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.

  

MODI'S MAJOR MISTAKE

MODI'S  MAJOR  MISTAKE
On the evening of the 8th of this month we were all struck by that ominous announcement whereby the high denomination currency notes would cease to be legal tender. Amidst the pandemonium caused all over we heard various voices praising the move as a major blow against black money, against terror funding and in support of honest people.
In the aftermath we have seen many tragic events such as the death of the aged queuing up to change money, the poor peasant who had just concluded a sale of land and saddled with demonetised notes and amongst others the frugal housewife who had stashed away savings from housekeeping money. There continues to be a shortage of the new currency and overall the small traders and shopkeepers find a drop in their revenues.

Economists have predicted a dip in economic activity that would have a bearing on the GDP and proclaim that it would take a while to restore economic equilibrium. The pain has been widespread and covers all classes and sections of the vast population in this land. Slowly it seems to be dawning on people that the promised gains may not be in fact realisable and that politicians are at their old game of selling dreams.

At this juncture it may be worthwhile to look back and ask a belated question. Who are the people who were behind the sweeping victory of the Superman of Gujarat who made that great leap into the throne at Delhi?  They are the same people who will now be rueing their support, the same small traders and businessmen, the same starry eyed people who were looking for a messiah, all those same people who now feel terribly let down.

'In one fell swoop,' the Bhakts said, and lo it now seems that in that same fell swoop has Modi alienated large numbers of his followers who led him to the throne. They had never expected to be let down in such manner, for those were the same high denomination notes that they had so mistakenly spent in backing Modi 

ARADHANA - a Tantric type of killing?

One wonders how they could do it.  The Jains, most peaceful of people whose monks and nuns cover their face to avoid annihilating micro-organisms and extol ahimsa; how could they allow a thirteen year old teenager to starve herself to death?

“There was never any compulsion,''  said her father Laxmichand;  “we would take permission everyday from our Guruji in Chennai, one day at a time," he said. The high priests of the religion advised the family that they should keep the grieving rituals to a minimum and observe the cremation as a 'shobha yatra. Can they be considered complicit in this grievous crime, an act of deliberate himsa, a dialectical opposite of the ahimsa they swear by?

Read the contradictions and discontents of Santhara in my story.

http://tiny.cc/6lj8fy

THE DAY INDEPENDENCE DAWNED

Times of India front page on that first Independence Day

Glancing back several decades ago. 

HIROSHIMA DAY

It took place seventy-one years ago. They dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima this day – the 6^th of August. The devastation and other effects are vividly portrayed in the Peace Memorial at Hiroshima.

My visit to the Peace Memorial at Hiroshima had a powerful effect on me and I wrote this piece that sleepless night.

NEW CLEAR

chandrashekhar  sastry

It was to be my first visit to Japan and I was excited.  I would be able to meet up with an old friend Zuenkosan who, many years ago, studied Tagore in the Shantiniketan University.  She used to amaze me with Bengali haiku sung in the style of Tagore’s music.  I remembered her delicate face more like a fragile flower, her carefully done coiffure, the jet black hair shining in the sun, the small paces with which she ran up to the Arts Block and the stately pirouette when she turned. 

On a hot June afternoon we marched with thousands of demonstrators.  We sang with thousands of demonstrators; we sang of our dread of Strontium 18, its insidious effects routed through milk and the threat to our children of the future.  We sang against the tests in Pokhran; we sang against the callous calculations by the eggheads computing the megadeaths to be produced by that infernal flash of hellfire and by its radiation.  We sang of Life, of men and women marching together; we sang that we shall overcome.

We were young and joyous and we had an inexhaustible faith in a future free of the threat of nuclear weapons.  We were sure we could make that future happen.  We were in love with Life. We danced in joy, in celebration of the meaning of Life; we would negate the Bomb and its colossal killings for it was the mindless expression of tired and tyrannical old men who have not loved and who know not the meaning of Life. 

Whenever I thought of Zuenko I remembered our long march.

~

I had some business in Hiroshima. The porcelain faced people, the staccato language, fairy-tale surroundings and novel mannerisms, sometimes gauche, often graceful had me conveyed into a different world.  On the Sunday, Zuenkosan offered to take me around Hiroshima.  The skeleton building directly below the bomb that exploded in the sky, inexplicably spared destruction though every other structure had been razed, the stream where thousands had gathered seeking relief, on to manicured greens, characteristically landscaped clumps of trees, patches of flowerbeds and elegantly planned gravel footpaths; we were approaching a slight knoll.

“A memorial to the very young soldiers.”

“The Kamikaze?”

“Yes, have you heard of them?”

