The contrasting Prime Ministers

One was a former Prime Minister, the other now holds that high  position. They could not be more different. Manmohan Singh's recent statement where he said he was 'deeply pained and anguished by the falsehoods and canards being spread to score political points in a lost cause by none less than Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi.'  comes out as a restrained but deeply felt comment on Modi's practice. Quite rightly he depreciates Modi's 'desire to tarnish every constitutional office, including that of  Former Prime Minister and Army Chief.' His statesmanlike remonstrance makes a remarkable contrast with the lowly utterances by those who are attacking him.   

Why does Modi have to continue acting the upstart after having attained the highest position in government? Having achieved what he set out to do he must now rise up to the position that he has  attained. From chief rabblerouser he must transform to being a leader of men, not by mocking institutions of learning with his hard work and Harvard remarks and not by scoring brownie points using lies and innuendo.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. - Groucho Marx

That may be a comedian's view of politics. However, the present scenario in India has led to politics appearing as comedy or farce. 
Men of limited vision tend to mock peers who can see more clearly into the future and work towards their ideals ceaselessly. Such Pygmies assume the role of Titans resulting in a greater fall than if they were merely confined to their pygmy stature.

The Spiritualiy of Atheism

Atheism – the highest form of Spirituality

Shoonya or Empty or bereft of anything of substance, the ultimate of non-being is an ancient Indian proposition that finally gave rise to the concept of zero. Curiously, the idea of zero resulted in an elevated idea of number and together with the structuring of a number by the positioning of numerals led to the ability to grasp and manipulate large numbers taking mankind beyond the primitive methods of counting that were restricted to one, two, three and infinity. Zero thus became the absolute supreme of all numbers. 

Atheism which posits the absence of any gods and even the negation of an earth-like heaven modelled on an impossible-of-achievement utopia seems to be the most practical solution to the intellectual confusion and strains of dishonesty created by the multiplicity of god-like constructs of the human mind. It is no coincidence that atheists from all regions do not, in contrast to the followers of different theists, have intra-atheistic conflicts arising from the sources of their beliefs. Atheism, which is accepted in the overall Hindu construct (incidentally the only Religion in the world that allows this) – was likened to ignorance and euphemistically called Avidya or lacking in knowledge. That tag did not lead to the brutalities of the Inquisition or to burning at the stake. Ignorance was contemptible but did not invoke a violent hatred leading to torture or death in the full view of a public arena. They also did not face commands to recant with ‘or else’ threats. They did not have to fear the ignominies of punishment in public for all to see and beware. They were not made examples of in order to terrorise those tending to be blasphemous.

So it appears that to be an atheist is in many ways superior to being a believer. It makes one free; provides freedom from the burden of a threatening Supreme Being, freedom from the need to continual prayer and ritual and freedom from the need to go on pilgrimage. It releases many spaces of the brain otherwise occupied by beliefs difficult to maintain and practice, it allows reason to displace blind faith and it fills the mind with hope. Belief in the supremacy of man replaces the belief in a supernatural God. With atheism mankind can start looking forward and relinquish the teachings of backward looking prophets.

There are many studying theism and even Chairs in Universities are devoted to the study of theology. Recently a Chair was created in an American University for the study of Atheism. That is a long awaited and much desired event and it is to be hoped it will eventually be followed by having Churches devoted to atheism and priests of non-God preaching to laity on the virtues of being non-believers. Will we also have atheist evangelists exhorting people to shed the beliefs of their fathers and who propagate discovering the emptiness of the heavens as the final epiphany that liberates them?    

Razing a Monument – the Taj Mahal

Remember the Buddhas at Bamiyan or the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya.  In one case the brave and fearless Taliban in a courageous and bold act of iconoclasm aimed cannon fire at the unarmed stone statues and blasted them out of their ornamented recesses leaving only some empty cannonball scorched niches. In the other case the kar sevaks egged on by Marga Darshaks demolished a magnificent old relic. We hear that the artistic, sensitive and diligent Japanese have assured the world they would restore the images at Bamiyan with holographic reproductions. That is good news because no amount of cannon fire could destroy a hologram. However, the Babri Masjid has no such saviours.

