Samskrtam

Samskritam

The alphabet in Samskritam is well thought out. The order is vowels first, and consonants next. Vowels are stand alone in nature unlike consonants. In Tamizh, vowels are called உயிர் எழுத்து Uyir Ezhutthu – life (giving) letters. Consonants are called மெய் எழுத்து Mey ezhutthu- body letters. Let us look at the system in Samskritam.
The letters are identified with the source in utterance of the letters. The sources are:
Source Letters
कण्ठ Throat) कण्ठ्य guttural
तालु Palate तालव्य palatal
मूर्ध Head मूर्धन्य cerebral
दन्त Tooth दन्तव्य dental
ओष्ठ Lip ओष्ठव्य labial 

The letters are serialized in the above order. Look at how the source is in order from throat to lip. Both the vowels and consonants follow this order.

अ, आ, अः and कवर्ग, ह are guttural.
इ, ई and चवर्ग, श are palatal.
ऋ ruu and टवर्ग, र, ष are cerebral
लृ and तवर्ग, ल, स are dental
उ, ऊ and पवर्ग are labial
व is dental-cum-labial
ए, ऐ are from (अ, ई), (अ, ए) guttural/palatal
ओ, औ are from (अ, उ), (अ, ओ) guttural/labial
The last letters in the five groups (in kavarga etc.) have a nasal overtone also.

There is more to why it is Samskritam (well-made) than just the letters, but letters are the building blocks and the scientific approach to their grouping is amazing

German initiative on Samskrtam dictionary:

“The extent of its indebtedness to the great seven-volumed Sanskrit-German Thesaurus compiled by the two eminent German Sanskritists, Otto Bohtlingk and Rudolf Roth, with the assistance of many distinguished scholars, such as Professor A.Weber of Berlin then only completed as far as the beginning of the letter ^ v was fully acknowledged by me in the Preface.”

The underlying motive of westerners’ interest in Samskrtam:

“I am only the second occupant of the Boden Chair, and that its Founder, Colonel Boden, stated most explicitly in his will (dated August 15, 1811) that the special object of his munificent bequest was to promote the translation of the Scriptures into Sanskrit, so as ' to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conveAthe six European lines :

(A) Keltic, (B) Hellenic, (C) Italic, (D) Teutonic, (E) Slavonic, (F) Lithuanian, each branching into various sub-lines as exhibited in the present languages of Europe.

It is this Asiatic and European ramification of the Aryan languages which has led to their being called Indo-European.”

“The name Semitic or Shemitic is applied to Assyrian, Hebrew, Aramaic (or Aramaean), Arabic, and Himyaritic, because in the tenth chapter of Genesis, Shem is represented as father of the principal nations speaking these languages e.g. in Assur (Assyria), Aram (Syria), and of Arphaxad, grandfather of Eber, from whom came the Hebrews or Trans-Euphratian race, the name Hebrew coming from^-e, and really meaning 'one who lives beyond (a river)' and Joktan, the father of many of the tribes inhabiting South Arabia. It is usual, too, to reckon among Semitic races the people of Abyssinia, whose sacred and literary language is the Ethiopic or Ge'ez, while their spoken dialects are Tigri for the north and north-east, and Amharic for the centre and south, all presenting affinities with the ancient Himyaritic Arabic of South Arabia (Yaman). Hence, speaking generally, we may classify Semitic languages under the two heads of: i. 'North Semitic,' comprising Assyrian, Hebrew, and Aramaic; South Semitic," comprising Arabic, Himyaritic, and Ethiopic.”

(The quotations are from the preface to Monier-William’s Sanskrit-English Dictionary.)

September 01, 2016

Devabhasha

Silence is the only devabhasha. For, one need control mind to communicate with god. Mind is the seat and fountain of thoughts and ideas that only need a language for expression. We tend to ascribe divinity to anyone or anything that is close to perfection. Thus, we have deva purusha and deva bhasha. It should not be taken literally.

Experiences

The fruit vendor in front of the house was missing for a few days. He said that he received a call that his mother had fallen and that he was called home 40 kms away. She had been managing her affairs so far but might need help now. She was 95. That typifies an average Indian, taking care of the aged parents.

It was 1987. The BBC channel was on. A woman was bemoaning that her mother was not taken care of well in the old age home. That shocked me. Why did she not take care of her mother? That is western culture.

Crazy Mohan describes how he was part of a joint family and how he owed his success to the training in the joint family. Joint families were the norm till the twentieth century beginning perhaps. They did not produce many Crazy Mohans, but carried on producing crazy people, some may say. People got on with bickering and friction, but got on. There is no going back to joint family system now.

We are now progressing. Families have gone nuclear by and large since there is no NPT for families. Old age homes are on the rise.

A senior colleague has described his experience in selecting a match for his son in the form of a skit.

Husband, wife and son went to see a girl.

The girl asked the boy during the interaction, ‘What about these things?’

The boy was puzzled and asked, ‘Which things?’

The girl pointed to his parents.

The boy was annoyed, but replied politely, ‘They will be with me of course.’

The girl said, ‘That settles it. We will part as acquaintances. Do not bother. We will not charge you for the refreshments.’

Madras Nalla Madras

That was a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMzW_hrs2Us) in a movie.

‘Pattanam’ (city) is the word used in the ordinary man’s parlance for Madras. There is another song ‘Pattanamthan pogalamadi pombale’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP9WPo0iWYE).

Pattikada pattanama is yet another song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaT9m9SzjMI).

Pattanama Pattikada was a film.

I thought a filmy introduction would attract readers.

I moved from pattikadu (village) to pattanam (Madras) in 1957 for studies. For the next ten years I lived in Madras during school/college days and in the village during vacations for a week or longer. It is difficult for me to answer ‘pattikada pattanama’. I would like to call myself pattikadu to invite sympathy. A classmate of mine pushed me a century behind, not just ‘pattikadu’, still more backward.

I want to write my humdrum impressions on Madras. I lived there from 1957-1969, 1974-1978, 1985-1987, and in 2007 – in all 19 years of my life of 73 years. Bengaluru comes next - 18 years running, followed by Mumbai – 10 years. I choose ‘Madras’ as it was so called in the times I was there mostly.