   I nodded.  Schoolchildren trained to fly bombs with wings grafted on in a cruel symbiosis to produce homing missiles.  Did this bring about a karmic retribution?  I quickly dismissed the banal thought.  A huge bronze bell, gifted by India, had Sanskrit inscriptions and a little further, set in a slightly depressed arena, the Peace Memorial building stood elevated on stilts.  Zuenkosan would not enter.  I was to be guided by a taped commentary.

   Nothing could have prepared me for this experience.  Half-tone blowups in compelling compositions screening an awesome range of destruction and brutally raw vignettes of corporeal suffering.  I moved mechanically, too hurt for expression.  Among the viewers no private whisper, no ‘look at this’ nudge, no pointing finger, no gasp of surprise.  Misshapen bottles, giant beams grotesquely twisted like straw, molten stone, an oversized black fingernail grown like a sprouting bean, radiation charred clothing, all the debris that an unearthly, hellish, indiscriminate fury had in a moment’s unleashing inflicted on Hiroshima.  Statistics, numbers affected then and numbers continuing to be affected long after that infernal lightning flashed overhead.

Out onto a verandah, released from that prison of memories that mankind should never erase, I found in a visitor’s book:

“Why?~

“Never again”

“I feel so ashamed.”

A litany of sorrow, anger and contrition.  I understood why Zuenkosan had stayed back.

She was strolling below as I came down and silently joined her in her aimless ambling.  The beauty of the surroundings appeared more intense; the falling leaf, the waving flower atop a tall stem, blue sky and billowing clouds, the smell of mown grass, the caress of a warm sun and a child’s tinkling laughter.  Slowly the present forced itself on me but it was a good half-hour before I could speak.

~

Zuenkosan had called me home for dinner.  The taxi I hailed was given the slip with her address written in Japanese.  It sailed through the city passing several streets with the cherry blossom abloom.  Zuenko had always studied, admiringly, the Shantiniketan flowers; the hibiscus, the lotus in the pond, the fragrant jasmine and shephali. When I reached her house, I was captivated by a beautiful creeper with purple flowers on the trellis. She opened the door and smiled a welcome.  It was the first time I was seeing her in a silk kimono. She looked statuesque.

I found myself unable to talk about the Peace Memorial but said how moved I was by the experience.  She gave a wise nod but made no comment. I had removed shoes and sat effortlessly on the tatami mat. A small photo album had photographs from Shantiniketan. Some of them had me in the picture.  After a little bustle between the kitchen and the room, she too sat down.  The tempura she served was simply exquisite.  The light batter teasingly veiled the bare-flesh pink of the prawn.  It gently imploded in the mouth thrusting forth the succulent prawn even as it crisply receded in the background. The sake` with its keen rinse cleansed the taste buds, arousing them in anticipation of another morsel. 

Shabu Shabu was a more sophisticated affair. Seaweed was steeped in a bowl over a flame, little pieces of vegetable and fish, even thinly sliced Kobe beef laid out. A variety of sauces was found in little porcelain bowls, besides the mandatory horseradish and the soya.  We spoke of food, of her studies in India and of my visit to Japan.  At the end of the meal, the bowl of seaweed into which the morsels of food had been dipped and cooked, served as a drink.  It ummarized the whole meal, little flavours of each portion coming up for review.

~

Zuenkosan knew that I had visited the huge factory on the other side of the hill, which produced airplanes and armaments during the war. 

“No more planes and armaments,” she said, “The treaty forbids Japan.” I mentioned that the factory now specialised in machine tools. 

“It hardly matters,” she went on, “Our Forces for Self Defence are very strong and we can deal with the neighbouring countries quite easily.”  Her eyes had narrowed and her thin lips had firmed. 

“We have all the knowledge and the technology necessary to produce missiles and to produce nuclear weapons,” she said, clearly, firmly and, I thought, stubbornly.

“I am sure you have,” I acknowledged.

I thanked her after the meal, immeasurably sad at her remarks.  Her reactions to my mention of the large factory on the other side of the hill were so puzzling.   She was very different from the Zuenko who studied in Shantiniketan.  I was glad she went into the kitchen to make coffee, as I sat musing. It pleased me that she remembered my distaste for green tea. The coffee was strong and the aroma lavishly elegant and refined.  At my first sip the tender old feelings flooded my mind. 

“Zuenko,” I said,“Life is many-splendoured and love is a beautiful emotion.   Do not let the wash of hatred or vengeance sour them.” I stretched out and held her hand.  “Do you remember we marched in Calcutta a few years ago against the Indian government’s atomic bombs?” 

She turned to me; her eyes were misty.  She was sipping coffee, eyes fixed on me.