Will they be assembling cannons around the Taj Mahal? One wonders how many cannons and how many cannonballs would be needed to raze that monumental wonder of the world, the Taj Mahal, to dust. It may have been built by traitors who were in the lineage of successful conquerors, who adopted the land they conquered and like the ancient Aryans decided to stay on, but it is too beautiful a gift to our land; a land whose ancient aesthetic accomplishments in turning common stone to exquisite sculpture are there as unmatched legacy for all to behold. Will the inheritors of that great artistic tradition descend into a mindless aping of the destructive philistinism of the Taliban?

We do not have to take the ranting of bigots seriously. They are more used to rabble rousing than to leading men to think. What we have to consider is the atmosphere of bigotry and fear that has been unleashed in this our land of unbounded tolerance and large-hearted inclusiveness.  How has this come about and how can we push it back? For push it back we must else we would be untrue to the legacies of the Indian past. That would be an even bigger disaster than the razing of the Taj Mahal.

Ozymandias and the Yogi of Uttar Pradesh

Those of you who have read of a 100 metre tall statue of Lord Ram proposed in Ayodhya may like to remember the Shelly poem on Ozymandias, reproduced below. 

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away"

. 

The revered Yogi who heads the state of Uttar Pradesh has no doubt many things to occupy his mind besides the commissioning of statues. The hospital at Gorakhpur and its sad record of child deaths is only one of the problems that plague the land. One politician commented on the Yogi's visit to Kerala for the Jan Raksha Yatra, asking him to study the educational systems and the public  health systems of Kerala rather than the penchant for political violence more often than not seeded by a virulent Hindutva trying to spread its malevolence among a polity noted for its secularism. 

Development the Chief has said to be the essence of his creed. And development it shall be, what if the development is of a skewed and fundamental nature. So we will develop the gigantic statue in reverence of a worshiped ancestor on the banks of a sacred river and the mighty shall look upon these works and despair. 

We ordinary mortals look upon the proposal and despair.

Modi:- Will not eat will not let eat

Modi:- Will not eat, will not let eat. 

When a chief politician whose election promises that he will not eat nor will he let eat, (greed being a euphemism for corruption), finally achieves his goal of becoming head of Government it does not behoove him to forget that not so long ago avowed promise.  When a close colleague has a son who has suddenly found himself in great wealth the father's proximity to the boss becomes an embarrassment not only to the politician but also to the party he belongs to and undoubtedly to the boss-man who had boasted of his penchant for ascetic fasting. Why then is the P M who is prone to  to spout homilies on each and every occasion not saying anything relating even obliquely to this sudden disclosure?

We tend to believe that the threat to take the web magazine, which brought this exceptionable amassing of wealth to light, to court for defamation is an infantile response and will keep this cloud on the government's keepers in the public gaze for much longer than it deserves. The coincidence and concurrence of fortune smiling with the paternal rise to power is too blatant to be accidental. 

There are enough precedents to follow and if Amit Shah has the moral fibre which the BJP always publicly professes to possess, it is only correct for him to bow to his sense of propriety and resign after initiating a process to investigate the reasons for the sudden prosperity of his son.  Then will the sins of the son be visited upon the father?

A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

It was very pleasing to read that the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. I was reminded of that march I had undertaken with a few thousand others from Aldermaston, the storehouse of nuclear weapons in England, to Hyde Park in London. The final achievement was to be able to shake hands with Bertrand Russell after standing in a long queue .  He  expounded the intellectual position in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and made the long march and its travails bearable. I still remember the march in the early sixties when as a student fired up with the ideals of pacifism and protesting the storage and use of nuclear weapons we went on the streets. In the towns we passed through people lined up on the streets and encouraged us as we marched. There were policemen on horseback riding by our side and some were pointing at their boots to say that we deserved a booting.

We sang of men and women marching together; we sang of the dread of Strontium 18 poisoning future generations; we sang of atolls in the pacific used to test some of these dreadful bombs; we sang that we shall overcome. Now reading about the Nobel Peace Prize being given  to a campaign for nuclear disarmament a great satisfaction drowns me for it seems that we are indeed slowly overcoming. 

