Surfing aimlessly across the internet yesterday, I stumbled across a collection of official correspondence of Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India…Most of the letters in the collection dated to 1959 and as I have heard of a 50-year archiving rule before they become public I think the letters must have just been released…
Rajen Babu as he was known, was, to begin with, a brilliant lawyer having topped several Calcutta (?) University exams before going on to get his Doctor of Laws…he subsequently became quite a renowned lawyer in Bhagalpur…till his skill at writing petitions on behalf of the indigo workers of Champaran brought him to the attention of Gandhi…and the rest, as they say, is history…
His official correspondence as President of India gives us a wonderful whiff at the simple and at the same time brilliant mind of this very great man…all the values of the Gandhian freedom fighters come through, and, the also the first hints of transition away…for example, there is a very interesting piece of correspondence between him and Nehru (hereinafter referred to as Panditji) about the size of the delegation, consisting of largely family members, that Rajen Babu took on a state visit to Ceylon…Nehru starts off by saying that we need to be sensitive to the strain these state visits put on the host country…and Rajen Babu, in the end, acknowledging that he would definitely keep this in mind for the future…
In the correspondence that I read, Sri Prakasa, then the Governor of Bombay, and, Govind Ballabh Pant, the then Home Minister come through as his closest friends…Sri Prakasa and he have exchanged letters on how Rajen Babu felt that Sri Prakasa should not take the Night Air Mail flight to Delhi (remember that institution of the ‘50s/ ‘60s, the planes coming from Bombay, Delhi, Madras and Calcutta to Nagpur, and, going back with the mail) because it would tire him…and Sri Prakasa saying how it would save money…catch any Governor of today caring for such things…
The gentle humanness of Rajen Babu is so transparent…Padmaja Naidu, the then Governor of West Bengal and Sarojini Naidu’s daughter is ill with a temperature and heading to Delhi for a Governors’ conference…Rajen Babu tells her, “Come and stay at Rashtrapati Bhavan so that I can have you properly looked after…”
The Gandhian in him comes through clearly in the numerous letters where he refuses invitations to serve on Committees or recommend friends from the past to jobs…”it would not be appropriate for me in my present role to do so. I hope you will understand…” he says time and again to friends he spent time in British jails with. The only occasion I see him express an interest is when the veteran Gandhian, G. Ramachandran asks him to join the Trust of the institution he is setting up in Gandhigram, near Madurai…”Let me talk to the Prime Minister about this,” Rajen Babu says…
The camaraderie of the freedom fighters is evident in every affectionate letter that he writes…whether it be on the death of a family member…a marriage he cannot attend…or just inquiring about their health…”Keep me informed of how you are recovering” he tells so many of his former jail mates and they do…and his affectionate notes to the families as his colleagues pass away…”It is inevitable, but that does not reduce the pain. I am with you…” is his constant refrain...
Some of the letters also very deeply reflect the strong chasm that existed between Rajen Babu and Panditji…Rajen Babu was definitely old school Gandhian…Panditji talked of the hydro electric dams being the temples of modern India…there is a twelve page letter he has written to Panditji on what he feels needs to be done to help the country…which includes introducing Gandhiji’s “Nayi Talim”, basic education, making Hindi the official language and providing incentives for Khandsari (home made jaggery) projects…wish I were a fly on the wall to see and hear Panditji’s responses to his suggestions…
Rajen Babu was not Panditji’s choice for President of India…Panditji would have preferred Rajaji…and that comes through in their world view…in one letter Panditji tells him that it would be preferable if he called him to discuss these different views rather than write about them…this is one place where Rajen Babu tells Panditji to go fly a kite…he feels it is his constitutional obligation to communicate his thoughts and he intends to do so the way he choses…
I would have loved to read the correspondence that must have been exchanged in 1955 between Panditji and Rajen Babu over the Hindu Code Bill…At one stage Rajen Babu who was opposed to the Bill had told Panditji that he would not sign it…Nehru bluntly told him that the President was a ceremonial role and that he had no option but to sign it…