The first impression that I recollect is rikshas – hand-pulled and cycle rikshas. I used to hire them as a boy whenever the distance was long or I had heavy baggage. The charge was decided by ‘beram’ (haggling). It did not trouble me that I was using human labour for my personal comfort. The rikshavala will keep shouting ‘oram po’ (move to the side) to make way for the risksha.

Drinking water was scarce and corporation taps were the source. Water would come in the morning and evening for one or two hours and there would be a queue of people and vessels of all types at the taps. Some altercations were routine.

Cinema as movies were called in common man’s lingo was an attraction, but it was ‘bad’ to see a movie, a belief that suited a light purse more than orthodox perception. Occasionally, my aunt would take me to some films she watched, rather rare. There were too many theatres around, Crown (next to the Mint where no minting seemed to be taking place), Krishna near a crematorium, significant perhaps, Murugan, Regal, Broadway, Prabhath, Bharath. Krishna was perhaps a tad better than the others. Lower middle class and poorer sections patronised these theatres. (An uncle of mine was critical about calling them ‘theatre’, which must be used for drama hall; it is ‘cinema’, he would say). Better placed people went to theatres in Mount Road perhaps.

One thing that comes to mind about Madras is the beach, touted as the second largest beach. It was yet to become a statue-yard or graveyard. Even the portion near the railway track was still accessible to the public and was called high court beach as it was close to the stately high court building which was partly damaged by Emden bombing. It housed then the light house which was open for public viewing. It was fun going up the spiral staircase.

Talking of theatres, an incident pops up in mind. When the slew of statues were being out up in the sixties, I shared a feeling with my professor, ‘Why have they not included U.V.Swmainatha Iyer, who took great pains to unearth Tamizh works?’ He laughed and said, ‘Do not say it aloud. You will be mocked at. There is already a statue for him in the University campus, and people used to joke about the crows perching there and excreting.’

The zoo was close to the Central station abutting the railway line. It was an apology for a zoo. At that time, the zoos in Calcutta, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram were better, I think. I have not visited the Vandalur Zoo. Poor animals!

Moor Market was in a Victorian building (since demolished with railway booking office housed there). One went there for second-hand books and curios.

The fourteen story building of LIC became the first sky scraper of Madras in the sixties, I think. It was an attraction, but I never went up.

The George Town (GT) area is a crowded place. You will bump into someone if not careful. Noise was constant inside a many-tenanted dungeons called houses and outside with variety of traffic including cattle. In fact, in the street just behind our house there was a cattle shed and we used to get milk from that owner who seemed to get water without any hassle.

Kothwal Chavadi was the whole sale vegetable market situated in the ground belonging to Kannika Parmeswari temple. Occasionally I have gone there with my uncle. The vendors used to cheat in quality and weight. Flower and fruit wholesale market was near Esplanade where the bus stand for buses plying to outstation areas was also situated. The law college and law courts were nearby and lawlessness everywhere.

I used to catch a bus in the bus stand to my village and also go and wait for the rice that would be sent by my father in a bus. I would sit on the low compound wall near the LIC building that was there and watching out for the bus. Getting out the bag from atop the bus using a coolie and taking it home employing a riksha was one of my chores.

Madras Tamizh is a speciality one should not miss. It has been the butt of comedy in many plays and films, after Brahminical expressions. Coming from North Arcot, it was not quite strange to my rustic ears. One thing Madrasis have been dismissive about is ‘hair’ and my badness is partly explained by it.

Commuting by bus used to be an ordeal. After the incentive was introduced, buses were crammed worse than pens. The conductor would ask everyone to move in, and often that would be possible only with some moving out through the front exit opening. The conductors were good whistlers, the whistle given being used occasionally. The bus would be stopped before every stage for issuing tickets. The conductor would be a good juggler with deft fingers, with ticket books and currency notes stacked in the space between fingers. The finger in the free hand will move between the tongue and the ticket every time a ticket was issued. Anyone who gave a currency note like a hundred rupee, will be labelled a candidate for death (savu girakki). The driver for his part would address any cyclist etc. crossing his path as someone who has a death wish (oottile sollikinu vanduttiyaa). The driver was nearly an acrobat. He would start and stop the vehicle in a way even a healthy person may suffer heart strain. The accelerator would be used as horn also. He would keep the clutch pressed and accelerate, and anyone would think that the bus was going to run over them.

I came to know much later that GT had the abodes of people like S S Vasan, Dhanammal, Patnam Subramania Iyer, and so on. Obviously, living in GT alone does not lead you to fortune or fame!

11/11/18

He sells vegetables. Lean and of middle height, he owns a small tempo and is seen in the morning near the park. The walkers-cum-talkers stop by and buy vegetables when they return home.

He is not too educated, but knows enough Maths to count the money, enough economics how to price his goods, enough management as to what to trade that day, where to buy and how to transport it, enough inventory management skill not to carry over the perishable, enough articulateness to have minimal conversation with his customers.

One day, a customer haggled. He told him, ‘It is one price for all.’ Another day a customer suggested that he put placards of prices on the items. He said, ‘Not done.’

He trusts people and does not mind being paid later or giving the change later. He does not ask. You return and he says, ‘OK.’ You demand the deferred balance and he gives without any demur.

He seems happy. He did not complain even when demonetization dampened business.

He earns to live and his possessions must be modest. He may not have any superannuation package, maybe not even superannuation. He may believe or may not believe in god. But, he is not in knots as to why we live and what will happen tomorrow, let alone after death. From my convoluted brain, it seems that his life is spiritual. I may be making up a story, but I like it.

May 07, 2015

Attitude

I was travelling in a crowded suburban train in Bombay (as it was then). A group of office-goers were playing cards. That is a speciality of Mumbai, people playing cards even standing. One of the players was smoking. Right behind where he was sitting, the notice was there- No Smoking. I pointed out to him the notice. He turned back, saw it and said, ‘likhnewala likta hai’, and got busy with his play.

Another day, I objected to a person smoking in the train and he took out of his pocket a rupee hundred note, waved it and said, ‘I have the money to pay the fine.’