Nuclear Weapons have catastrophic consequences and would cause unacceptable human suffering. There are about 15000 nuclear weapons and they run the risk of literally ending the world by a freak accident or by irresponsible politicians. At the rate at which these weapons of mass destruction are growing the probability of their misuse mounts and a helpless world hopes that a better sense would prevail among those who have access to the controls of these bombs.

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is a most befitting tribute to the pacifists all over the world who have striven hard and are still working tirelessly to put an end to the devilish invention that the atomic bombs have become. 

It is some time since I wrote. Dussera is as good a day as any to resume.  A few days ago I had written a topical short story The Silencing which was  my tribute to a recently murdered journalist.  Can you imagine my surprise to receive a reply from the editor of a journal I had submitted it to? The learned Editor said:-

 'The problem is that the plot and the incidents are known to all through newspaper and other media. There's no novelty as well as very less elements of fiction. Kindly write another story dear sir.'

Perhaps he does not recollect what he must have learned long ago that Truth is stranger than Fiction; perhaps he does not feel the courage to put out something based on real events and shields himself by calling it controversial and therefore to be abhorred.  But I cannot let it go unread so here is the whole story:

The Silencing

Chandashekhar Sastry

I wish I’d been there earlier. It might have made all the difference. So all I can tell you is why he was murdered. Gaurav was the fearless editor who would challenge every untoward idea and cut through superstition and blind faith to reveal the truth behind the veil of false belief and awkward myth. He had been made to pay the ultimate price for his bold stand on the side of the verity that many preferred concealed. He brimmed with bold unconventional ideas that revealed an underlying humanity unbridled by any trace of bigotry. He was an idealist who brooked no compromise. I had sensed the looming threat and was on my way to plead with him to be extra cautious but I was a little late. They had shot him. As he opened the gate to his house and before he entered, they shot three bullets into him and one bullet which missed him had lodged in the front door. Two men masked by full helmets on motorcycles, each with a loaded country made pistol, had sped away after their murderous mission.   

We all knew they had threatened him and he would laugh at the threats.  Gaurav showed us some of them which he considered really crude.

in charge of `dharam prasaar' (propagation of faith) in west UP, Rakesh Tyagi, said these "yodhas" would protect Hindu religion. "If anyone tries to demolish a temple, attack the Hindu religion, kills cows, or wage love jihad, these yodhas would deal with them," Tyagi said.in charge of `dharam prasaar' (propagation of faith) in west UP, Rakesh Tyagi, said these "yodhas" would protect Hindu religion. "If anyone tries to demolish a temple, attack the Hindu religion, kills cows, or wage love jihad, these yodhas would deal with them," Tyagi said.If anyone tries to demolish a temple, attack the Hindu religion, kill cows, or wage love jihad, our yodhas would deal with them.

That was one of the quotes in a rabid pamphlet that was thrust under his door. Such things only hardened his resolve to fight the forces that upheld an unreasoning fundamentalism and thoughtless superstition in practice. It was not an ideal of reason ruling over faith and it was not a passionate desire to emancipate people from darkness; it was just a desire to uphold truth. That was a simple yearning in his uncomplicated mind.     

“Atheism is the highest form of spiritualism he thundered,” at his public meetings, “for it is the force that places humanity above all and gives reality the essence of truth. ‘Satyameva Jayate’ is not merely a philosophical idea but needs to be lived in practice and demonstrated in life.” He would go on to claim that the extravagance of piety and a blind faith in godmen transforms into its dialectical opposite and makes a sin of such worship of the Babas and Sadhus who cynically draw followers, transform them into devotees and reap a rich profit out of their gullibility. He proclaimed that, in a sense, the amorphous nature of the Hindu faith had proved ineffectual to protect its simple, trusting flock and these easily misled souls placed their trust in devious men seducing their minds with high sounding ideals and arabesque sermons. Some of these charlatans masquerading as learned gurus claimed to have gleaned their pretentious high philosophies at the feet of those immortal Rishis who haunt the high reaches of the Himalayas, invoking the immortal deities presumed to be living on those peaks.