Somewhat prophetic is also his letter to Panditji asking him to ensure that the coming budget (1960) provided enough money to defend the border with China…
Despite their differences they were old colleagues and there is an affectionate letter from Nehru inviting Rajen Babu to join him and the Cabinet for lunch on December 3, 1959, which was Rajen Babu’s seventy fifth birthday…and Rajen Babu’s acknowledgement of the invitation is equally touching…
There is an old world wistfulness that I experienced as I read these letters…a world where even politics was gentlemanly…it reminded me of the walk I took in Besant Nagar during this holiday one Saturday morning…after a few minutes it struck me that there was no fragrance of idlis and sambar cooking any more and no one played MS’ Suprabatham anymore, like they used to in the ‘70s…they are gone, and, so is the spirit of Rajen Babu and his letters…gone…
And then the realization...”Change,” they say is the only, “permanent thing…”
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The sage of Sindhula
It is now a week since we came back from India…the stomach is slowly settling back to the North American sterility…the glow of the warmth of the humanness that dominated the last four weeks alongside with the constantly upset stomach is beginning to become a memory…and the snow banks bring one back to the reality of the moment…the warmth was there, gone, the cold, snow is here, that is all that is real…the search for the next trip is the mind’s desire to re-enact enjoyable experiences and ignore the coldness of the snow…
As I sit back and look at the four weeks one experience stands out for me as going beyond words…and being the fool that I am, I shall try to put it in words…
Whenever in Bombay I have always tried to go and spend sometime in the presence of the sage of Sindhula (on Nowroji Gamadia Road), Ramesh Balsekar…this time, with my constantly upset stomach I was not sure that I would be able to do so…however, one morning, I think it was on Christmas Eve, I was able to manage to make it in between a breakfast date with my daughter and son-in-law at the Taj President and a shopping appointment…
After a quick breakfast at the Taj President I caught a taxi and got off about kilometre ahead of the correct intersection, more by mistake than design…as I walked through the early morning Bombay traffic I realized how out of shape I was, physically, and, mentally ?
Balsekar’s satsangs used to start at 9.00am and the watchman would let us in by 8.50am. So, when I reached at 8.45am, I was a little surprised when he told me that the satsangs now started at 9.30am, and, I could go up at 9.20am. My North American efficiency was offended…why had they not changed the posting on the website ? I could have spent another half hour in air conditioned comfort at the Taj President ? Supposedly the anger of an organized mind…in reality the sputterings of one’s ego that is caught up in ideas…
I sat myself down on the steps of Sindhula building and watched the motley crowd of satsangis come…a white woman who looked like a relic of the hippie revolution…a forty something Indian woman who looked like a liberated lesbian from Lamington Road…men in shorts and a man trying to find place to park his Mercedes…and then, of course, Shirish who is Balsekar’s aide de camp…Shirish recognized me and we spoke…I didn’t see his wife Kalindi, didn’t ask him…maybe they are no longer together…
The watchman let us in at 9.10 and I used the somewhat rickety lift of Sindhula
Balsekar is now past ninety and has undergo surgeries…he is very frail and uses a walker to move around…so much has changed since I first met him in 2002…there is still fire in him, but, it burns differently, not with the crackle that was there in 2002…
These days Balsekar does not talk much…they play a video of one of his talks and he sometimes makes a comment or if someone asks a question responds to the question…
He came in, and, the Liberated Lesbian gave him a hug…he sat down, wiped his mouth with the clean hand towel he always has…looked around to survey the motely crowd in front of him…I was swinging away on the jhoola and somehow decided to be more respectful when he caught my eye and moved to a chair…
The video came on and a Balsekar of some ten years earlier was talking with a person who was a medical doctor…the difference between the sage and the common human is that the sage has no sense of personal doership…the sense of personal doership is what distinguishes the human from the sage and the animal…
JP Singh who records Balsekar’s talks had told me to jot down any questions and ask Balsekar towards the end…he gave me a book and I made furious notes…Why does the Source create a sense of personal doership as the sense of personal doership seems to the cause of all trouble ?