In Bengaluru recently, a passenger was about to throw out the window a used ticket and I told him, ‘Please do not throw it; it is our city.’ He threw and said, ‘Why are the corporation people not doing their job? Let them do.’

An Indian wanted to engage a cab in UK, and there was one too many for the allowed number for a cab. He pleaded with the cab driver to take them as one was a child. The cab driver replied, ‘We make rules here to obey them.’

There was an officer posted abroad, a senior who retired as GM, who I believe used to buy clothes and return them after a week as return was possible there. He used to enjoy new clothes free until the store noticed it.

Monkey plays guest

I was doing something in the kitchen and was engrossed in my work. I turned for a second toward the microwave oven, I do not remember why (when you read on you will understand how it might have easily slipped from my mind even if I had indeed a purpose for that), and what do I see there? A monkey, of course, seated comfortably on the platform next to the microwave in the space made for it, as it were, by amma. (She had removed the mixy in order to work on the grinder). The monkey had entered the kitchen unobtrusively through the balcony window kept wide open as an informal invitation to it, shall I say?

I have been dull-witted even in reading the minds of higher mortals like humans (I am confident that the monkey won’t read this and take umbrage at the statement that humans are higher mortals). How was I to divine what went behind the mind of a monkey? For all I knew, it was from Pakistan with hidden weapons of mass destruction. I did not know how to shoo it away. I sort of had learnt the noises to make in respect of crows (coosh), dogs (vettu), etc., but not for a monkey. It is a different issue whether the animals learnt the terms we coined for them. I was all nerves and thought at first of throwing the sugar container, but better sense prevailed even in that emergency that it would only sweeten the kitchen floor. Moreover, it was no match for WMD the monkey perhaps had in its arsenal. It would be more like the soldier in ‘Arms and the Man’ of Shaw, carrying chocolates in his pocket in the place of bullets.

I decided that I should rush out of the room (having worked in a reputed institution for a long time, it has got deeply ingrained in me that fleeing the scene of conflict is the most discreet step to be taken by an astute manager) to look for a stick. My sense was with me and I remembered that patti usually kept some stick with her. My plan worked. I saw an acrylic pipe used as a stick by her. I took hold of it and returned to the scene of action.

My mind was not idle meantime. The discourse of one Sastrigal on Ramayana flashed in my mind. He was narrating how, during one such discourse, a monkey entered and occupied a vantage point. He felt unsettled as also the audience. The monkey sat through quietly for some time and then slunk away without inflicting any harm. The audience came to terms after the menace disappeared to conclude that it was Hanuman who came on the scene. The Sastrigal recited a stanza that says that wherever Ramayana is narrated, Hanuman is present. I did not want to leave anything to chance. Maybe Hanuman was pleased to pay a visit to our house also though Ramayana was not even in my mind at that time. Nevertheless I recited a sloka praising Hanuman in my mind. All this happened in a trice.

When I returned I saw amma slamming the door of the kitchen. She perhaps thought that she was confining the monkey in the kitchen as if she was Mumbai police catching Kasab. I was furious. How could she leave the kitchen at the sole disposal of the monkey? (The thought of Hanuman had flashed out as easily as it came).

We have the philanthropic practice of leaving everything in the kitchen open for flies and mosquitoes, ants and cockroaches. Now one more species has been added in the list of our donees. The monkey would have a field day, I thought in anger. Anger was my surrogate emotion for fear. In physics we have read about the transformation of one form of energy to another, which has made several inventions possible. We can in like manner transform one emotion to another, though the simile falls short of completeness as in my case it resulted in annoyance to amma, not any benefit.

I shook the handle of the kitchen door to open it. You may think uncharitably that my hand was shaking in any case. When I opened, I did not see the monkey where I last saw it. The storeroom was open too and I thought that it must have entered there. (If it were Hanuman, it ought to have gone there in right earnest as it is pooja room as well). I was afraid to enter and find out. What if it pounced on me as I peeped? I made some sort of noise and banged the pipe on the door of the storeroom. Patti had brought another longer and sturdier pipe. I now had two pipes to fight with. In the event, I peeped and surveyed the room well, but the monkey was not there.

Then I went to the balcony. Amma was shouting from behind (to my rattled mind it sounded as gibberish) whether I had removed a half-litre packet of milk. I was disturbed by her voice and told her to keep quiet and not bother about the milk packet when I was fighting a life and death battle with a monkey. Patti butted in and asked whether we had left any milk for the monkey as it was drinking the milk outside. She gave a sagacious advice from her wizened old age that we should keep the doors closed. I told her to keep her advice to herself. It was still to dawn on me that the monkey had left our premises. Amma was still harping on the milk and I told her why she did not put it straight into the fridge. I also ticked her off for watching the TV in neglect of her work and threatened to smash the TV. She started to say something, but I outshouted her and she knew better not to waste her breath. The altercation thus died young.

I realised late that the monkey was playing guest (my coinage, in case you have not already given me the credit for it) and looking for breakfast and did not come for human blood wantonly. However, I do not recommend to anyone to entertain monkeys for breakfast. After all, the recent visitors to Taj and Trident went there not for breakfast, but for human lives!

Post Office

What an amusing experience it is to go to the post office! Here is an age-old institution that sticks to its original ways no matter what has happened around. Everything is done manually. The registers look like coming off loose leaf. They are stacked around the staff. The staff have developed a way of recognising them, like a mother cow would identify its calf, though to a dumb one like me they all look alike. What a good exercise for the arms, pulling them and putting them back! What a relief to the eyes which do not have to face electron beams!

I envy the efficiency and the courtesy of the staff. They are in the seats at the appointed hours and do their work non-stop. What a sea of difference from the banks!

I went to draw the monthly interest as a ‘messenger’. People ask me what I do in retired life. Why, I act as a messenger for my wife! She was the payee in all the slips that were filled in for drawing the interest and she authorised me as her ‘messenger’ to get the cash. Let no one take the word ‘messenger’ to be slighting. Great souls are called ‘divine messengers’. You may chuckle that I am comparing wife to ‘God’. These are changed times. Previously husbands were to be considered ‘Gods’. I have no way of saying whether it was honoured or not. But, now wives are to be considered ‘God’. At least you have one example that it is taken seriously.

