Civilization catches up with the Langur monkeys

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article800682.ece?homepage=true
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article801118.ece
The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to start next week in Delhi, and, the papers have been full of stories and pictures about the preparedness or the lack thereof. There are pictures of pan-stained wash basins and much else. But, that is not what caught my attention today…the Hindu ( a major Indian newspaper) has a lead story on how the CWG authorities are ‘employing’ trained Langur monkeys to keep away wild monkeys from the games’ sites. Civilization, I chuckled to myself, is catching up with the simians too…

I can quite imagine the conversation in a Langur family…”Our Chottu, you know, has got a good job now ?” Mama Langur would be telling her friends sitting on the mango tree outside the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, “Civil service ki naukri mili hai, Chottu ko…” adding, “…ab tho contract ka naukri hai…magar Games ke baad permanent ho jayega…” (A job in the government civil service. Right now it is a contract job, but, it will become permanent after the Games)

Aunty Langur whose son Mottu did not get the job because he was overweight pipes in saying, “Of course that is what they say…that they will make him permanent after the Games…my cousin who was recruited for the Asiad Games in 1982, is still on contract…and this time, they told him that he was too old for the job…”

“Maybe Chottu will do so well that the Canadians will recruit him and he can go to Canada” Mama Langur piped in, already having dreams of visiting Niagara Falls once Chottu goes to Canada…

Aunty Langur could not get that go past her…”You know these Canadians are big chors (thieves)…they tempt our boys to apply for immigration to make money…and when the boys go there they tell them there are no jobs for them because they do not have Canadian experience…in any case what will a Langur do in Canada, there are no wild monkeys to chase away at the Air Canada stadium when the Blue Jays play” Aunty Langur chipped in, showing off her superior knowledge of Canada…Aunty Langur added, “You know Sarala’s son had to come back after paying 10,000 bananas for his immigration because he could not find even a circus job in Canada…no Canadian experience”

As this talk was going on among the women, Dada Langur ambled in, scratching his paunch…Dada Langur was the grand old monkey of the lot…he was grizzled from several fights he had over bananas, peanuts and yes, women in his days…he had wandered to different orchards and claimed that he had sat on a tree in Birla House at one of Gandhi’s prayer meetings…

“What are you women gossiping about ?” Dada asked as all the women monkeys covered their heads with the approaching alpha male…Walking into the assembly, Dada Langur fondly patted Sharyu, a thirty something year old curvaceous Langur, making it look avuncular, but, everybody knew his thoughts and intentions…

Mama Langur told him, “Dadaji, the Commonwealth Games are starting next week…” “Of course, I know about the Commowealth Games…" Dada Langur replied, "you must remember that I am almost as old as the Commonwealth itself…Did they finally get those toilets fixed ?”

Mama Langur who had to get in the news of her son’s selection to the Civil Service job cut Dadaji short, “Our Chottu has got a job with the Civil Service for the Commonwealth games…right now it is contract but will become permanent…”

“What job has Chottu got ?” Dada Langur asked, reaching for a clump of bananas…

Before Mama Langur could say anything, Aunty Langur chipped in, “He is going to drive away all our Langur brothers and sisters who will be visiting the stadiums from the villages…” Since Mottu hadn’t got the job, she needed to show the job in a bad light…

Dada Langur listened to Aunty Langur and swallowed a few more bananas…

“You know, they say the British left India, but, their practices never left the country…this is true not just for men and women, but, also for monkey dom…” Dada Langur started saying…

“During the salt satyagraha,” he continued, “whom did the British use to assault the satyagrahis…not British constables…the British sergeant stood with his sola topee on and ordered Indian constables to attack…the Indians had been trained on how to hit their brethren…the British sergeant stood by and gave orders…the Indian constables did the dirty work…”

“Of course, the Indian constables got special privileges…in fact, when the British left they took many of them to Bilayat (Bilayat means Overseas, the root word from which the word Old Blightey comes) with them…I remember, my cousin’s friend, Gilbert…his real name was Gowrishanker and he changed his name to Gilbert…went to Bilayat the year the British left, married a white girl and settled down…”

“So, Girls…” the patriarch continued, “things don’t change…civilization is catching up with us monkeys too, sixty years later…Mama Langur, forget marrying off Chottu to your brother’s daughter, Bitiya…get ready to welcome a Canadian memsahib as bahu in a few years’ time…” Dada Langur gave another avuncular pat to Sharyu and limbered off into the trees near Jawaharlal Nehru stadium

Coming home...btw, where is home ?

Though physically I reached Canada around 6.30 in the evening on Sunday last, my body has only today reached Europe on the way back from India and the mystic East. With about thirty landings and take offs in a period of twenty or so days and a time difference, at its peak, of twelve hours, the body is still figuring out where in the Universe I am. Over the past week, I was getting back from work around 6pm, going straight to bed, and, waking up around 11pm, cooking, doing the dishes etc., doing some meditation and going back to bed around 2am. Today I got up around 2am. Europe has a six hour time difference with Canada, and, so, since 8am is a a reasonable time to get up on a Saturday, I say, the body has reached Europe.

As I look back on the wonderful holiday, perhaps the most wonderful in years, I realize that most of my time was spent visiting temples. Not planned that way, but, that is how it worked out. I realized this, on the last day of my trip, as I wandered into the Hare Krishna temple in Mumbai’s Juhu area, while waiting for the vegetarian restaurant, Govinda, attached to the temple, to open. Sitting in the temple I saw and heard the young American Hare Krishna devotee put his heart and total being into a beautiful rendering of a bhajan (somewhat like a Gospel hymn) on Ganesha (it was the festival day of Ganesha, the God who removes all obstacles) and end with a rendering of Hare Rama, Hare Krishna...Outside the temple, Mercedes Benzes and BMWs jostled their way for parking to be in time to get seating as Govinda opened at 12.30pm.