Waited, like back in the IIMA days to get the maximum impact for my question…my friend Ramki whom I met in Chennai with whom I appeared for the IIMA group discussion tells me that in 1969 I was adept at making a comment in a group discussion at the most advantageous moment…creating a stir and then going off to sleep…
And then, I caught the sage’s eye…went in front of him, sat down on the cushion, and, introduced myself as Dr Phadnis’ friend, uncle of Radha, Dr Phadnis’ daughter-in-law…unlike in the past, the sage nodded in recognition, not with much warmth…I was disappointed…I remember how happy I had been when once he told me that ‘Yes. I can see you are Radha’s uncle…she looks like you very much…’ the mind had been hoping for that sort of a stroke…the guru had a different message this time…
With all the deftness of the logic that years of academic learning has given me I logicked with Ramesh, like I had with Swami Chinmayananda forty years ago…”If the feeling of doership is the root cause of the problems, why does the Source, supposedly infinte in compassion give us that ?”…I asked the sage…
Diamond cuts diamond is what comes to my mind…but that is presumptuous for I am no diamond…the diamond of Balsekar’s mind honed with enlightenment and his own academic training at LSE bore down on me…
“What are you ? He raised his fingers, pointed at me, ‘you are just a three dimensional object’ How do you presume that with this limited, defined in space time and mind you will understand the infinite ? Just accept that it is part of the divine hypnosis, Leela and stop struggling…”
I bent down to do pranam and he accepted the bowed head…I was about to get up and go when I sensed that the sage was not done with me…
“What did you think of the video ? All the questions that the doctor kept asking ?”
I hesitated, not knowing what to say…”I think his search was deep and hence all the questions…” I uttered the words without really having something to say…
The sage looked at me deep…picked up his clean hand towel and wiped his mouth and swallowed…”You know when you ask a question, try and see why you ask a question…there has to be sincerity in asking a question…not the pride that goes with the assumption that you have the answers…the sense that I have to cross examine this man to get at the truth…the Guru does not work that way…when you come to me, keep yourself open, not full of your ideas…if you have too many ideas that keep surfacing you will never be able to hear what the Guru has to say…to hear the Guru you have to be humble, not cross examining with pride…”
The sage had nothing further to say…he once again wiped his mouth with the clean hand towel…beckoned to the next questioner…to me it sounds like the words of Krishna
Athava bahunai tena
kim gya’tena tava’rjuna
vishtabhyaham idam sarvam
ekam sena’stito jagat
Of what use is this knowledge to you Arjuna ?
All that you need to know is that in a fraction of myself I sustain the whole Universe
I am still not listening with emptiness…the mind is still showing off, dancing a jig to show how much I have read and now…when all that shit diarrheas out of the system then I will be ready for the sage…
----
As I sit back and look at the four weeks one experience stands out for me as going beyond words…and being the fool that I am, I shall try to put it in words…
Whenever in Bombay I have always tried to go and spend sometime in the presence of the sage of Sindhula (on Nowroji Gamadia Road), Ramesh Balsekar…this time, with my constantly upset stomach I was not sure that I would be able to do so…however, one morning, I think it was on Christmas Eve, I was able to manage to make it in between a breakfast date with my daughter and son-in-law at the Taj President and a shopping appointment…
After a quick breakfast at the Taj President I caught a taxi and got off about kilometre ahead of the correct intersection, more by mistake than design…as I walked through the early morning Bombay traffic I realized how out of shape I was, physically, and, mentally ?
Balsekar’s satsangs used to start at 9.00am and the watchman would let us in by 8.50am. So, when I reached at 8.45am, I was a little surprised when he told me that the satsangs now started at 9.30am, and, I could go up at 9.20am. My North American efficiency was offended…why had they not changed the posting on the website ? I could have spent another half hour in air conditioned comfort at the Taj President ? Supposedly the anger of an organized mind…in reality the sputterings of one’s ego that is caught up in ideas…
I sat myself down on the steps of Sindhula building and watched the motley crowd of satsangis come…a white woman who looked like a relic of the hippie revolution…a forty something Indian woman who looked like a liberated lesbian from Lamington Road…men in shorts and a man trying to find place to park his Mercedes…and then, of course, Shirish who is Balsekar’s aide de camp…Shirish recognized me and we spoke…I didn’t see his wife Kalindi, didn’t ask him…maybe they are no longer together…
The watchman let us in at 9.10 and I used the somewhat rickety lift of Sindhula
Balsekar is now past ninety and has undergo surgeries…he is very frail and uses a walker to move around…so much has changed since I first met him in 2002…there is still fire in him, but, it burns differently, not with the crackle that was there in 2002…
These days Balsekar does not talk much…they play a video of one of his talks and he sometimes makes a comment or if someone asks a question responds to the question…
He came in, and, the Liberated Lesbian gave him a hug…he sat down, wiped his mouth with the clean hand towel he always has…looked around to survey the motely crowd in front of him…I was swinging away on the jhoola and somehow decided to be more respectful when he caught my eye and moved to a chair…
The video came on and a Balsekar of some ten years earlier was talking with a person who was a medical doctor…the difference between the sage and the common human is that the sage has no sense of personal doership…the sense of personal doership is what distinguishes the human from the sage and the animal…
JP Singh who records Balsekar’s talks had told me to jot down any questions and ask Balsekar towards the end…he gave me a book and I made furious notes…Why does the Source create a sense of personal doership as the sense of personal doership seems to the cause of all trouble ?
