The past few days I have been reading Ayn Rand and her lectures and views on various topics.I am not an Ayn Rand fan ,in fact I consider her philosophy and take on most issues a collection of hog wosh.I consider her views insidious and harmful to the functioning of society at large.While her premise of using rationality as a basis is worth admiring and accepting ,her subsequent take on numerous issues such as morality,freedom of speech, Man vs Woman,God vs Man, State vs People are too insular.Her views directly contradicts the Hinduism view of life.Its not that which bothers me ,its an application of pragmatic principles in an ideal manner discounting any medians between the extremities that disconcerts me. the irony in her philosophy is that its probably the only one that brackets the left and the right in the same set.If I have to repudiate Ayn Rand it would take a large amount of time and blogging space,So I leave it to rest here.
I have also listened to considerable amount of sermons on Vaishnavite philosophy the past few days. I realized I have hardly ever read anything related to this.I should have read substantially on it considering I belong to that tradition. It would help explain our views on God,on salvation,on life,on significance of rituals and so on.So if anyone knows any simple book that I can read up on it please do let me know.
The last of the lectures I wanted to blog about is the one I attended at the faculty hall of IISC yesterday.It was a lecture that sought to explain the presence of sensuality in sacred temple art throughout the country.It was a highly interesting and engrossing lecture that had as its basis that presence of erotic art in temples was normal back then and nothing is licentious or bad about it as people saw it as a symbol of fertility. Fertility the lecture sought to tell was the central motif.It was a method of transcending the barrier between the real(physical) and the surreal(divine or spiritual), a celebration of both.
The lecture was delivered by Ms.Vidya Dihijea(I am not sure of the spelling). Anyone interested in this can buy and read her book The body Adorned.
I have a few reservations though. If you were to look at the temples of India (atleast the ones in South) and the Khajuraho temples theres a glaring difference.While all temples have voluptuous dancing girls tanatalizingly poised and copulating pairs on its pillars none of them brazenly celebrate it as the ones built by the Chandela dynasty at Khajuraho.The erotic art there in its scale,intimacy and number out does most other temples.I said South because I have seen only those temples. I have wondered why.Its known that the Chandelas were there during the height of Tantrik following. Tantrik philosophy is different.it speaks of attainment of salvation through sensual pleasure. Obviously as a nation we were not uncomfortable with the idea at all. afterall a substantial part of Hindus,infact most of them are Phallic worshippers.I wish she had explained the phallic worship and the tantrik ideology after all its integral to the theme of the sacred and sensuos.
The lecture was peppered with quotes from ancient Hindu texts on Gods.the example of soundaryalahiri and bhagavad dhyana sopaanam were given to show that detailed physical description and a celebration of it is also a way of acknowledging the spiritual one I think. The thing is these are intended as mere physical descriptions. Both adi shankara and shrimad thoopil vedanta desikar are ecstatic describing the beauty of the blemishless(what Rajaji called korai illadha govindan) God. both the names of sopanam and soundarya lahiri stress on this aspect.There is no hint of anything uncomfortable in those lines even for the devotee who reads them. a better example could have been the description of lord shiva and parvati by kalidasa in his kumarasambhavam.
Interesting lectures are always a welcome change, I was not entirely convinced though.
Archive for hinduism
Lectures,Sermons & Musings
A celebration of life-Maargazhi maadam
What the vibrant city of Bengalooru does consciously with Bengalooru habba its quiter counterpart Chennai has been doing routinely with maargazhi. Its almost unconscious like some endemic clock that programs a city together during the month of dec-jan every year.i do not know the reason for the significance of the month nor the origin of the customs followed during that period. At a point when I am finding it increasingly difficult to find time to be in Chennai its this month I miss the most.
The thing with maargazhi is that it transcends communities and castes .I lived for 21 years in Nungambakkam .I liked it there; you saw different kinds of people unlike mambalam or triplicane. Even now I find areas such as the latter suffocating because you see people only in one mold always. Anyways now I no longer live in Nungambakkam but somewhere in me I shall always belong there.