Even as the person before me was in the midst of transacting his business, the counter staff took my slips, added the amounts mentally and enquired whether I was to get Rs. 6500 (it was Rs. 6470). I nodded and he replied that there might not be enough cash. He suggested that I come the next day or take a chance till 3 PM when he would take the collections at other counters and pay me if possible. I decided to wait. One way of spending retired life and a way to build my patience, though belatedly!

I stepped out and had to get back as Anbumani’s persona non grata (smokers) were puffing out nicotine that I had no intention of imbibing. To while away the time, I started reciting something. After the queue in front of the counter spirited off, I sat in a chair. The Post Office did its planning meticulously to ward off unwanted occupants in the chairs. The first two chairs, which were a little away from the counter, were kept busy with a lot of files and papers. The one next was so dirty that sitting on it might infect you with any disease. The last chair which was alright by P.O. standards could be occupied only when there was no queue at the counter.

I suddenly felt an impact on my hand. I turned to see that a gentleman had sat on the adjoining chair flailing his limbs beyond its boundary. I adjusted to cause no inconvenience to the esteemed customer of the P.O. He got up and went away quickly. It was so considerate of him.

As it was close to 3 PM (I was looking at the clock every minute), I was getting anxious. Another customer came with slips like what I was holding. The staff asked him whether he was depositing money or withdrawing. He said that it was withdrawal and that the amount involved was Rs. 2500. The staff told him that there might not be cash enough and pointed out to me and said that I was waiting. The customer was an optimistic soul and requested ‘Nodi’. I got up to make sure that my slips got priority. The staff went to the other counter, brought some cash, augmented it with cash taken out from the handsafe by the postmaster and worked on my slips. Finally, I moved out of the P.O. at 3:30 PM with cash.

What an achievement and what a noble way to spend retired life!

23/1/17
I took an auto. On the way, a motorist took a right turn blindly ahead of the auto and dashed on it. He stopped, came out and looked at the damage to his car and the auto. The auto driver also inspected. No altercation! The motorist, a young man, pulled out his purse and offered some cash. The auto driver refused. He said coolly that there was already damage to the auto. The young man tried to force it, but the auto driver would have nothing of it. 
When he dropped me, I paid him 70 as the metre showed 66. He promptly shelled out the change, something the auto drivers normally do not have.
We perhaps get rains still because of such people.

3/3/18
I am trying to cross near St Joseph’s college. As the signal does not seem to be on, I walk up to the policeman. He puts his hand out and walks across escorting me. I thank him wondering whether it is a dream.
I look for Sundaram Mutual Fund in Phoenix building, but it is not there. I ask a person in the stairway, and he suggests that I try in another building a few yards away. There also there is no trace of it. I ask a gentleman. He goes out of the way to find it for me using his mobile and calling a few numbers. Then, he looks around for the watchman who just returned from lunch. He says that they had moved near Trinity Church.
A good day when I met people who try to help. Never mind that I did not go to Trinity Church.

9/12/17
I waved but many autowalas ignored or refused as the distance was short. One stopped and took us in. He did not turn on the metre. He put his hand on it, but withdrew and murmured inaudibly something. I did not press as I know the fare.
The driver saw me talking to my wife in Tamizh and started a conversation. He said that there was too much evil, injustice and strife in the world and gave a laundry list of sufferings. He asked me why it was so and answered himself that it was because we have man’s rule on earth. He assured me that soon god’s rule would come and there would be no suffering. I suggested to him that even now there is only god’s rule and suffering will be part of life and without problems life would not be there. He brushed me aside and said that it is man’s view. I looked at him and he too looked like a man only.
He kept haranguing at every signal when the auto had to wait. But, as in life, in journey too there is an end mercifully. I paid him more than the normal fare in appreciation of his taking us when others refused.
As I got down, I saw the name ‘Emmanuel’.
That is mobile evangelism.

 January 4, 2017

I attended briefly the new year party in a complex. The compere was a young girl dressed queerly. She asked a girl her name. The girl said Samskriti. She asked the girl the meaning of the word and the girl replied culture. The compere asked her to tell about Indian culture. The irony was loud.
The music was thunderous making the whole body shake as in an earthquake. It is a wonder how they call it music. Long back I attennded Rolling Stones performance. The name was apt. Rolling stones might have been sweeter perhaps.
After every performance she said it was fantastic, awesome, and such things, making me wonder whether she was a dictionary or human being knowing the meaning of what she uttered.
After the first two performances, I left to save my ears and heart. The immediate reason was that the performance of my grandchildren was over.

 January 15, 2017

My daughter was saying that a friend of hers was expecting a child. My grandson asked, ‘How is it known? (eppadi theriyum)?’ My daughter smiled and said, ‘They told us.’

 August 24, 2016

roceedings or the rigmarole of the occasion were indeed a hindrance.
After the function was over, one boy said, ‘It was such a bore. They could have given it in the next class.’
Children love play, excitement, animation, fight, chat and what not.
I made no noise and heard no meaningful syllable. After the event, I found myself alone as everyone left me dreaming, a favour conferred on old age. Luckily I knew the way back.

 February 3, 2016

I collect flowers on the way to buy milk. As I was plucking the flowers from the tree, a young boy (less than 5 perhaps) picked one from the ground and offered to me. I took it from him with a smile and said, ‘Thank you.’ The next day again, he looked at me and pointed to other flowers in another plant. He was happy to be part of the life he was observing. I wondered whether it is for good that we chain them in school and cram into their heads humpty-dumpties. The school bus arrived and he was lifted and taken into it. I saw the name of the school on the bus, ‘Freedom International’ Good joke!

 July 25, 2015

 wanted to get a grandson and his wish was answered and he was all joy. In Madurai, an old lady in mid-eighties takes care of the home when he goes there. His son lives with his mother in Chennai, he said.
Then, he said that his elder brother died in an accident at the age of 29. His father was shattered and died of grief a year later. The wife of his brother and a year old child were left to be cared for when his brother died. His mother was also there, who died at 94 years of age. He devoted himself to taking care of all of them. A family of his own would have cut into this duty, he said. He added, 'I do not call it sacrifice. It is duty.' The son, he referred to is his nephew.
He would have shared more information. But, my legs rather than my ears got tired. I invited him to come home some time and took leave.