Waited, like back in the IIMA days to get the maximum impact for my question…my friend Ramki whom I met in Chennai with whom I appeared for the IIMA group discussion tells me that in 1969 I was adept at making a comment in a group discussion at the most advantageous moment…creating a stir and then going off to sleep…
And then, I caught the sage’s eye…went in front of him, sat down on the cushion, and, introduced myself as Dr Phadnis’ friend, uncle of Radha, Dr Phadnis’ daughter-in-law…unlike in the past, the sage nodded in recognition, not with much warmth…I was disappointed…I remember how happy I had been when once he told me that ‘Yes. I can see you are Radha’s uncle…she looks like you very much…’ the mind had been hoping for that sort of a stroke…the guru had a different message this time…
With all the deftness of the logic that years of academic learning has given me I logicked with Ramesh, like I had with Swami Chinmayananda forty years ago…”If the feeling of doership is the root cause of the problems, why does the Source, supposedly infinte in compassion give us that ?”…I asked the sage…
Diamond cuts diamond is what comes to my mind…but that is presumptuous for I am no diamond…the diamond of Balsekar’s mind honed with enlightenment and his own academic training at LSE bore down on me…
“What are you ? He raised his fingers, pointed at me, ‘you are just a three dimensional object’ How do you presume that with this limited, defined in space time and mind you will understand the infinite ? Just accept that it is part of the divine hypnosis, Leela and stop struggling…”
I bent down to do pranam and he accepted the bowed head…I was about to get up and go when I sensed that the sage was not done with me…
“What did you think of the video ? All the questions that the doctor kept asking ?”
I hesitated, not knowing what to say…”I think his search was deep and hence all the questions…” I uttered the words without really having something to say…
The sage looked at me deep…picked up his clean hand towel and wiped his mouth and swallowed…”You know when you ask a question, try and see why you ask a question…there has to be sincerity in asking a question…not the pride that goes with the assumption that you have the answers…the sense that I have to cross examine this man to get at the truth…the Guru does not work that way…when you come to me, keep yourself open, not full of your ideas…if you have too many ideas that keep surfacing you will never be able to hear what the Guru has to say…to hear the Guru you have to be humble, not cross examining with pride…”
The sage had nothing further to say…he once again wiped his mouth with the clean hand towel…beckoned to the next questioner…to me it sounds like the words of Krishna
Athava bahunai tena
kim gya’tena tava’rjuna
vishtabhyaham idam sarvam
ekam sena’stito jagat
Of what use is this knowledge to you Arjuna ?
All that you need to know is that in a fraction of myself I sustain the whole Universe
I am still not listening with emptiness…the mind is still showing off, dancing a jig to show how much I have read and now…when all that shit diarrheas out of the system then I will be ready for the sage…
----
The White Tiger
The White Tiger, a review
Very rarely, in recent years, have I sat through and read a book from cover to cover, at one sitting...yesterday evening, around 5pm, I took up Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger"...I had seen the book in India, read reviews and yesterday discovered that beti pyaari had picked up a copy...
Started reading it with the usual scepticism.. .however, as the pages passed, it gripped me...sat till around 10pm reading the book before I nodded off...given the fact that by 10pm I have generally been asleep for about two hours, this should give you an indicator of how I was absorbed...finished the 250+ pages of the book this afternoon...
The fact that I have just returned from India, and, this book is all about what is happening within India perhaps made it so immediately absorbing... and then, a lot of the book is set in Gurgaon and I had just been in Gurgaon, and, could relate to all that was being said...I could recognize the malls and the Buckingham and Windsor mansions...this book gives one dimension of the changing face of India...or, in reality, is there a change at all, or, have just the players and the stage changed ?
The irreverence of the book was what held my attention to begin with...the writer describes Krishna (of the Bhagavad Gita fame) as one more chauffeur... and the descriptions of the filth of the Ganges...the book ends with the same irreverence where the protagonist hopes to found a 'good' school where children will not have to learn about God and Gandhi...