Nowhere else in the world could one see this absolute integration of the divine and totally material. And that is India...now I realize why we Indians say Apna Bharat Mahan (our India is the greatest)...we can so well integrate the divine and the material that no one will see the difference...unlike other societies that trample tradition in their quest for modernity, as in material success, India does not...and that is what makes it unique...takes more time to get wherever you are going, spiritually or materially, but, you respect what has gone before....the journey is important, not how soon you get there...

Travelling around India, I could see that notwithstanding the modernity that the urban economic boon has brought in, this ability to integrate stays unchanged. It is not the orthodoxy of the fundamentalist of whatever religion, though there are evidences of that, occasionally. It is the willingness to accept the duality and ambiguity of life, something only the lateral mind can accept.

Seldom does one see, these days, a young woman in anything but Western clothes at workplaces ...but, catch the line at Mumbai’s Siddhi Vinayak temple on a Tuesday morning and you will see the same young women in traditional attire and a bindi (the red dot on the forehead)...Gods demand proper attire, and, an unflinching centuries' old dress code...

The centuries old temple at Guruvayur still demands that all women come dressed in a sari and men take off their upper clothing as a mark of respect to God...this is the only institution that I know of that sent the all powerful Empress of India, Indira Gandhi, packing to put on the correct attire and come back in the prescribed dress code to worship God...

In a similar vein, the statues of Gods and Godesses that are in every nook and corner of Bali have their lower limbs covered by a cloth, and, everyone who enters a temple must cover their legs with a sarong...

A statue of a God in Bali with the lower limbs covered




There is a beauty to this dichotomy that the linear mind will find hard to accept...Schizophrenia of the collective consciousness, or something Jungian like that, they will say...the reality is that is that it is this seamless ability to switch between the’ divine’ and the material that keeps that seething mass of one billion plus people in some sense of balance as the country goes through change...as it has been for thousands of years, invasions of different foreigners, integrating them and yet maintaining a distinctiveness...thus, there is no conflict in the pickpocket starting his day by offering his first takings at the local temple..and that is what keeps the balance when Mumbai’s twenty first century street planners struggle with removing a century old temple or mosque that comes in the way of a new express super highway...detour the highway...

Eastern mysticism pooh poohs the passing tranquility of a few moments that come in meditation with the same vehemence as it denounces the transitoriness of material comfort...which is why Theravadan Buddhists consider the Hindu attempt to incorporate the Buddha as the ninth avatara of Vishnu somewhat of an insult...the Buddha they say is beyond all this pain-pleasure equation, the Buddha doesn’t come back, Vishnu keeps coming back, they say, which reminds me of two siblings fighting over which one of them is more loved by the parents...

A friend of mine asked me on Monday as to what was my most significant experience on this trip...I was too jet lagged to respond then. As I reflect now, with the mental fog clearing, two experiences stay uppermost... the first was the Sagar Manthan (churning of the Ocean) images from Hindu mythology at the entrance to Angkor Thom...for those, not familiar with this story from Hindu mythology here is the abbreviated Reader’s Digest version...

Devas (gods) and asuras (demons) fought as most siblings do. Amrit, the divine nectar that would give immortality could only be obtained by churning the Kshirsagar (Ocean of Milk), where the asuras had dropped it when they wrested it from the devas. The devas and asuras both sought immortality and decided to churn the Kshirsagar. With the devas on one side and the asuras on the other, the Sagar Manthan commenced, the churning of the ocean of milk. Vishnu incarnated as Kurma, the tortoise, on whom was placed a mountain as a churning pole, and Vasuki, the great venom-spewing serpent, was wrapped around it and used to churn the ocean. A host of divine celestial objects came up during the churning. Among these, importantly, was Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Prosperity, and the daughter of the king of the milky ocean . The last to come up was the Amrit. With this, the avatar of Kurma, the tortoise, ended. Vishnu then took up the form of a beautiful maiden (Apsara, you will find statues of millions of them all over Angkor Thom and Wat) to distract the asuras and gave immortality to the devas.

Sagar Manthan, represented at the entrance to Angkor Thom

The Sagar Manthan is symbolic of human existence, the constant churning, the constant activity, the myriad searches for peace, prosperity and all that...the churning is the expression of desire: but for desire there would be no human life, and, it is so beautifully caught in the representation as one enters the ancient capital of the Khmer kingdom, Angkor Thom...


And, then, the second significant memory...

A few steps away from Sagar Manthan is a representation of the Avalokateshwara Buddha, the being who can attain Nibbana and cross this pain-pleasure equation, but, who refuses to do so, till every sentient being can make the same journey...the Avalokateshwara Buddha (some regard the Dalai Lama as a manifestation of the Buddha Avalokateshwara) smiles without baring his teeth, the calm, realized smile that comes from the heart as He/She waits for each being to be ready to come with Him/Her...not a smile of victory or success, but, one of compassion and deep awareness...

The Buddha Avalokateshwara at Angkor Thom

And, as one stands before the statue the Buddhist chant rings loud and clear in the mind

Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammasam Buddhassa

To such exalted Beings, I bow in deep reverence and humility
+++++

The Shadow Princess

It is two thirty in the morning, not an unusual hour for me to be awake. But, I have been awake for over an hour, and, in a larger sense, awake for several hours now, reading with tremendous absorption this book I stumbled upon at the local library yesterday.

Being one of the first ‘holiday’ Fridays of this year’s summer, I had gone to the library in search of Shashi Tharoor’s “The Great Indian Novel.” I had stumbled upon it on the net, and, had read portions of it, in the style that the free Google reader would allow, with in between pages blocked out. Not willing to invest money in buying the book, yet wanting to read it, I had stopped by at the local library to see if they had a copy. They did not, but, as I neared the door, my eyes caught sight of the red lipstick lined lips and Indian ruby jewellery on the hands of the model on the cover of a book...what else is needed to catch the eye of an ageing Indian male salivating for the scents and scenes of India, and, yet not willing to live there...