 July 17, 2015

I went across to buy medicine and was waiting to cross over. The fruit vendor asked, 'When will madam return?' His wife added, 'It was lively with her around with a number of people turning in for yoga (bhajan actually).' Their warmth was touching. I do not even buy fruits from them and they owe nothing to me. Is not life rich with such fellow-feeling that is spontaneous?

 June 2, 2015

I returned for reuse the plastic bags in which the lady flower vendor supplies flowers. She remarked, 'Are they clean? Hope no flower petal is stuck inside, in which case I cannot use it as my customers use the flowers for puja.'

I stopped an auto and told the driver our destination. He demanded a fixed fare which I refused. I did not quite hear what he said after that. I imagined that he wanted meter plus something. My wife informed me that he was agreeing to go by the metre.
That brought to mind a story my mother told me as a boy, something she must have read in a magazine.
A deaf one (that was the normal expression sixty years ago) planned to visit a friend who was ill for some time. He visualised (his sight was in order!) how the meeting would go. “I will ask him how he is and he will say ‘better’, and I will express satisfaction, I will probe about his diet, and he will say some porridge, and I will recommend to continue it, and I will ask him who his doctor is and he will mention some renowned doctor’s name and I will endorse it.” He went and the actual interview took the following pattern:
“How are you?”
“There is some deterioration.”
“Glad to hear. What diet do you take?”
Irritated, the friend exploded, “Mannangatti (clump of mud).”
“That is the proper diet. Keep it up. Which doctor are you consulting?”
“Yamadharmaraja.”
“He is the best doctor. Follow his advice.”
That answers my curiosity about how my listeners take my responses!

The Rat!

This happened more than a decade ago in Jaipur.

We were sleeping in a house that had six openings to outside. Suddenly I felt someone caressing my feet. I asked my wife whether she touched me and she denied sleepily. I consoled myself that my imagination was running riot. I tried to sleep, but a second time I felt something disturbing my feet. I could no longer blame my hallucination. It was physical, not psychological. I switched on the light. 

All was quiet but it looked eerie. 

I remembered my granny narrating how a cat caressed and bit her leg in the village. She imagined the cat bite was hurting her all through life. 

After several anxious moments, the cause of the nocturnal overtures became known. It was a rat. As I wrote, the openings to the rat were many, but they find some subterranean route in any case. That was not relevant. I was proceeding like my service days' practice - probing accountability as the security and chances of recovery deteriorate meanwhile.

We became active in expelling the rate. We closed as many ways to remain locked down inside as possible. We succeeded in cornering it to the bathroom and as it happened, it fell in the commode and the smooth surface was slippery for its climb. Not to take a chance, I closed the lid of the commode under the supervision of my wife.

I called the watchman for removing the rat safely to a place from which it may not find its way. He said plaintively, 'Maim brahman hoom.' The right man for last rites! He arranged for the rat to be removed, dead perhaps. Not sure if it was escorted to heaven under the power of some mantra. 

Jun 6

The clouds loomed in the horizon. The heat was still insufferable. Slow drizzle fell rhythmically on the windshield. A furlong from the guesthouse. Precipitation gathered in momentum. While getting off the car, the rain drops were big and drenched you partially. The wind speed was increasing. Rain was lashing. It was lightning one moment and thunder came the next. The thunder was deafening. Why did the clouds become so suddenly boisterous? Pent-up pressures? The gale and rain snapped the electric cables because of falling trees. It was dark. It was hot and breathless inside. Two more hours before the connection would be restored, we were told. There was no way but to sweat it out. The order returns at midnight. Life goes on. It dawns. Another day. Another experience. Not quite different. Life appears to be a meaningless repetition of whimsical moments, fleeting feelings and tentative action. It might be worse otherwise!

May 4, 2016 ·

Varanasi

I first visited Varanasi in 1974 when I performed rituals in Allahabad and Varanasi. But for the religious fervour I possessed, it was a depressing visit. The city was dirty, roads narrow, crowded and it was anything but holy. The three cities I saw on the banks of Ganga, Allahabad, Varanasi and Kolkata, did not make me feel reverence for Ganga. Later I saw Patna and it further turned my mind rebellious.

While in varanasi, an anecdote was said how some ruffian threw human waste on a person carrying heavy luggage. The person walked on homeward as the ruffians were trying to divert his attention so that they could bolt away with what he was carrying. That added to my chagrin.

Later I visited in the nineties twice. It was from bad to worse. A local took me to take bath in Ganga that was at the backyard almost. Human waste was mingling at the point and I skipped the holy bath and went and bathed in what was perhaps the same water through the tap.

I nearly missed the train once as the rikshaw was not able to move. It was less than a kilometer. I got down and struggled to walk to the station which was a settlement sort of. It took quite a while to live off that memory.

I do not think there is any holiness in unruly crowd and filth. Even though god is everywhere, he does not prevent us in going after him in clean places.

 May 28, 2015

********************
When I go to buy milk in the morning, it is my custom to collect some flowers. As I was plucking flowers one day, a girl, who was returning rom walk in the park, smiled genially, plucked some flowers for me and went her way.
*********************
Living is fulfilling with such trivia.

Monkey plays guest

I was doing something in the kitchen and was engrossed in my work. I turned for a second toward the microwave oven, I do not remember why (when you read on you will understand how it might have easily slipped from my mind even if I had indeed a purpose for that), and what do I see there? A monkey, of course, seated comfortably on the platform next to the microwave in the space made for it, as it were, by amma. (She had removed the mixy in order to work on the grinder). The monkey had entered the kitchen unobtrusively through the balcony window kept wide open as an informal invitation to it, shall I say?

I have been dull-witted even in reading the minds of higher mortals like humans (I am confident that the monkey won’t read this and take umbrage at the statement that humans are higher mortals). How was I to divine what went behind the mind of a monkey? For all I knew, it was from Pakistan with hidden weapons of mass destruction. I did not know how to shoo it away. I sort of had learnt the noises to make in respect of crows (coosh), dogs (vettu), etc., but not for a monkey. It is a different issue whether the animals learnt the terms we coined for them. I was all nerves and thought at first of throwing the sugar container, but better sense prevailed even in that emergency that it would only sweeten the kitchen floor. Moreover, it was no match for WMD the monkey perhaps had in its arsenal. It would be more like the soldier in ‘Arms and the Man’ of Shaw, carrying chocolates in his pocket in the place of bullets.