For the last eight years, ever since the call center revolution I have been travelling to India once or so a year...I have also sat listening to my North American friends returning and telling me how India is booming...Diet Pepsi and Kit Kat being freely available being the yardstick of such prosperity.. .I have always felt a nagging feeling of discomfort.. .Aravind Adiga draws a clear picture of this discomfort through the letters that his protagonist, Balram Halwai writes to the Chinese Prime Minister...
There is a brutality to poverty that is difficult to accept...it is different from the pictures of westerners adopting chubby orphans through World Vision...that brutality comes through loud and clear in cockroach infested servants quarters of Buckingham Apartments that Balram lives in...it comes through in the 'ammonia' smell of parking lots where drivers have to wait and urinate as they wait for their masters and mistresses to come back from late night parties...and more than anything else the principle of the Rooster Coop that keeps the poor and poverty going...
In the '20s when Katherine Mayo came out with Mother India, Gandhi wrote of it, '... it is the report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon, or to give a graphic description of the stench exuded by the opened drains...' In a sense Aravind Adiga's book could also be described as a drain inspector's report...however, I say that in an entirely complimentary sense...it takes courage for someone to expose the underbelly of the call centre revolution.. .looks like many have not read the book yet in India, or there would have been outcry by now to have Aravind deported...
One thing that struck me at a very personal level was the Rumi quotation that Aravind keeps using,
Like a madman I kept searching for the key
And then I realized the door was open...
Read the book to see how Rumi helps a rooster escapes the Rooster Coop...be ready for much gore, dirt and crap...a tremendous read...there is no moral at the end of the story...as Mr Ashok would have said...sorry, let me not take the punch line away...read it to see what Mr Ashok would have said to Pinky Madam...
Very rarely, in recent years, have I sat through and read a book from cover to cover, at one sitting...yesterday evening, around 5pm, I took up Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger"...I had seen the book in India, read reviews and yesterday discovered that beti pyaari had picked up a copy...
Started reading it with the usual scepticism.. .however, as the pages passed, it gripped me...sat till around 10pm reading the book before I nodded off...given the fact that by 10pm I have generally been asleep for about two hours, this should give you an indicator of how I was absorbed...finished the 250+ pages of the book this afternoon...
The fact that I have just returned from India, and, this book is all about what is happening within India perhaps made it so immediately absorbing... and then, a lot of the book is set in Gurgaon and I had just been in Gurgaon, and, could relate to all that was being said...I could recognize the malls and the Buckingham and Windsor mansions...this book gives one dimension of the changing face of India...or, in reality, is there a change at all, or, have just the players and the stage changed ?
The irreverence of the book was what held my attention to begin with...the writer describes Krishna (of the Bhagavad Gita fame) as one more chauffeur... and the descriptions of the filth of the Ganges...the book ends with the same irreverence where the protagonist hopes to found a 'good' school where children will not have to learn about God and Gandhi...
For the last eight years, ever since the call center revolution I have been travelling to India once or so a year...I have also sat listening to my North American friends returning and telling me how India is booming...Diet Pepsi and Kit Kat being freely available being the yardstick of such prosperity.. .I have always felt a nagging feeling of discomfort.. .Aravind Adiga draws a clear picture of this discomfort through the letters that his protagonist, Balram Halwai writes to the Chinese Prime Minister...
There is a brutality to poverty that is difficult to accept...it is different from the pictures of westerners adopting chubby orphans through World Vision...that brutality comes through loud and clear in cockroach infested servants quarters of Buckingham Apartments that Balram lives in...it comes through in the 'ammonia' smell of parking lots where drivers have to wait and urinate as they wait for their masters and mistresses to come back from late night parties...and more than anything else the principle of the Rooster Coop that keeps the poor and poverty going...
In the '20s when Katherine Mayo came out with Mother India, Gandhi wrote of it, '... it is the report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon, or to give a graphic description of the stench exuded by the opened drains...' In a sense Aravind Adiga's book could also be described as a drain inspector's report...however, I say that in an entirely complimentary sense...it takes courage for someone to expose the underbelly of the call centre revolution.. .looks like many have not read the book yet in India, or there would have been outcry by now to have Aravind deported...
One thing that struck me at a very personal level was the Rumi quotation that Aravind keeps using,
Like a madman I kept searching for the key
And then I realized the door was open...
Read the book to see how Rumi helps a rooster escapes the Rooster Coop...be ready for much gore, dirt and crap...a tremendous read...there is no moral at the end of the story...as Mr Ashok would have said...sorry, let me not take the punch line away...read it to see what Mr Ashok would have said to Pinky Madam...
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