I picked up the book and the opening pages were about the Queen Mumtaz Mahal in labour, as she gave birth to her last child, the Princess Goharara Begum. Not exactly the sort of stuff that fascinates the male mind, but, the allure of the red lips and ruby jewellery persisted, and, I borrowed the book.

I came back home and continued reading “the Shadow Princess.” And as I did so, images of my school days came back. The first was the story of the tomb of the Itmad-daula, the father of the empress Noor Jehan. I had heard first of this tomb from my brother, a writer of several books on Indian history (KRN Swamy, "The Peacock Throne" and other books). The tomb of the Itmad-daula (Pillar of the Empire, a title given to Mirza Ghiyas Beg, by the emperor Jahangir after Jahangir married Mehrunnisa, and, also overlooked the fifty thousand rupees that Ghiyas Beg had swindled from the royal coffers) was the Baby Taj.

And that took me through several wanderings of the mind as I had grown up.

The book captures so beautifully that strange dementia of the mind that overtakes a man when he loses the woman who absorbs him so totally. As I read about the madness of Shah Jahan at the death of Arjumand Bano (the given name of Mumtaz Mahal) my mind went back to the first time I visited the Agra Fort, two years ago. I remember pausing for a moment at the small mosque-room which is supposed to be the room from where the imprisoned Shah Jahan would gaze out in loving madness across the Yamuna to catch a glimpse of the Taj, where his beloved (too weak a word) obsession lay buried. What a strange madness and how it posseses almost everyone of us...how we struggle and fight with it, and, yet succumb in some way or the other...we are taught to deny it, yet, it is what brings us to life...

The writer, Indu Sundaresan, has done a tremendous amount of research into history, and, done an even more splendid job of weaving together the stories into such a brilliant narrative. The intrigues of the zenana (the harem) and the struggles of the princesses in their search for attention and affection (what’s new about that ?) are told so well. Hadn’t heard of Indu Sundaresan till yesterday. Went to her web site and read about the other books she has written. “The Twentieth Wife”, the story of Mehrunnisa (later named Noor Mahal by Jahangir and as his madness grew for her, graduated the name to Noor Jehan) sounds interesting.

The tales of Dara Shikoh’s Theosophist like explorations into integrating religions is interesting, as also the antics of the Jesuits as they strive to catch his attention. Akbar tried such things before and even in the twenty first century we have these all faith attempts...a bit of an oxymoron...since the word faith, by definition, excludes any other belief...what we perhaps really need is an emergence of total lack of faith to explore freely and without limiting ourself through fear

I am now at the point where Jahanara, perhaps the central character of the book, has a meeting with the exiled Noor Jehan, in the exiled, former empress’ palace at Lahore. The writer has so imaginatively and wonderfully captured the spirit of those days that one would wonder whether she was an ‘embedded’ reporter in the retinue that followed the Padshah, and, all set in language that the twenty first century (and readers in North America) can understand.. .Listen to this advice given by the ageing Empress Noorjehan to the young nineteen year Jahanara exploring her own raging hormones and her need for Mirza Najabat Khan

“Only one last word, my dear,” Mehrunnisa said wearily. “If your Bapa will not allow you to have a legal alliance with Mirza Najabat Khan, you must find another way to do so. Guard your personal happiness carefully, Jahanara; no one else will be willing to do it for you...”

Looks like Dear Abby has been around for some centuries...

Hahvahd

I first heard of Hahvahd (Harvard) somewhere in 1967 or so. My cousin had joined this newly minted School of Management in Western India, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and he told me about IIMA and Harvard. Never heard of Harvard till then, though I had been good at quiz programmes…Yale, yes…Harvard, no…

IIMA had been set up in collaboration with Harvard Business School (HBS) and not many people, in those days, knew what they taught out there. In fact, some of us, even forty years after we graduated from IIMA, don’t know what they taught. My cousin gave me the Institute handbook and I remember not understanding a word of the course outlines (Management of Change particularly foxed me. I thought that Management of Change was all about what to do if one had a hundred rupee note and needed a couple of fives and tens in change)…

When I asked my cousin as to what they taught he told me, “Don’t worry…you will get a salary of at least Rs800 per month after completing this course…” Considering the fact that the IAS (Indian Administrative Service, cream of the crop civil service career) probationer of those days got Rs600 per month after going through an arduous selection process, I thought that was enough incentive to embark on a course of studies that I did not have the vaguest idea about. Unlike today, the number of applicants to the IIMs was fairly low, and, so I got in.

There is another theory associated with my entry into IIMA. IIMA had just invested in a mainframe computer and all applications were processed through the computer…for those of you old enough to know these things, the earliest computers processed data using punched cards…the story is that a young girl (punch card operators, they called them) wearing stiletto heels stepped on a card that had my details, resulting in a combination of punch entries that admitted me to the Institute…I am the strongest supporter of this theory…having seen the high levels of academic brilliance among my classmates, there was no other way I could have made it…

I remember the first morning landing at IIMA in Vastrapur. Suddenly out of the desert that lay just beyond the what was the seat of the Gujarat Government in those days, one saw a clump of seemingly unfinished buildings with no exterior plaster…they had paid good money to this Amriki architect, Louis Kahn who designed the place, and, the story is that when they ran out of money to pay him, he just packed his bags and went back leaving the exterior unfinished…all that you have heard about the IIMA campus being modelled on the style of Nalanda is an after thought…

In those days, everything and everyone had to be approved by the alma mater, Harvard. All course material came from there, and, very early in my stay there, the name Soldiers’ Field, MA, etched itself into my brain as the address blurb on case material.