I decided that I should rush out of the room (having worked in a reputed institution for a long time, it has got deeply ingrained in me that fleeing the scene of conflict is the most discreet step to be taken by an astute manager) to look for a stick. My sense was with me and I remembered that patti usually kept some stick with her. My plan worked. I saw an acrylic pipe used as a stick by her. I took hold of it and returned to the scene of action.

My mind was not idle meantime. The discourse of one Sastrigal on Ramayana flashed in my mind. He was narrating how, during one such discourse, a monkey entered and occupied a vantage point. He felt unsettled as also the audience. The monkey sat through quietly for some time and then slunk away without inflicting any harm. The audience came to terms after the menace disappeared to conclude that it was Hanuman who came on the scene. The Sastrigal recited a stanza that says that wherever Ramayana is narrated, Hanuman is present. I did not want to leave anything to chance. Maybe Hanuman was pleased to pay a visit to our house also though Ramayana was not even in my mind at that time. Nevertheless I recited a sloka praising Hanuman in my mind. All this happened in a trice.

When I returned I saw amma slamming the door of the kitchen. She perhaps thought that she was confining the monkey in the kitchen as if she was Mumbai police catching Kasab. I was furious. How could she leave the kitchen at the sole disposal of the monkey? (The thought of Hanuman had flashed out as easily as it came).

We have the philanthropic practice of leaving everything in the kitchen open for flies and mosquitoes, ants and cockroaches. Now one more species has been added in the list of our donees. The monkey would have a field day, I thought in anger. Anger was my surrogate emotion for fear. In physics we have read about the transformation of one form of energy to another, which has made several inventions possible. We can in like manner transform one emotion to another, though the simile falls short of completeness as in my case it resulted in annoyance to amma, not any benefit.

I shook the handle of the kitchen door to open it. You may think uncharitably that my hand was shaking in any case. When I opened, I did not see the monkey where I last saw it. The storeroom was open too and I thought that it must have entered there. (If it were Hanuman, it ought to have gone there in right earnest as it is pooja room as well). I was afraid to enter and find out. What if it pounced on me as I peeped? I made some sort of noise and banged the pipe on the door of the storeroom. Patti had brought another longer and sturdier pipe. I now had two pipes to fight with. In the event, I peeped and surveyed the room well, but the monkey was not there.

Then I went to the balcony. Amma was shouting from behind (to my rattled mind it sounded as gibberish) whether I had removed a half-litre packet of milk. I was disturbed by her voice and told her to keep quiet and not bother about the milk packet when I was fighting a life and death battle with a monkey. Patti butted in and asked whether we had left any milk for the monkey as it was drinking the milk outside. She gave a sagacious advice from her wizened old age that we should keep the doors closed. I told her to keep her advice to herself. It was still to dawn on me that the monkey had left our premises. Amma was still harping on the milk and I told her why she did not put it straight into the fridge. I also ticked her off for watching the TV in neglect of her work and threatened to smash the TV. She started to say something, but I outshouted her and she knew better not to waste her breath. The altercation thus died young.

I realised late that the monkey was playing guest (my coinage, in case you have not already given me the credit for it) and looking for breakfast and did not come for human blood wantonly. However, I do not recommend to anyone to entertain monkeys for breakfast. After all, the recent visitors to Taj and Trident went there not for breakfast, but for human lives!

11/11/18

He sells vegetables. Lean and of middle height, he owns a small tempo and is seen in the morning near the park. The walkers-cum-talkers stop by and buy vegetables when they return home.

He is not too educated, but knows enough Maths to count the money, enough economics how to price his goods, enough management as to what to trade that day, where to buy and how to transport it, enough inventory management skill not to carry over the perishable, enough articulateness to have minimal conversation with his customers.

One day, a customer haggled. He told him, ‘It is one price for all.’ Another day a customer suggested that he put placards of prices on the items. He said, ‘Not done.’

He trusts people and does not mind being paid later or giving the change later. He does not ask. You return and he says, ‘OK.’ You demand the deferred balance and he gives without any demur.

He seems happy. He did not complain even when demonetization dampened business.

He earns to live and his possessions must be modest. He may not have any superannuation package, maybe not even superannuation. He may believe or may not believe in god. But, he is not in knots as to why we live and what will happen tomorrow, let alone after death. From my convoluted brain, it seems that his life is spiritual. I may be making up a story, but I like it.

Misc 1

I love doing kitchen work – all work, not just cooking. As I was doing the dishes, a thought crossed my mind:

‘If we keep doing what we can, it makes us fit. Not expecting a payoff or recognition makes it spiritual.’

I shared this with my daughter and grandson (14 years old). He remarked, ‘That is what Mahatma Gandhi said.’

I did not know that Gandhi said it preempting me! 

*

ABC approach

Even in business, the law will have to be an arrow in the quiver, not the brahmastra. There would arise cases where B and C items may be a headache and need closer attention. It decides what must receive priority of attention, not how much attention a thing taken up needs. The cardinal principle is that anything taken up needs full attention.

Same will go for customer service. Any customer has to be attended to with courtesy and care. That is what builds and sustains market.

Of course, I am not discrediting the principle, but observing its relevance and limitations.

November 29, 2014

Adult

Scientists of both body and mind have cut a man into pieces. Those of body have cut him into head, heart, etc., leaving many brainless, heartless or both-less. Those of mind have cut him into Id, Ego, Super-ego (Freud) or child, parent and adult (Eric Berne). Therefore, the odds are we will not find a whole man. My quest to find an adult may be queer, but I am not unknown for mad choices. Let me soldier on.

My mind took the above opening when, suddenly, I felt curious to know who an adult would be. It has been the story of my life journey that I normally look for anything in my wild multidimensional imagination rather than in the cold three-dimensional world. What follows can therefore hurt no real soul if found flagrant.