You know its maargazhi when ullikayam (garlic) and venkayam(onion) become a strictly enforced taboo. It always is but no one cares .No amount of begging and throwing tantrums would work with your mother. So its also the month I eat out often. You see when something is forbidden its all the more irresistible. Its like when, though you may be an insomniac for days before vaikunta ekadeshi you sleep at nine and eat for three people that day. But apart from no garlic maargazhi is also the month you get up early. When I was younger and more at home it used to be five or six, now it’s a more earthly eight or nine. For a person like me who sleeps at five and gets up at two in holidays(you escape the hot sun that way) such early timings is a sin but its impossible to sleep later than nine even if you wished. For, Maargazhi is the month of the fourth veda of tamil , that of aandal’s thirrupavai. So, every channel and hence every household blares that and in some like mine my mother recites that loud enough to make my sleep uncomfortable and yet not disturb the neighbours. It’s an achievement that none of my friends in college have been able to achieve. She has this strategic point outside my bedroom that lets her disturb my utopia, keep an eye on the kitchen, watch T.V and chat to the aunty outside. When you hear elle illankiliye innam urunkudiyo you give up and get up. That’s the point she knows she will break me and hence takes the high pitch there. Its thirrupavai that’s so integral to this month, so wonderfully framed it’s my greatest regret that I don’t know thirrupavai properly. It is chanted everyday in the morning. You hear it in temples, mutts, households, TV, in the katcheris in the evening or the discourses in the morning it’s all pervading during those few weeks.
Apart from thirrupavai it’s also the month of discourses in the morning. Every sabha, auditorium or even schools has one. But what maargazhi is world famous for is its concerts in the evenings called katcheris. from junior artistes to the best you see all of them. while traditionally a carnatic stronghold you can also get to hear music from around the globe at that time. the crowds flock all the concerts, toursists come to the city and its when daily conversations begin with “inniki sudha enga padraa paaru?” each one has their favourite artiste, the connosieurs devour the chance, critics descend like a plague and newspapers devote sections to musical reviews, aunties debate who is the best this season ,the sarees and jewellery of singers become the latest fashion statement and little children(like I was a long time ago) lose their evening cartoons. Today as a part of SPICMACAY I realize why the movement or concerts fail to excite me as it does to some of my friends, its because when you are a part of maargazhi ,concerts are what the city breathes and you as a part of it fall into the rhythm. A lot of things pale in comparison to that.
Rangolis are another aspect of the month.i no longer see them in my street but when I was 12 or 13 I used to get up and assist(more like disrupt) my mom’s rangoli. You could see a whole lot of kids and aunties doing the same, everyday every house has this huge rangoli in front of them. I was generally given a small one to fill up seperately next to my mother’s. Not a single soul later in the day would appreciate my piece of art. Everyone even your maid will point at the bigger one and seem impervious to the beautiful small one next to it. You see I had my limitations I was given only those shades not needed in the main one and I experimented a bit(like not filling it all inside the white outlines) and apparently it wasn’t that appealing.
Lastly its that time of the year when you get venpongal with ghee everyday. prasadam in each temple out does the other and idlis and vadas and sambar mirror the spirit of the city more then than anytime of the year.
Cheer Haran
Everyone in India knows the horrendous episode of the vastra haran. there is enough emotion in there to overwhelm any self respecting woman. However , the reason why it is so poignant in the story is because it irreversibly marks the turn towards the war. Contrary to what may seem obvious, the Great War is essentially a huge tragedy propounding peace and not war. It shows war in all its glory to make us realize that war is cruel, there is no winner and there is nothing called a righteous war. Yudhishtira says this from the beginning, Bhima after ghattotkach dies and Arjuna after Abhimanyu’s slaughter realizes that. The only person who remains unfazed is draupadi. She takes her sorrow on the stride and seeks revenge for her humiliation. She is not to be understood as a war mongerer ; she was well learned and well versed. She says clearly she feels for bhishma, drona and all the others but that they need to pay for their sin of siding with the wrong side.she even consoles herself on the murder of the upapandavas saying it’s the cruel side to a war.
The clear demarcation in the story is the vastra haran which sets the wrong apart from the right, unpardonable from the pardonable and justifies the carnage that follows. the issue in the story of inheritance is a tricky one .Duryodhana’s claim to the throne is as justified as yudhishtira’s. even the wax palace incident could be dismissed as political conspiracy but what cannot be dispelled is cheer haran. it is so crucial to the story with the miracle so very important that I sometimes wonder if it’s a concoction of the poet or a true incident. If the war was for mere territory kurukshetra would have never become a dhramakshetra .All the great moments of drama emanate from that single incident, its matched not in its entirety by Abhimanyu’s death. What anointed draupadi as a godess and a sati is also that single chapter. Mahabharatha is great as a story because it’s a magnum opus with a moral. Morals are important because they streamline the society. That an outrage on womanhood is unpardonable can be understood. what is righteousness and why it pays dividends can also be seen. Practically morals help a society to function smoothly. Years before in less advanced communities they held the social fabric together and eased functioning.
What is right and wrong is relative and subject to the society. If burglary is taught to be right then it shall be right but the point to be noted is that it was crucial for only one to be right either burglary or being against it. The great war chose its own standards of morality and that’s why it is appealing. While the illiad and odissi are great they don’t measure up to the Indian epics because there is nothing you learn from them. What do you come to know? That beautiful women are treacherous? For Helen goes back to Minalaus. That makes a farce out of the entire war and you feel sorry for the valiant Hector.