There were still resident white professors from Harvard, and, any desi professor who joined was packed off to the International Teachers’ Program (ITP) for baptism. So much so that when Chandulal, the barber who had set up shop under a tree within the IIMA premises, was away from his post for a few weeks everyone said, “Chandulal, ITP ma gayo…” “Chandulal has gone to do the ITP (at Harvard)…”

With this strong influence of Harvard I had always wanted to see the, what I call, (alma mater) ², alma mater of my alma mater…though I have lived in North America for several years now, this opportunity did not present itself to me till last week…when I went visiting my niece who lives close to Boston…

On the appointed day, after offering prayers in the fashion of a believer doing the once in a lifetime pilgrimage, I set out…Leaving my car at a local subway station, we took the Red Line to Harvard…

Getting out at of the subway, we got our first touch of what is essentially the characteristic of a University town…a middle aged man wearing a track suit with the words “Harvard Business School, Information Technology” saw us looking at the street map and said, “Can I help you ?” We told him that we were in search of the Holy Grail, Harvard Business School, and, he told us, “Over the bridge and to your left…”

Harvard is the quintessential University town…I saw more middle aged men wearing corduroy jackets and walking around in Harvard than I have seen in any other town in North America…(I now have the courage to defy my son who has stopped me, till now, from buying a corduroy jacket on the grounds that they are not ‘smart’)…I did see a few business suits as we walked through HBS, but, the per square mile density of corduroy jacket wearers in North America is perhaps the highest in Harvard…

We crossed the river Charles and came up to the road that had been etched in my mind from reading the address blurb on case material, Soldiers’ Field…I stopped for a minute as a mark of respect before crossing this road…

And then, I could see for myself the tower of the Baker Library building which we had seen on the cover of innumerable editions of the Harvard Business Review (HBR)…I have never visited Oxford or Cambridge in England, but, as I walked through the roads leading to HBS I had the distinct feeling that Oxford or Cambridge was where they got their inspiration from…interesting that so much cutting edge 21st century management thought seems to be being born in a town that has the ambience of a 19th century English university town…

Also I thought of the many young Indian professors who would have come here for baptism in the ‘60s…Seshan, Bala, Vora are some of the names that came to mind…how different the non diverse world of HBS must have been then…and what it must have taken to make the positive mark that they made…

After doing a parikrama (circumambulation, generally done of any temple) of HBS we went to Harvard Yard, where the statue of John Harvard sits…as you go near you will notice that his left shoe shines more than anything else in the surroundings…this comes from the belief that rubbing that left shoe fetches you luck, and, a lot of students must be using this approach to make up for the time spent partying when they should have been studying for their exams…

There is an unofficial tour of the Harvard campus conducted by students (the tour is called Hahvahd), and, I shall conclude with this story that the charming young girl who was conducting the tour told us standing at the feet of John Harvard…

Harvard has the practice of naming the buildings on the campus after the Harvard University Presidents…the word House is added to the President’s last name…so you have a Langdon House, a Quincy House, a Holyoke house and so on…the only exception is the President who was in office between l672-1675, Leonard Hore…try adding his last name to the word House and you will see why…

Of Jean and Jhumpa

When I first came to Canada some eighteen years ago and started doing road trips to the US, one thing that petrified me was missing an exit on the highway…and sometimes even when I did not miss the exit the equally petrifying problem was that the exit could be closed for road repairs or some other reason…

I remember a few months after coming to Canada making my first road trip to Pittsburgh to the Balaji temple there…coming back I missed the exit and landed up in a somewhat seedy looking town…with all the stories I had heard about shootings in the US before I came here, I was petrified driving around the town at dusk with bharya priyaa and two kidz in the car, searching for the route back…and then, one day coming back through Buffalo in the winter, I again missed an exit and experienced hell with freezing rain (different from the proverbial fires of hell, though just as fearful) trying to find my way to the Peace Bridge…

All that is now a thing of the past with the lovely Jenn perched between me and bharya priyaa, in the car, as we go driving in the US now…now, just in case some of you are wondering whether this is some ménage a trois that this ageing couple are getting into in their old age let me reassure you that Jenn is all satvic…she is my trusted GPS…

From the moment I switch on Jenn, I know I can trust her implicitly…in her lovely, reassuring voice she tells me ‘Keep to the right and exit ramp in one point five kilometres…’ and as I near the ramp and see that exit is closed for road repairs I do not panic anymore…I just calmly drive on pass the exit, and, the lovely Jenn waits for a few seconds after I have passed the exit and in a calm, measured voice almost like my mother talking to me after I missed a Math exam at school, ‘Recalculating…’ and like my mother again, in a few seconds, Jenn has found a solution, “Go seven point five kilometres and exit ramp left” she takes over and guides me back on to the correct route…and, if I decide that instead of going to a temple, as originally planned, I shall go to a mosque Jenn has no problems…I just need to tell her ‘find nearest mosque’ and all she says is ‘Recalculating’ and like ‘Open Sesame’ in the Alladin story, Jenn solves the problem…

Driving over eighteen hundred kilometres over the Easter break all around North Eastern US I never got the heebie-jeebies missing an exit…I remember how in the early days of my existence in the land of milk and honey (as it was then), the US, I would have to order ‘Triptiks’ from the automobile association and whoever was in the passenger seat would have to navigate…all that is gone now, bharya priyaa sleeps and/or puts on Mohammad Rafi’s songs on the iPod...all thanks to the lovely, Jenn, and, Jenn is one woman that bp (bharya priyaa) is not jealous about…

A large portion of my time over the Easter break was spent on the I90, aka, the New York State thruway which runs over 800 kilometres (somebody in the US please translate that into miles) from New York, NY to the Pennsylvania state line…talking of kilometres and miles, on this trip I got stuck because of a traffic accident and decided to phone our relative telling them that we would be late…when the relative at the other end asked me “How far are you from here ?” I, Canadian-conditioned that I am, said, “about a hundred and fifty kilometers away”…a somewhat quizzical silence at the other end…having lived in the USofA for over thirty five years, the only country that I know of that still uses ‘miles’ to measure distances, my relative could not figure out how far away I was, and, I, being quantitatively challenged, could not do the mental math to translate it into miles…realizing the problem I said, “about two hours away” and all was OK…

btw, the lovely Jenn can give her instructions in either miles or kilometres…you just have to tap her appropriate button…

Coming back to the I90 it is one of the more unexciting roadways I have travelled in my life…no buffaloes, autos or trucks as in the Motherland to keep you awake as you zip along…however, I now notice that all the service stations have Wi-Fi…so, I could regularly connect to the web through my iPod and catch up on the latest emails as I stopped at the service stations…cool, eh?

