuated by the existing oligarchy of ulemas, and at the same time a heart-felt expression of sorrow at the irrationality of existence.

'Oh Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestination round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

Oh Thou, who Man of baser earth did make,
And even with Paradise devise the Snake,
For all the Sin wretched Man's face is
Black with, Man's forgiveness give - and take.'



Postscript: Alas! I just remembered. Owing to the legerdemain of the philistine Fudu, four paragraphs of the article were lost irretrievably at the time of composition when he leaned on the 'Delete' key and saved the document in one smooth motion. He shall pay for this in blood when we both stand in the literary Valhalla when the last trump sounds.