Last month he had torn into a Pretender, whose long hair and hirsute face was dyed black to hide age, whose awkward obesity was hidden behind encircling white robes, enacting the role of a wise seer. Trying to use a modern analogy he was the Guru who likened spiritualism to petrol that would drive the car of life, which when exhausted needs to be again restored for fuelling the car, leaving his followers astounded at such high philosophy. That it also enabled a continual and repeated spouting of recycled wisdom as the driving force was the hidden bonus, extending the shelf-life of his platitudinous preaching.

The meticulous demolition of the Pretender’s claims to having received spiritual wisdom following a visit to the Himalayas outraged the virtuous believers. Some of his followers would not suffer the editor’s diatribes in silence and were raring to reply, their offended sense raising a shrill clarion rather vengefully. Those who were articulate filled social media with protests and rabidly vile comments, whereas those who had made the taking of offense a principal occupation were inclined to stronger remonstrance. Groups had been formed and their discourse was filled with more hate than reason. In some such extreme group it was first suggested that a permanent silencing of the Offender was a pressing necessity.

“Take him out,” someone said hesitantly in a closed door meeting of the faithful, but it did not then receive much support for his murderous suggestion. Nevertheless, that proved to have been a seminal proposal and the vicious thought had found root and grown; it was repeated more robustly after a few sessions. There was no dearth of volunteers, no dearth of ideas for the execution of the plot to take him out. I had been forewarned by someone who was revolted at the thought of assassination and therefore sneaked the cooking of a wicked plot. He did not have much detail but only knew it was imminent. I was frightened by the possibility and thought I should meet with Gaurav to warn him that he was creating enemies.

 “Welcome friend,” he said as he opened the door and saw me. “This is a surprise.”

“I am sorry Gaurav I did not wait to telephone and rushed here as soon as I heard about it,” I said. “There is evil afoot and some people who have been agitated by your editorials want to kill you.”  I held his hands and in a quivering voice told him to stop, to go away on a holiday and forget these frightful things. But he was stubborn. He did not seem perturbed.

“Yes, I have received warnings on the telephone and even in person. A turbaned man in dark glasses called on me and in a very soft tone asked me to beware as some people had taken offence at my writing. ‘They were powerful people,’ he added, ‘they are quite capable of doing you in.’ It was insinuated in a gentle voice, sugarcoating the threat.”

He confessed that the vicious threat delivered in person, had resulted in a couple of sleepless nights and then he had ignored the whole thing in order to conquer the insomnia that followed from fear. 

“Please inform the police and ask for protection,” I had pleaded but he considered that unnecessary. “Don’t go on with those platitudes that they cannot silence you and your ideas and words will live long after you,” I said. “We want you to continue writing; we don’t want that stopped. After all, dead men write no tales. It is only prudent to be practical. Can’t you write without provoking retribution?” 

He laughed at that, “Galileo recanted to be able to continue his studies and to surreptitiously courier his researches to lands beyond the reach of the Inquisition. There was a definite purpose in doing so. He furthered the cause of Science by succumbing to the Cardinals’ demands. I myself see no such reason to go back on my iconoclasm.”

 Gaurav seemed exhilarated with his relentless attack on unquestioning faith and undoubting superstition. His purpose was to have future generations inherit a world unburdened from a demon haunted past. He would not stop his writings. The vile language used by trolls on his website and social media at first shocked his sensibilities but he learnt to ignore it for he did not have the coarseness to reply giving as good as he got.

Later I came to know that they plotted the attack very carefully. They studied his schedules and the route his car took on the way home. They timed the distance from the last traffic lights to his home and made allowances for traffic snarls which were always an unknown. Someone got hold of a country made pistol and live ammunition and a team travelled out of town to far off fields to test the weapon and give confidence to the elected assassin. It was a risky mission and had to be expertly carried out for a failure would alert the victim. There may not be another chance; a requisitioned police protection would make it doubly difficult. It may even compromise the would-be killer who may not be able to withstand an interrogation if he were apprehended.   