Sitting in Lakshmi’s aunt’s house waiting for bharya priyaa to get ready (the story of my life) I happened to notice a copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ lying around…Lakshmi’s aunt is an avid reader and also reviews books for several North American journals…started reading the book for ‘time pass’ as the Bombay train hawker would say…

‘Time pass’ turned into interest and absorption as I worked my way through the story and I was totally fascinated with the accuracy with with Jhumpa has captured the middle class immigrant ethic in that story…a sixty something man loses his wife of thirty some years when, totally unexpectedly, she does not come out of anaesthesia after a minor surgery…the suddenness of the event is caught so poignantly by Jhumpa…

And how that shakes up everyone’s life…how we take everyone who has been there for so long as granted…like most of us in that age group, the bereavement leaves the man stranded mid stream…the aloneness comes through and how his daughter struggles with her own feelings…what does she do with her mother's two hundred and eighteen saris, for example...the daughter wears only western clothes but she finds it difficult to throw the saris away...

We have all heard or read of such experiences through stories set in India and this is the first one I have read set in the immigrant ethos of North America that captures such an incident…and, then enters Meenakshi (Mrs Bagchi, no known relative of our Evergreen Hero) into our protagonist’s life…no, I won’t give away the ending…read the book to find out for yourself…

This was the first time I was reading Jhumpa (I saw the movie ‘Namesake’ but did not read the book)…I found so much of myself in Unaccustomed Earth…as I was driving up the Garden State Parkway I kept thinking of how I would respond if someone close to me were to suddenly die, and, what would be the response from my children…she made me get in touch with my feelings, and, that was good…

Confessions of a Buddhist atheist

Lakshmi comes home from work quite late these days…I reach home earlier, spend some time cooking, then surf around aimlessly on the computer… Facebook, the Hindu, the latest on Paramahamsa Nityananda and his growing coterie of film star companions…then, often I do a sit, and, by around 8pm, drop off to sleep with the Comedy Channel lulling me to sleep…

Given this schedule, it was only natural that Lakshmi was quite shocked/surprised to see me sitting up and quite chirpy at 9pm, yesterday…after having made sure that all was OK, she inquired as to what was the cause for this somewhat rare occurrence…

In previous scribblings I had made reference to Stephen Batchelor’s recent book, “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist”…I had ordered the book and it was there in the mailbox when I came home, and, I started reading it…by 9pm I had finished 145 of the book’s 240 pages getting up just once to attend to bio needs…

Now, I know this is not the sort of attention that I normally give to anything in life…so, why the difference ?

Stephen Batchelor, is a self confessed flower child of the ‘60s…that does not by itself make him worth missing ‘Corner Gas’…

After dropping out of school, and, trekking across Europe and Afghanistan, sampling different psyhotropic drug combinations, he lands in Dharmsala where, around the time I was graduating from IIMA, he was getting initiated into Tibetan Buddhism. Circa this period, the Dalai Lama had ‘authorized’ SN Goenka to conduct a Vipassana course for monks of his order…very interestingly, I noted that Stephen Batchelor was one of the monks who ‘sat’ this course.

From Dharmsala, Stephen goes to Switzerland to work with one of the seniormost abbots of the tradition, and, it is there that I can see the origins of his earlier book, ‘Buddhism without Beliefs…’ The questioning starts within…what are the myths, what is the reality ? And from there he moves to becoming a Zen student in South Korea…while his Vajrayana preceptor is sorry to see him leave the Vajrayana practice, he does nothing to stop him…

The first person Stephen meets as he steps off the plane on landing in South Korea, is the French Buddhist nun who will be subsequently become his wife…but before that very human relationship matures into a partnership there is a very interesting introduction to the practice of South Korean Zen…and a few references to his growing involvement with the French Buddhist nun…,he also talks of how the lack of a heterosexual companionship was making him attracted to men (no problem with that, at least in Canada, not sure in other places)…

But, the real action in the book for me starts after he and the French nun (I forget her monastic name, she is now his wife, Martine) leave the monastery after the death of the preceptor…

With the resulting dissolution following the preceptor’s death, Stephen talks of how he was faced with the task of making a living…the Sangha had provided him the wherewithal for life since the age of eighteen…now, with his and Martine’s decision to make it into the world of samsara the task of making a living was quite daunting…while both of them were steeped in the knowledge of the Buddhist texts, they had no formal qualifications, and, that made it so much more difficult for them to find a job…His mother’s fears when he dropped out of school seemed to be coming true…till the end, like a lot of mothers, she kept gently questioning his career choice, or lack thereof, from a practical point of view…

Stephen’s search to understand the historical Buddha is the cornerstone of the book…an extension of the Zen question he was taught to ponder over ‘What is this ? Where did it come from ?’…he makes references to Marxist interpretations of the Buddha’s life, and, finally brings out the historical Buddha in as realistic a light as possible…

The picture he paints of Siddhatha Gotama is of a very human being, much involved in the day to day hustle and bustle of politics and life…

Based on his research he has come to the conclusion that the four sightings (the sick person, the dead body, the old person and the hermit) which we have all heard of as the cause for Siddhatha Gotama’s renunciation do not have any historical basis…the texts, according to Batchelor, say that these sightings happened to another Buddha, Vipassi, by name…and have been incorporated into Siddhatha Gotama’s life as one more of the embellishing myths…

Batchelor’s interpretation of the Great Renunciation is more around ennui and deep angst experienced by a very sensitive young man…

I have reached the stage in the book where Batchelor is talking of the First Mahasangha after the Buddha’s death…Ananda, the Buddha’s companion and principal batman, had a photographic memory of everything the Buddha had said…however, there was much debate over whether he should join the Mahasangha…I have heard Goenkaji give his interpretation of this incident…Batchelor talks of it, very differently, in the context of the power politics between the Buddha’s principal disciples, on his death…