Law lays down that a man becomes an adult once he turns eighteen. It is that flip second as the midnight hour of the seventeenth year of one’s existence sways from 11.59 to 12.00 that adulthood drops from above as an angelic gift. Law has been likened to an ass, but the transformation at that precious second may not necessarily be into an ass.

Maturity is considered a qualification for being an adult, but it is a synonym. An adult and a mature person mean one and the same thing (person?). The reason it is touted as a qualification is that many legal adults are not mature (not real adults).

I read that Narendra’s (Vivekananda’s) father advised him not to be surprised at anything while encountering the world. Isherwood says that such is the advice a Westerner also receives. That is the first telltale sign of one’s becoming an adult – not being surprised at anything. In elaboration, it may be said that an adult is reasonably aware of ordinary things of the world. Where something is not known, it is something to be picked up if necessary, not to be wondered at.

Moderation is another attribute of an adult. It is like applying brake while driving. Impetuosity and temerity are attractive in adolescents, not in adults. Moderation is not adopting a middle course, but weighing practicality, perils and impact. It is not avoidance of risk, but management of risk. It is not a mindless mean between opposing claims, but a workable solution without sacrificing the essence.

Enjoying productive work is an adult trait. Leisure or pleasure as a whole time goal is a contra indication.

An adult appreciates that his knowledge is limited and conditioned, that scope for correction is aplenty. He knows that his views spring from his beliefs and that other views may contradict his because of change in the standpoint. He is confident of his stance without the need to be rambunctious, and lives in amity with others of different takes on a given matter.

The urge to advice is in check in an adult. (My children must be chuckling if they read, but I am safe as they are not into FB). Individuals develop by experience, not by instruction. Developing juniors is very much a responsibility, but the role is played as a case-in-need and not as a director.

Economy of speech is practised by an adult. He does not feel the need to put in his view or contradict another. He speaks if it matters. (cf Rahul Dravid on Sachin’s claim about Chappel’s offer of captaincy: I have not read the book, and after reading it, I will give my comment if it is needed.) He expresses himself in his behaviour and action. His words carry the backing of his personal experience.

Well, to be an adult in character is demanding, but it is optional. I have decided to be a child and play around and be in the world of passing fun as, encouragingly, innumerable others have chosen.

 

Advice

May 18, 2016 ·

Advice falls on deaf years. Reasons may be:

The listener did not yearn for that advice. 

The adviser is not all that wise he assumes to be. Advice is given often as a conduit. Experience does not back it. The giver himself does not practise it.

No two situations are alike.

It is given ad nauseum.

Advice imparts derived knowledge, if at all, which is inferior to direct knowledge. People like to learn their own way.

Teaching is incidental.

It is scriptural and impractical.

(The first statement will apply to this piece of writing also).

 

June 20, 2014

Age

From my diary (2/10/2002)

Youth has tenderness, curiosity and capacity for experimentation, a buoyancy- all of which lend meaning for beauty. For this beauty to sustain, one has to go through life carefully- experimenting but not recklessly, acquiring wisdom from both observation and experience. As one matures, it is grace and magnanimity, a near insensitivity to hurt at others' words and actions and a sensibility not to hurt others, that bring acceptability. Aged ones with such attitude are really beautiful. The physical charm has sweetly metamorphosed in them to an inner beauty that is radiant and penetrative.

 

Age is in mind and mind is in body.

Ageing is natural and we age differently. There are fit nonagenarians and handicapped middle aged persons.

There is no one who has an ageless body.

Time passes and matters, do not be fooled by Einstein! If you do not mind time, you will miss the train, exam and important appointments. You will age whether you mind time or not.

Read everything and lead life like any buddhu does. Be yourself. Listen to both your body and mind.

 

 

 

May 17, 2016

Alms

My musings

Is it right to beg for alms and as a corollary, is it right to give alms? It is likely to get a paradoxical no and yes answers.

Avvaiyar has given such answers. She says ‘Do not give up giving’ (ஈகை விலக்கேல்), and in the next but three aphorisms, ‘Taking is indignity’ (ஏற்பது இகழ்ச்சி).

Two sides are required for a transaction and so if one is right, the other cannot be outright wrong.

Hindu Dharma required that brahmachari, vanaprastha and sanyasi beg and grhastha feed them. It upholds giving and taking in that social setting. As Hindu dharma has crumbled, never bother whether it was right or not, what is the position in the modern society?

Hinduism apart, all other religions too put charity on a high pedestal. Even those who stand away from religion will rarely frown on charity. If charity is to be practised, takers must be there. I am not suggesting that we should create a market the way we have gone about in commodities and service.

Getting personal, I may not have got to where I have been but for charity. I know of many others who had a quantum jump because of timely help. It is a matter of interpretation whether it amounts to taking alms or not.

I feel that every being deserves to live and if it deserves to live, it has to eat. Giving food to the hungry is a social dharma and the thought whether one deserves or not is antithetical to a basic need for living which is sacred.

Why does one depend on alms? Is it due to laziness, want of a gainful occupation, exploitation, social inequities, or state policy? How are we to know in an individual case? Therefore, it has been laid down that feeding the hungry is a social obligation.

Free food used to be served in many places and normally, peope do not go there as people develop a status consciousness. In several temples free food is on offer. Annadanam is undertaken by many. The midday meal scheme, which was perhaps pioneered by The Hindu Theological High School (Deena Bandhu Sangam started by Sri K.Rangaswamy Iyengar) is a right step in this direction.

I strongly feel that the culture of providing food without examining the worth of who is fed will be a binding one.

The idea of praising giving and talking low of taking is intended to discourage depending on charity while being disposed towards doing charity. That seems in order to let people work for their living. The society and the state have a job to do in creating jobs and reducing instances where charity is resorted to.

 

Charity and getting cheated

It is difficult to say when charity is deserved and who the best judge is in this regard. Any money that has gone out of us is not ours until it comes back. Losing money hurts more than in money terms. All of us lose money some time or other. Charity is parting with money for a cause that we consider worthy. We may find later that what we thought was charity was a neat swindle. It hurts again even though we did not expect the money back.