It happened as evening approached. It was 5 p m on a winter evening and dusk was setting in when I set out for his home. I chose the scooter as I could weave through traffic and reach his home before a car could. However, I was late and all the risks I had taken on the road speeding to meet with him had been in vain. As I turned the corner I saw the motorcycle with his killers roaring away and Gaurav was lying on the porch before his house in a pool of blood. He had not been able to reach up and ring the doorbell. They got him even as he closed the gate behind him. He was first hit on the front of his chest then the second and third bullet hit him in the back as he turned running to the porch and a fourth had lodged in the front door.

They shot him up. Dead men write no tales. They shut him up.

Note on author Chandrashekhar Sastry

The Author is a widely travelled engineer-scientist now retired and living in Bangalore. He has studied in Bombay, Germany and in the UK and worked in Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Bangalore.
His first book The Non-Resident Indian published in 1991 by Panther Publishers was a pioneering work with an unorthodox treatment of a contemporary subject. His second book  The Tanjore Painting (Penguin 2014) deals with the cultural imports that the diaspora carries to their new found homelands. His latest collection of short stories Long and Short Tales has been published by Sanbun Publishers in 2016

V I S H U 

It's Vishu tomorrow and I have to revisit what I wrote for  Vishu some years ago.  
I love reading it and offering it again and again every New Year 

AN  EYEFUL  OF  LUCK

Kerala girls attaining puberty are ceremoniously given the bronze looking glass for now they are enjoined to groom themselves and always be well turned out as they are now of marriageable age. The magical looking glass is handed down through the generations and is a precious heirloom.

I arrived in the evening to find Lali at the door displaying a wide grin. 

“Back in two weeks.  I am surprised.” It was said a little sardonically with a tilt of the head and a half smile that I had missed for fifteen days.

 “That was a wild goose chase, I must admit.”  I wanted to make peace.

“Did you meet your Valiamman?  How is he?”

“All in due course; for the moment I must wash, change and wind down. But tell me how have you been?”

 Journeying by air one loses the easy transition that a train journey allows.  Travelling on a land route the geography changes gently and the people and cultures transpose in a slowly changing matrix devoid of cliffs or precipices. The routes always remain two-dimensional.  Air travel on the other hand brings about a culture shock of some kind. The third dimension intervenes in a sudden and an explosive way.    Taking off at the runway is a violent yank, it rapidly raises you to near stratospheric heights in a vehement jerk that one cannot fail to notice.   At the end of the journey, the suddenness of the modern steep approach landing, changes an idyllic floating amongst clouds into a bumpy run on the tarmac, in too short an interval to allow the psyche room to settle the abrupt change. 

From the almost indolent and leisurely ways of Kerala, some parts steeped in medieval beliefs and rituals, I had descended suddenly into a metropolis with cars, multistory buildings, multilane highways, 24 hour FM radio and cable television.  It leads to a certain type of jet lag not entirely connected with the circadian rhythms and I needed some time to acclimatise.  I went into the bedroom and unpacked my suitcase leaving only the looking-glass inside.  I wanted to surprise her with that.  I triumphantly took out the jumbo bananas I bought at Kochi.  They always pleased her wild Bihari tastes.

After a refreshing bath I sat by the television to watch the news station that I had missed for a fortnight.  Lali brought me a cup of tea.  Nothing much had happened in the world and I switched off the set.  There was a pile of mail, which I thought I would deal with later.  Lali, as always, had tackled the important ones.

“Valiamman is well and still moves about in the house.  Occasionally he even has an evening walk in the front yard.  He enquired after you and was very pleased to see the photographs I gave him.  My sister’s family was also glad on seeing me after a few years.”

“What about the Silent Valley?  Did you go trekking in the forests?”

“That was an absolute catastrophe.  The Forest Warden made the impractical proposition of travelling as a mad scientist eager to photograph the flora and fauna of the forests.”

“ Impractical, no.  Mad, yes.   But scientist! That’s rich.”

“Anyway I declined to go through with such a deception.  Just as well I would think. The alternative was going with a poacher into the forests.  Eventually I tried that too but it was disastrous.  We ended up being turned out of the forest by a brigand who lives therein with his gang of thieves and is much wanted by the police of three states. That was a lucky escape.”

“Good God, my premonitions were correct then.”