The book grips me like very few books have in the recent past…however, as I read Stephen Batchelor’s interpretation of the Buddha’s life, and, compare it with what I have heard from Goenkaji and read from Thich Nhat Hahn, a story attributed to the Buddha and several other teachers comes to my mind…

A group of blind men one day came across an elephant and started describing it. One of them who was near the tail said the elephant was like a rope, another who was near the legs said that it was like a pillar, a third who was near the trunk said it was like a water spout, a fourth who was near the ear said it was like a fan…

experiencing the Truth is somewhat similar…

in our current shape and form it will always be a part, not the Whole…for the Whole we have to go beyond the mind and its limitations…till then, everything is entertainment…

Aimless Musings

It just occurred to me that earlier this year, I completed 25 years of living outside of India, eight or so in the Middle East and seventeen in Canada. Almost every year I have gone back to India, sometimes to spend a few days, and, sometimes a few weeks. The experience has always left me wanting to go back again, wanting more, almost, like meeting a woman one is in love with…’age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’ are the words that come to mind…

It is an exercise in simplicity to say that India has changed. Of course, everything sounds more costly than it was in the days I lived there. I still remember eating a Masala Dosa for thirty seven paise at Rama Nayak’s at Kings Circle. (That should give the reader an idea of how old I am) Today, the same masala dosa perhaps costs twenty rupees. However, that is inflation and I am sure Torontonians can talk of similar things. What occurs to me is that the way of life I grew up in the ‘60s is changing…and, more often than not, I am not missing it…what I am just trying to say is that a more fundamental, deeper change is occuring than what is happenning to the price of masala dosa...and yet some things will perhaps never change…

Having said this, I must make one caveat…I know of only the urban centres today…the heart and the bulk of India is in its middle towns and villages…and my current lack of immunity to e-coli and other bacteria that come as dressing on food in those places has not permitted me to explore much in rural and small town India.

If I were to go back in my mind’s eye and think of the first real change that I noticed after leaving India in 1984, it was the emergence of the little PCOs (Public Call Offices) in the ‘80s. One of the challenges I faced for a major part of my working life in India was to get a residential phone connection. I was the Personnel Manager of a large Indian corporation, and, the company was willing to do anything to get me a residential phone connection…but, no luck. Starting from the ‘80s I began to realize how easy (relatively) it was becoming to connect to the outside world. I remember the days when I would want to connect back to HO, from say Gauhati (now Guwahati) and the operator would put through a ‘demand call’ through the exchange at nine times the regular rate. The arrival of the PCOs in the ‘eighties, as I look back, was the first sign that the way of life I had grown up with, was changing…almost like what Thomas Friedman says the fax machine did to life in Eastern Europe…

The PCO network has grown and stabilized itself over the years in India, and, today everyone has a cell phone. Drivers have cell phones with only incoming calls allowed so that their ‘masters’ can call them to the front of the five star hotel where they (the masters) have been partying. And yes, everyone talks of how boys and girls are SMS-ing coochie coo messages, and, what is happening to Indian moral values…. However, as we will see with all the social revolution that the cell phone is ushering in, somethings never change...

One of the social evils in India (and in several other societies) has been the abuse of women by their husbands demanding money for liquor…on a recent visit to India, I found that the house help woman did not have her cell phone…when we inquired she sheepishly confessed that her man had made a noise demanding money for liquor and since she had no money she had pawned her cell phone to ward off the beast…somethings never change, eh ? In stories written during Prohibition days, it was the woman’s jewellery that she pawned to pay her husband’s liquor bills, now cell phones…

But that was an aside…a serious one, nevertheless, a reminder to my friends who say that with the arrival of Kit Kat things in India have changed…PS pls check with the servant woman referenced above before making that statement…

Which brought to my mind, yesterday’s news item about the death of Gangubai Hangal. Gangubai was one of the foremost Hindustani music singers. It is not about the quality of her music that I would like to comment. It is about the system she was born into and grew up in…the system of patronage (known in some instances as the Devadassi system) under which some of the best known female artists of the Carnatic and Hindustani music scene grew up and ‘flourished’ (is flourished the correct word ?)

Art and artists have always needed a patron…and patrons demand a price for their support, and, that was the origin of the system…some of the stories that Gangubai has talked of portray the twilight zone that this operates in…and the clutches of the strict caste hierarchy..

Her ‘father’ was a Brahmin, though he and her mother never married…as a child she would go stealing mangoes in the Brahmin areas of the city…the inhabitants were not so much concerned with the mangoes being stolen as their being stolen by a girl whose Brahmin paternity had not been sanctified through marriage…

Another very touching reflection that Gangubai talks of…brings tears to my eyes as I write this…she was called to sing at a session of the Congress Party which Gandhi was attending…after singing, her biggest worry was that indeterminate paternity and subsequent caste affiliation might decree that she could not eat with the others…luckily she says that was not the case…and she wept when she was asked to sit and eat along with everyone else…

There is a very curious dichotomy to all this…some of the best music and dance grew under this system…the association with the Devadassi system made it impossible for girls to study Bharata Natyam till Rukmini Devi, a Brahmin woman who married an Englishman, brought it out of the twilight zone…interestingly, to make it ‘safe’ Rukmini Devi downplayed the ‘sringara’ (erotic) element of Bharata Natyam…Balasaraswathi, a renowned dancer, and, herself a product of the Devadassi system is quoted by TJS George as saying, “let this Brahmin women do what she is good at, and, leave dancing and sringara to us who are good at it…”

As a system of sexual and economic exploitation there is no justification for the Devadassi system, notwithstanding the fact that some relationships, like that of Gangubai and Gururaj Kaulgi grew to be based on mutual respect, and, that at one time Gangubai was his ‘patron’ and not the other way around…

The question I am raising is: We can think of several such exploitative situations all over the world…is anything changing in terms of human relationships ? Or, is the exploitation of the Devadassi just being replaced by that of the starlet by the producer ?