All stories need not have a moral but epics that are passed down generations and define a nation need to, for they are the mirrors of an ancient world and you want to see a pretty face there.
Yagnyaseni by Pratibha Ray
A highly sucessful oriya novel, yagnyaseni tells the story of draupadi.infact we are shown the entire story of Mahabharat from the perspective of the story’s heroine. The author strongly sympathises with draupadi and atempts to unravel the different layers of her character from the viewpoint of a woman.Thus a large part of the novel is drawn from folk lore and some parts i suppose are the author’s own interpretations and suppositions.The book also deals with the eternal story of love between Arjun and Panchali.It also potrays the friendship between Krishney and Krishna strongly.
Draupadi has arguably, always been the most oustanding and enigmatic of all heroines the world has ever known.The author uses this fact brilliantly to flesh her character out.she explores the hurt in Arjuna for having to share his wife and Draupadi’s great affection for Arjun.Infact this is something that the original Mahabharat hints at too. While it blatantly states that Draupadi’s favourite husband was Arjun and the latter preferred Draupadi of all his wives, it hints at Arjun’s frustration in two places. The Mahabharat also makes it obvious that Yudhishtir desired Draupadi , something that Arjuna sensed. Yudhishtir was well aware that his mother would ask the alms to be split, afterall it was repeated everyday. Yet, he chose to call the princess won by Arjun as a gift.That later Arjun decides to enter the chamber of Yudhishtir and Draupadi and undertake a piligrimage has always been very curious. he didnt need his bows and arrows to catch a thief and that he couldnt find weapons elsewhere is also incongrous. What perhaps was the reason for that was his hurt at having to share Panchali thus deliberately moving away and subtly hinting at it. His subsequent piligrimage for one year saw him marry three times. Incidentally the novel mentions the duration of this tour of his to be 12 years. the versions i have read so far place it at one year which afterall makes more sense.The second and perhaps the last time we are given an insight into this hurt of his is in the Karna Parva where Arjun accuses Dharamaraj of enjoying the fruit of his labour. He sights Draupadi svayamvar as an example and also states that Yudhishtir was the root cause of their and Panchali’s suffering.This book by Ray however deliberates upon that aspect elaborately.In parts its unneeded. The pandavs and panchali accepted their fate as such and realsied that they were the tools to establish dharma. That Arjun sulked all the time and Draupadi thought only about him is perhaps a bit difficult to digest. Afterall given their sufferings its highly improbable they could do it even if they so wished.
The other aspect of the novel is Draupadi’s regard and affection for Karna.It also states that Karna’s animosity towards Arjun was because the latter was Draupadi’s favourite. The original Mahabharat mentions no such incident. It only states that Karna was hurt by the insult at the svayamvar ,the reason why he participates in the cheer haran. That he subsequently repents that act is also elaborately stated.The disrobing is thus the low point of Karna’s character along with that of Bhishma, Drona and others.But Krishna asking Karna to give up Duryodhan states that while doing so he will obtain Panchali as his wife. Thus perhaps Karna nurtured a soft corner for her. But then she was the supremely desired woman of her time.
As for draupadi’s attraction towards Karna there is no such incident in Vyasa’s story. Its only the later folk lores which mention that. Infact Draupadi goades Arjun to kill Karna and Arjun also promises her that he shall do so to assuage her insult.
That Draupadi was an example of total supplication to Shri Krishna is something that is well known and we again see a great deal written about it, here too.
The Mahabharat is great because it does not hide the grey shades in any character. It portrays no person as purely good or no one as the epitome of evil. The sanskrit version provides ample scope for writing about Draupadi as such. There is perhaps no need to draw on folk lores and build imaginary situations. This is perhaps Prathiba Ray’s greatest fault.While mirroring Draupadi in today’s women the author has missed out in places on the true nature of her heroine. Yet it is perhaps the best book on draupadi ever written.
The list- A year later
1.Freedom at midnight:the sheer depth of work gone into writing this book is amazing. the author is in love with mountbatten, but the other aspects of book more than make up for that folly.meticulously researched.
2.Great Indian Novel- Shashi Tharoor: read it in a hurry. not as great as expected. though a highly engrossing read.
3.Siddhartha-Hernan Hessie:alleviating.must read
4. Brave New world-Asimov: finally! in every sense of the word is an alpha class with soma in boot.
5.LesMiserables-Hugo:brilliantly portrayed
6.The Pakistani Bride- Bapsi Sidhwa: didnt like Ice Candy Man much, the same verdict.A waste of time.