“It was Veerappan and he threatened to kill us if we persisted in scouting the forests.”

“And your distant Aunt Ammini?  Were you able to trace her or her descendants after her disappearance so long ago?”

“I think I have a clue.”

The neighbour’s wife arrived with a whole lot of goods and they retired into the kitchen.  When she left it was Lali’s turn to take me by surprise. 

“Everything ready for Vishu,” she said.  It was only then that I remembered Valiamman’s request to stay back.  Tomorrow was Vishu, the New Year’s day.  Lali had conspired to make it really memorable, and the friendly neighbour had procured all the goods for a proper Vishu.  It was to be her first Vishu.

“It’s not only the hearty New Year’s repast that I have considered.  I am also arranging the Kanni for the lucky look in the early morning.”   Her enthusiasm about the whole thing overflowed.

She was well prepared.  She had sprigs of the yellow laburnum flowers, the jackfruit and mango, and the other needs for the morning ritual.  Vishu signals the New Year and tradition goes far back to make it an occasion, which encapsulates in a single glance of fortune all the hopes and wishes for a Happy New Year.   Happiness spelt prosperity and prosperity comes from an abundance of yield from the earth.  The Horn of Plenty overflows and grain, fruit, vegetable, all must be represented.  Prosperity, an accumulation of wealth where the noble metal gold takes pride of place, closely followed by silver coins.

I was too tired from my travels to help her and went to bed early.  I could hear Lali pottering about with various things arranging the spread of prosperity that we were to view early the next day as the first thing in the morning.  I even heard some voices before I dozed off and knew that neighbours had been invoked to confirm the arrangement and to give the final touches.  I slept very soundly but awoke at four in the morning.

Withdrawing the antique magical looking-glass from my bag I crept into the living room and closed the bedroom door.  It was a wonderful picture coloured by the nostalgia of so many similar New Years that I had seen from childhood.  The furniture had been cleared to one side and against the eastern wall I saw the kanni arranged.  There was the large bell metal urli with its two rings hanging on either side filled with rice grain, and in it were placed two upturned halves of a split coconut with yellow lentils filling the hollows.  On the tapered end cut from a plantain leaf was the golden cucumber and the slice of jackfruit its rich yellow cloves bursting out, the raw mango with its ruddy cheeks and saucy, upturned pointed end.  A bunch of small bananas in their golden skin lay on a side.  On another side there was a necklace complementing the yellow laburnum in golden colour, and lying on the unbleached mundu and veshti with golden borders, a few old silver coins, bright with the profiles of the English Emperor gorgeously crowned.   On the right was the spouted bronze pot polished and shining golden.

I made out all that in the light of the street lamp shining through the window. Lali had placed a box of matches near the small rush mat in front of the ensemble.  I lit up the two bronze lamps on either side and then sat down on the mat to see my face in the mirror.  I leaned over and removed the silvered glass mirror Lali had taken from the dressing table.  In its place I stood my mother’s looking glass made of polished bronze and leaned back sitting erect.  What I then saw was a truly golden sight, a sight to be emblazoned in my eyes for a whole year.  While I looked on from the outside, I was also there inside that witching scene, my sleepy face framed in that century old heirloom, its golden frame and the yellow flames of the lamps bestowing on my visage the ageless look of a gilt mummy.  There was gold all over, in the polished urli, in the laburnum flowers, in the yellow legume, in the irregular coils of the golden chain necklace.  On the burnished skin of the melon-cucumber the gold was tempered excessively with copper.  There was the promise of gold in the colour of the mango and the fulfilled promise in the banana.  The shining lamps were of solid gold, a liquid golden hue filled the oil in the bowl, the dancing flames were golden in their gaseous luminance.  The sandalwood paste in the silver bowl appeared golden.  Not to be out done, the little prayer book, the Gita, had gilt letters on the cover.  I was mesmerised by the sight and felt as if a whole year was passing by as I peered at everything, one after the other, eyes glissading from the left to the right.  My gilt faced image, my other inside the mirror, was also casting his eyes in synchronism, taking in the picture from right to left.  The prospects of a year full of fortune, an eyeful of golden luck that I should not forget for a long, long while.  It was a golden past and it premised a golden future.