Masala Dosa, a State of Mind

Surfing through the web yesterday I came across a photo essay on Falafels, the way they are made and eaten in different parts of the world…which then lead my mind to wonder as to what would qualify for India’s national dish ? Of course, while one lives in India, that is Bharat, every region or street will lay claim to a special dish…thus, for the Bengali, Macher Jhol (fish curry would be a plebeian, non-Bengali way of describing Macher jhol); for the Gujerati, Undhia (cooked vegetables would be again a plebeian, non-Gujerati description); for the Keralite, Avial (vegetables cooked in a coconut gravy to the non-Keralite, God’s Nectar to the Keralite) and so on…

However, as we all know once we have crossed Kala Pani (Indian expression for crossing the oceans), for the outside world everyone is Indian, or, ‘Hindi’ as they call you, somewhat derisively in the Middle East. (I had a Tamilian friend who, like all proud Tamilians of the ‘60s, did not speak a work of Hindi, till, a taxi driver in Bahrain asked him, “kaisa Hindi hai tum ? Hindi nahin bolta hai…’ What sort of a ‘Hindi’ –Indian- are you that you do not speak Hindi…?) And so, for the outside world, which makes no distinction between Hindis and Pakis, what would emerge as the national or food of the subcontinent ?

Given current trends in the UK where, for two and hundred and fifty years of the Raj, Indians (and Bangladeshis, in the main) have now replaced roast beef and yorkshire pudding with chicken tikka as the national dish of Old Blightey, one would think that chicken tikka and/or chicken tandoori would be top of the list. Be that as it may, as we all know, apna Bharat mahan hai (India is great) and diverse. One significant element of this diversity is that there is a significant number of people from among the one billion plus subcontinenters who will not eat anything that walks…in fact, in the old Madras state (now Tamil Nadu) hotels for the vegetarians would be denoted as Civil Hotels, as opposed to the Military Hotels for the carnivores…the principle being that meat was served in the Army, hence Military Hotels as opposed to Civil, or vegetarian hotels…there used to be a further subdivision of Brahmin hotels among the Civil hotels...which I shall not go into for now...

And, if one were to take a look at what the Civil Hotels have to offer, the Dosa makes the top of the list…particularly when we look at Civil Hotels outside of India…

I have seen the dosa variously described by Civil Hotels outside of India trying to market their wares to the western clientele. The most common description is that of ‘crepe made of rice and lentils.’ More important than the dosa itself are its accompaniments, the coconut chutney, the sambar (a lentil based gravy), and, of course, the crowning glory, the milagai podi. Travelling in HongKong, I once saw milagai podi described as ‘chilli powder mixed with spices and garnished with oil…’ A much easier and more understandable way of describing milagai podi is simply, “Gunpowder” It takes some courage and fortitude for the average westerner not brought up on a wholesome diet of green and red chillies to make oral contact with “Gunpowder.”

There is a school of thought among some women who have moved to western climes from India that they will never eat Indian food outside of their homes, as they fancy themselves the best Indian chefs and that no one can make Indian food better. I shall not comment on that school of thought. What is more important is that on Saturday or Sunday morning when Indian Udipi style restaurants open their doors in Mississauga, Ontario or Sunnyvale, California, there is generally a line up of ex Besant Nagar, Ballygunge, Karol Bagh, Matunga (all Indian suburbs with predominantly South Indian populations) residents waiting outside to get a whiff of their favourite food.

Subcontinenters living outside of the subcontinent reconnect to their roots in different ways. For some it is the music they grew up on, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh et al…For some it is the religion they grew up with…Living overseas I have always been impressed with the number of tam-brahm houses that arrange for the chanting of the Vishnu Sahasranama (an ancient chant giving the thousand names of Vishnu) outside of India…For those like me with less artistic or spiritual leanings, it is the food…

Walk into any Indian restaurant and you can see the regulars…for them, the food is their raison d’etre, the reason for being…I have seen some of them go away on business trips, only to be separated from their favourite food, be it chicken tikka masala or masala dosa, and, stumble into their favourite food haunt a few weeks later with a zombie like look on their face…once the body has received the nourishment it was deprived of while living off bagels and salads, and, the masalas start doing their trick once again, the person can start talking rocket science once again…

My son spent last year in France, studying at a global business school…when he was coming home after six months in France we asked him what he wanted, expecting him to ask for some exotic French cuisine to be served with red wine…Dosa with sambar was the instant chat line reply…and boy, for the next six weeks he lived off dosas…

Which then, makes me wonder is the Masala Dosa (or chicken tikka) a food, or, a state of mind ?

Dear Shashi (written a few months ago)

Background note to readers:
The Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, the former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, is in some hot water, first, for having stayed at Delhi’s plush Taj Mahal hotel (admittedly at his own expense since there is no gym at the Kerala Bhavan where he should have stayed, eating avial and kalan) while waiting for his official residence to be vacated by the previous resident. Also, in response to a diktat that all ministers travel economy class, he is supposed to have used, in a tweet, the expressions cattle class and holy cows…the people of India, I am told, are not pleased and the General Secretary of the ruling Congress Party, in addition to others, has apologized to them…

This is a friendly letter written to The Hon Mr Shashi Tharoor, former Manhattan resident and current Indian Minister of State for External Affairs…sharing some thoughts from a current Toronto resident…

Dear Shashi,

While I am not one of the 169,096 people who is following you on Twitter, I have been following the story about your tweets and thought I could share some thoughts with you.

In the first place I don’t think it is appropriate for the Honourable Minister of State for External Affairs of Bharat that is India, to go around tweeting. It is going to give the world the impression that in India we have become so westernized that Ministers, even if they are Ministers of State, do not have important matters to attend to and have all the time in the world to tweet around. It is all fine and dandy for President Obama to carry his own Blackberry and reply to the select group of people who have his email address, not a minister of the Bharat Sarkar. Indian ministers have weightier things to do than tweet away to 169,096 people.