“Don’t look back and feel bitter.  Don’t look ahead and feel fear.”  I knew it sounded hackneyed. She was placing the cup down and I saw her hand trembling. I arose to say goodbye, adding: 

“I will not accept, my dear, that we have failed.  Together, we have to produce another Buddha, another Prince of Peace.”

As I raised her hand to my lips in farewell, I heard her whisper, “Don’t go yet.”

I was silent for a while. “Yes, Zuenko, ‘We shall overcome’ was not idle prophesy. See, it is happening.”

Her eyes met mine and she smiled as she daintily recited an extempore haiku in Bengali:

She marched out of step.

His hand waved fingers twitching

She fell in step again

This and many other moving pieces, some of them prize winning, can be had  in my new book LONG AND SHORT TALES. Go to >>>        http://imojo.in/7e984q

An Atheist's Chair

An Atheist’s Chair

Atheists have always been at the receiving end. We had Salman Rushdie speaking of atheists too having sensibilities that are being offended even though they do not take such offence to murderous extents. Atheists have not asked for the banning of treatises that are offensive to them. Atheists do not seek to proselytise and convert believers to a rational non-belief. In fact they are woefully short of atheist evangelists if such a term can be used. Closer home we have had the outstanding lyricist and poet, Javed Akhtar, in a  T V  discussion that was discussing widespread religious evangelism on television channels, bemoan the fact that only atheists do not have a t v channel to propagate their disbeliefs.

    

      Apart from the better known Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World there is little learned discussion of Atheism as a mode of thought. Sagan preferred to search the heavens for extra terrestrial intelligence rather than for God and the angels. There are plenty of sites on the Internet propagating and defending atheist concepts but they seem hardly learned enough to be taken seriously. Ridiculing theism is not sufficient argument to reduce it to the absurdity of its conclusions.  Reductio ad absurdum is a Euclidean construct more suited to the certainties of Geometry.

Now we have Mr Louis Appignani, 83 and resident in Florida, endowing what is the America’s first academic chair “for the study of atheism, humanism and secular ethics. 

“I’m trying to eliminate discrimination against atheists. This is a step in that direction, to make atheism legitimate,” he said and successfully insisted on having the endowed chair with the word ‘atheism’ in the name. He wasn’t going to contribute unless it had the word atheism.

    

      Mr. Appignani rejected a last-minute proposal from a dean to name the chair as “philosophical naturalism.” As a via media, he and the university leaders worked out the title, broadening the scope by including humanism and secular ethics. The University is now searching through a committee of faculty members to conduct a search for a scholar to fill the position.

      One study projects that atheists comprise an estimated 2.01%, and non-religious a further 16% of the world population, indicating little preference for atheism in the world. Perhaps this study ignores, Albania, China, Korea and Russia which has no state religion and actively discourages all Faiths

    

       However a study among Americans says the younger people are even less religious than their elders with 35% of millennials saying they identify as atheist, agnostic or with no religion in particular. No wonder a Chair in a University for the study of Atheism is first found in the USA. Will it start teaching us to drive out the present dark age of irrationality and superstition?

 

The Many Shades of Yoga

The many shades of Yoga

With the International Yoga Day looming ahead we tried to read up on Yoga and found to our utter confusion that there were many shades of this thing called YOGA. There was Jnana Yoga implying intense meditation and an attainment of knowledge and wisdom; there was the physical Hatha Yoga to improve the suppleness and strength of one’s limbs; there was a Bhakthi Yoga to enable one to dissolve oneself in the divine and there was the  Karma Yoga of the selfless man who works for the well being of fellowmen. Besides, we also had lesser known variations such as  Kriya Yoga, Swara Yoga, Mantra Yoga etc. – and no less the modern American practices of hot yoga or yoga in a sauna.

Which of these many Yogas do we choose for the International Yoga Day? Just stretching our limbs in calisthenic poses and chanting OM hardly does justice to the ancient concept of yoga.

By grafting on to the contemporary postural yoga the vocal, loud utterance of OM, exemplifying the power of the word, and hence the mind, we are attempting to literally yoke mind and body into a union of physical and spiritual praxis.  

Swami Viekananda had rejected Hatha Yoga as it was very difficult, not quickly learned, and did not lead to much spiritual growth. For him Raja Yoga was the way and we can now make pretence with a pale imitation by pronouncing OM while practicing our postures.

Of all the extolled virtues of Yoga perhaps the most wondrous is the mind reading capability posited by some ancients and my story with the link given below may entertain. It is International with some Yoga thrown in.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WnAyrDF9S_7A8PC8STzu1cPFR-w47CbuWBhT3I7xxKA/edit

It’s my offering for The International Yoga Day of 21 June 2016.