I heard the handle of the bedroom door turn and rushed up to clasp my hand over Lali’s eyes.  I slowly guided her to the rush mat and seated her.  Untrusting, like a blind man she put out her right hand, rotating the palm, to feel her way.

“Sit down,” I said, “and keep your eyes closed.”  Then wetting my fingertips from the spouted bronze ewer, I wiped her eyes to unstick the eyelids in a symbolic washing and bid her to open them.  

“Your first view of the New Year,” I said, “Open your eyes now.”

For all the virtues of electric lighting there is an abrupt harshness about switching on the incandescent lamp.  It imposes a rapid reaction in the eye, the iris closing swiftly and blinding the eye in the first few microseconds of the high wattage of electric current.  On the other hand in the mellow pleasance of the candle flame or the oil wick lamp, the iris is dealt with more gently.  It is like a twilight between darkness and the full light of the sun.  Lali’s eyes opened slowly as I watched her face.  She first saw her image and smiled at herself.  Then her eyes coursed along the assembly of last night, taking in all that in the aura of the lighted lamps.  Finally it was only when her eyes returned to her image in the looking glass that she gave a gasp of surprise.

“Your mother’s looking glass?”

“Yes, recovered from the attic of the old house.”

It was the magical looking glass which my mother had often talked about and which she thought carried a palimpsest of images of all the girls who had been ritually presented the mirror as they matured into women.

I sat down beside her and we both peered into the mirror.  Slowly behind our two images, more faces were being formed in the magic mirror; we could see the face of my mother, framed for the first time in her own mirror, young and girlish, and then, behind her in a succession of images were the mothers and mothers of mothers, all young, queuing up one behind another, in a regressively distant past, reaching out to us with their youthful smiles and blessing us with a golden future in that eyeful of luck that every Vishu promises.  And three places behind Mother and on a side was a Moplah woman with the closely fitted blouse, gold ornament on the parting of the hair, a broad gold waistband encircling her and a corner of the upper garment raised to cover the topknot of hair, bearing the look of Amminibibi that I had seen in the photograph framed and kept in the house of the boat builder.   Ammini my mother’s first cousin who had disappeared in 1921, the year of the Moplah uprising.

1986     words

Dr Chandrashekhar Sastry

98 Gulmohur

16^th Main,  Block 4 –B

Koramangala

Bangalore 560034

Tel:  91 80 41101069      E-mail:  csastry@vsnl.com

Modi at Harvard

Modi at Harvard

Modi’s barbs against the venerable Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and the esteemed University that he once adorned remind one of the mindless taunts that we all used to practice as schoolchildren. Fascinated with the use or misuse of the English language we made all sorts of puns and alliterative idioms and a meaningless nonsensical rhyme or a faux poetic rhythm which then became the hallmark of our childish efforts. It ill behoves the head of a large nation to descend to such puerile bickering.

The sign of great wisdom is a humility that the learned seer wears on his sleeve, just as the unmistakable sign of an upstart is the ease with which he flings mockery at men of learning. One is not looking down at the man of achievement who may have overcome humble beginnings.  After all we do not ask which University Alexander the Great graduated from before he started conquering the world. But when a false pride enters the soul of the successful man it indeed cometh before a fall.

This is where Brthrhari comes to mind.

Ajnah sukham aradhyah, Sukhataram aradhyate visheshajnah;

Jnanalav durvidagdham, Brahma bhi naram na pujayate

The ignoramus is easily satisfied, the learned even more easily

He who prides on an iota of knowledge, even the gods fail to satisfy.

We salute Narendra Modi as our Prime Minister; we congratulate him for occupying the seat that Jawaharlal Nehru once held; we think he deserves to feel a just pride on having reached the pinnacle of political achievement. Such dizzying heights also compel one to overcome the vertigo that it brings and a distillation of the mind, an elevation of the soul is necessary to occupy this exalted post. Failing to rise to the position he holds the clay feet of the idol is slowly coming into view. 

iT IS SLOWLY BECOMING CLEAR THAT THE MAN IS OUT OF HIS DEPTH.