The correct procedure in these matters as your staff may have already advised you is to entrust your Blackberry to your third assistant Principal Secretary. At periodic intervals the third assistant Principal Secretary will ask the fourth assistant Principal Secretary to print out all emails received in your name, review them, and, forward them up the chain of Secretaries, Assistant, Deputy, Principal and Chief to be left in your in tray.

At each stage of the process the appropriate Secretary will add their remarks. You will then peruse the aforesaid document and add your own thoughts, which will work its way down the hierarchy. Should any of the Secretaries require a translation of the comments since you may not be familiar with the national language, Hindi, in view of your having lived out of the country for so long, it will be sent to the Translations Directorate.

Finally, in the fullness of time, the document will reach the fourth assistant Principal Secretary who will call the Principal Stenographer (provided he or she is not on Casual, Sick or other leave) and dictate the reply. The Principal Stenographer will type out the reply and give it to the Information Technology department who will send the message out.

Now, having lived in the infamous West for so long you maybe tempted to say “Why do I need a Blackberry for doing this ?” Dear Shashi, that is because like all those who have lived in the West for so long you have no understanding of time…you think if something is not done on time, there is no point in doing it…let me try and explain this to you from the Indian perspective…

Years ago, much before computers took over the Indian Railways and you could check ‘online’ where every train is at a given moment, every station had a printed timetable which gave the arrival and departure timings of the trains. Needless to add the actual time when the trains came and left had little bearing on the timetable displayed.

An irate passenger once marched up to the Station Master and said, “What is the use of this timetable ? The trains are always late…why do you display it all ?”

The Station Master who had been schooled in the timeless philosophies of the Vedas and the Upanishads looked at the customer and said, “Agreed the trains are late. However, if there was no timetable how would you know that the train was late ?”

Moral of the story, Shashi: Timetables and schedules are there only to tell you how late you are…throw that Blackberry away and stop tweeting…you will, if not anything else, give your staff some peace…whatever has to happen will happen whenever it has to happen as the Lord Krishna has said somewhere in some holy text…

Then, Shashi, I saw this picture of you sitting in the Economy class cabin of a domestic flight. While you appeared to be meditating, honestly, the look on your face reminded me of a child who had been forcibly made to swallow a large dollop of castor oil…I am not being critical…I know how bad travelling by Economy class is, having travelled Economy all my life…

Looking at that look on your face I realized how near I was to similar disaster when on one of my trips to India I was offered a job to head the HR department of a big Indian company, and, I very nearly accepted…and the story of your tweeting around only confirmed how some guardian angel sitting on my shoulder saved me from disaster…

Let me tell what may have happened had I accepted that job.

My first job, soon after I graduated was with a large Engineering Company in the Bombay region. Every year, the Management and Union would celebrate Satyanarayana Pooja where all those who had got married in the last twelve months would sit for the said pooja along with their spouse.

As you perhaps know by now, having lived in India for a few months, Satyanarayana Pooja is performed by newly weds to ensure that the God Satyanarayan bestows on the couple a male child…In the year I got married, my wife and I sat the Pooja and enjoyed the meal thereafter…all was well…we had a good time, and, six years later my daughter arrived…notwithstanding the fact that the God Satyanarayan had got the timing and gender of the product requisition all mixed up we had no complaints…this was what happened before I left India a quarter of a century ago…

Just imagine, the Canada returned HR Director dealing with the Satyanarayan Pooja request, had I accepted the job.

Union representative Blackberrys me: “We need to conduct Satyanarayana Pooja and provide a meal to all employees…”
Canada returned HR Director Blackberries back: “What is Satyanarayan Pooja ?”
Union representative: “Satyanarayan Pooja is prayer for newly married couples to be blessed with male child…”
Canada returned HR Director Blackberries back: “What does this Satyanarayan chap have to do with producing a child for our employees ? There are different and more pleasurable ways to producing a child…stop wasting time…get on with your work…”

The rest I leave to your imagination. A holy cow has been assaulted, if not killed…workers walk out, rioting, police come and all that which you maybe slowly getting to know…

Needless to add, the HR Director would have been on his way back to Canada, coach class, to collect his unemployment benefits. (btw, ‘coach class’, try and use that word next time. Having always travelled premium first in your days as Under Secretary General of the UN, you may not have heard of it. It is the same travel class as the prohibited c word that you used, and, is located at the back of the aircraft where you can get the wafting smell of the loos.)

Moral of the story, Shashi: In India things work differently from Manhattan or Toronto.

Now, very recently the lady at Pizza Hut seems to have decided that all of you must go coach class I am not questioning her wisdom, she knows all…However, hearing about this decision and that of the boy wonder travelling by the Shatabdi Express reminds me of an exchange involving the Father of the Nation who used to travel Third Class rail…

I am not sure if it was Lord Wavell or Lord Mountbatten (having written all those books you will know the story and should be able to correct me if I tell it wrong), but, one of them remarked to the Father of the Nation that it was so wonderful to see that in spite of the power he wielded he lived in such poverty. Sarojini Naidu, a woman not known to hide the truth, who was standing nearby, quipped, “It takes an awful lot of money to keep this old man,(referring to the Father of the Nation) in poverty…”

Moral of the story, Shashi: To be a successful Indian politician you don’t have to be poor, you just need to appear to be poor.

Thank you for all that you are doing. Come winter, when I shall be shovelling snow off my driveway, and, the thought comes up in mind, “I wish I had accepted that job in India…” I shall administer myself a strong, hardy slap on my cheek and perish that thought…

With much affection,

PS- I do apologize for having taken the liberty of addressing you by your first name…I should have said, “Dear and Respected Mantri-ji”…again a bloody Western habit, like women wearing jeans and going to pubs…I hope you are not calling your boss by his first name… “Manmohan, old boy” may get you into trouble again, just like that tweet did...