7.The Argumentative Indian- Amartya Sen: a truly interesting read by a bengali first and an economist next.
8.The Hindu Way Of Life-Dr.Radhakrishnan: found it tedious in parts but nevertheless very well presented.
9.Freaknomics: must read.
10. Harry Potter and the deathly hallows: as magical as ever.
Worshipping False Gods and the Case of Lost Identity.
This past week I have been reading the book by Arun Shourie-Worshipping False Gods, an interesting read to say the least.The book is a scathing attack on Dr.B.R.Ambedkar.Shourie has, to put it short accused Ambedkar of being an iniquituous British loyalist.The book is a drag in parts reiterating again and again the same point from different angles.I have never felt any warmth towards the likes of Ambedkar.But what set me thinking is that the problem with the so called modern day India is that we have slowly but spuriously allowed our thought process to be curbed.We have so many demi gods in false pedestals to worship that we have forgotten in the process what is politically right and wrong. Indeed we still seem to be colonised from a nostalgic British hangover and the politics of vote banks in our thought process.
What alarms me most is that most of us have been kept in the dark.We are never taught how one of the greatest genocides in history happened to a non transgressing nation India, at the hands of the muslim invaders.Historians fear this would assume communal tones,while it should not.We are not told how the great temples of India were systematically destroyed,the so called left front way back sided with the British,the cunning means that the missionaries adopted in converting the Indian masses.Yet we teach generation after generation of young Indians how the so called upper castes ill treated the lower ones,that the Mughals were secular caring rulers while in reality they were not,that the Hindu system was plagued with the ills of sati and child marriage.All these are a part of the same history of India.Not nice chapters to read but probably the most defining ones of today’s society.In short,the current history text books tell us what the british wanted us to know and today’s politicians want us to.any attempt to bring to light the whole history of the nation and it has been deemed saffronisation.Maybe generations to come will still be taught of the carnage at Godhra and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.Of the other side of the story we shall as always together as a nation keep silent.We shall learn only what is convenient to be learnt.Indeed a case of lost story and identity.
Draupadi-the heroine of mahabharath
The greatest and largest classic ever written the Mahabharath underneath all its glory and grandeur primarily is a story of psychological warfare. Vyasaa deals brilliantly with the human mind in its darkest and deepest crevices. In a story that bears the stamp of irony no one else except its heroine, Draupadi showcases best the spirit of Mahabharath.
Born of the sacrificial altar Draupadi or yajnaseni as she was known it is said was born on this earth to quell the arrogance of wicked men and re-establish dharma. Born like the dark cloud pregnant with waters that bends the rays of the sun to radiate light, joy and danger Draupadi too was born. As this dark hued damsel of incomparable beauty emerged from the flames it is said that the gods in heaven, the apsaras, the three worlds and even the rishis stared momentarily, dumbstruck at her beauty. Indeed it is very sad that this very beauty of hers proved to be the root cause of the Great War that claimed millions of lives.
In retrospection,one could say she had everything and curiously nothing. She married Arjuna only to be cruelly wed by four other men. The possible wound that this could inflict upon a woman is beyond measure. Draupadi’s anger at this injustice and at Arjuna for failing to protect her, and arjuna’s frustration at Draupadi when she accepted the proposal is sparingly made known to us. The love story between these two is very subtly dealt with. Indeed one cannot blame Draupadi for loving only Arjuna the most, a fact that she herself accepts. Maybe she found consolance in the fact that she had wed the five greatest heroes, and pride in that fact that she was Krishna’s dearest friend and the empress of bharathavarsha. But once again fate betrayed her .in the treacherous game of dice Dharma raja not only lost himself but also Panchali. How could he pledge his wife? Couldn’t he have pledged any other queen that he or his brothers may have married? Were the questions that draupadi raised in that august assembly.they have never been satisfactorily answered since then.
Her black cascades of hair that had been purified by the holy waters of rajasuya, when dragged by dushasana the poet describes , looked like a storm crossing the sea and a black serpent that coiled over the kuru vamsa.its more apt to say that it looked like a snake coiling around mother earth herself.
What endears draupadi to me is that she chose to brave grievious tribulations in a humanely manner.she screamed,vented her anger ,wanted revenge and finally refused to wash dushassan’s blood off her hair.she was a daughter of this smelly earth more than anything else.thats why the idea of draupadi transcends generations and stands timeless till today.she was a woman of this earth and hence of today so unlike sita who chose to bear her sufferings with an tolerance and quiet that can hardly be imagined let alone seen today.
The story of draupadi is also a lesson of courage, determination, faith, hope and victory and the loss that comes with it all. And if you are a believer in God she stands as the epitome of unshakeable faith .Many a heroine may have been scripted in many a story but none can equal this great Draupadi!