Mrs. Murthy tells of an incident in USA. A mother helps a poor lady who wants money to treat her child for some deadly disease. Her son smells a rat and dissuades her. The mother helps nevertheless. Later a newspaper report appears about the lady being a cheat, that her child never had any disease and that it was only a pretence to cheat people. The son shows it to her mother exultantly. The mother, after reading it, tells him calmly that she was happy to know that the lady's son did not really have any deadly disease. Looks incredible but edifying.

People make a living in ever so many ways, cheating is also in the list, and in great variety.

March 26, 2018 ·

All About Ass

Ass that I am, I know not to tell an ass from a donkey. Is ass wild whereas donkey is domesticated?

A fool can either be an ass or a donkey – he has free choice.

The male of either is jackass while female of the species jenny. How come there is no difference? A foal for the young one is also the same and so too asinine as adjective.

I am reminded of a love story that goes like this: A king there was and he was so fond of his wife. The queen though was fond of the launderer. The launderer in turn doted on his wife. The launderer’s wife loved the ass exceedingly. The story teller left it hanging there. The preference of the ass is a mystery.

Shakespeare the great did not treat the ass so slightingly. He converts human beings to asses in Midsummer Night’s Dream and produces an entertaining play.

To be called an ass may not be all that demeaning. Otherwise, how would I assume that title without qualms?

 

Astrology is not a science, but we do not follow science in life. If someone believes in it, what objection can others have?

As for me, astrology cannot be a guide to life.

Let me present my case in another way.

It is not necessary that something must be a science to be true and valid. I believe in Soul/Brahman and it is not born of science. One may have conviction about astrology from his own point of view. I lack it. But, the conviction has nothing to do with astrology being a science.

Escalating the discussion, probably, there is some correlation between the planetary conjunctions at the time of conception, a definitive moment that fixes the identity of an individual, not the time of delivery. Scientifically, a large part of an individual’s make-up (colour, predispositions, etc.) are determined at conception. Delivery is not as significant an event except that it takes place normally about 270 days since conception. Where C-section is done, it becomes arbitrary. A relative of mine fixed the C-section on a star of his choice. Even, going by conception, the characteristics of twins differ and their fortunes. That has not been satisfactorily accounted for. I am mentioning this to bring out the point that I have been thinking of it. I tried a bit to understand astrology from the traditional point of view amateurishly. I did not persevere.

It is simply that I do not regard astrology relevant to life – and I have, if anything, right to my life only. Others will decide for themselves.

On the basic point, that astrology is not a science. I would like to hear counter-arguments how it is a science. Anecdotes are not an argument. Comparison with meteorology is ill-conceived. Metereology has explanation for the prediction. Failure of a prediction does not make it unscientific. Such a correlation is unavailable for astrology.

 

February 08, 2017

Atithi

अतिथि (atithi)

Atithi is generally translated as guest, but my teacher said that it refers to a stranger who does not stay longer than overnight (a tithi is 24 hours, atithi means ‘not, or less than, 24 hours’). Friends and relatives staying with us for days together are not atithis.

The injunction ‘atithi devo bhava’ refers to being hospitable to the strangers. Presumably, the householders were expected to take care of travellers (pilgrims, etc.) who would stay overnight in a place during their journey. Those days, there were no guest-houses and each house was a guest-house.

The modern day banquets and such affairs are more snobbish, attempt to provide rich food to those who must be on diet, entailing enormous waste.

 

Attitude

13/1/2012

Nobody owes us anything. The converse is not true. It is not correct to assume that we do not owe anything to others. But, it is not humanly possible to pay all others what we owe them. The best we can do is not to demand anything from anybody, not to expect, not to feel the lack of such help, not to feel let down. To carry a burden that we have not paid others their dues is not good either. The mind has to be freed, not fettered.

 

Awards

Palghat Sri Ramprasad, while accepting an award, says that any award is a reminder that it is due to so many factors and persons, never to his sole ingenuity. This is the attitude that is healthy. We are corrupted by the idea of individual excellence (which is a fact within a nurturing environment and genetics) and extravagant reward. All truly great people have shown humility and acknowledged the part of luck and favorable circumstances.

Next to attitude, accepting the contribution of so many in a person’s achievement will secure social balance and cohesion.

 

July 24, 2016

Beauty: definition:

Beauty is more than passing physical attributes. True beauty is that solid agreement between what one is and what one appears as. It is that inner strength that radiates as outer charm, guileless and artless.

The beauty of definition is that it stirs your mind to search and spread out ideas like a salesman in a sari shop and you are left unsure whether you got what you were looking for.

 

A person’s behaviour in prosperity and in adversity will differ. That is normal. We should not confuse between scripture and reality. Scripture tries to bring unity and the record suggests that it is still trying.

We must base our decisions and action on reality instead of moralising.

 

August 1, 2016 ·

Brain

We have excess capacity of the liver, kidneys, etc. They keep quiet without bothering to over work, and we live well. We have excess capacity of brain. We strain it to the limit and create misery. We have problems like religious fundamentalism, a clear product of human brain. We need to understand that brain has function related to one life and it has to be used on need basis, just as involuntarily as we use kidney, liver only when there is work.

I have seen managers who create work for the subordinates because there is some excess time.

(yes, yes.. this post is also the result).

 

2018

Boredom

When I met a relative and the talk commenced, the topic was boredom.

Boredom results from inactive body and overactive mind. We have got used to live in a virtual world, led by some pied piper’s tune. We substitute for our authentic experience that of others.

Being active physically, being present fully in what we are doing whether it is bathing, eating or toilet, talking to other beings, even trees and flowers, there are many ways we can engage with life interest and no pecuniary interest.

Just as we should exercise our body to tire it, we must relax our mind to refresh it. Just as we should eat to replenish the lost cells, we should starve the mind to make it open for new ideas.

Boredom is because of the body having reserve energy and mind being crazy for more stuff to cram in. The solution is to burn the excess energy and empty the already crammed mind.

I am no better. Writing a prescription does not cure the disease.

 

Calcutta (Kolkata now)

My first two visits to Calcutta are not even in my memory. My mother took me there when she visited her brothers gone there for earning their livelihood.

I visited in 1974 along with a visit to Prayag and Kasi as a religious trip.

I went a few times between 1976 and 1986 as my in-laws were there.

I worked in UCo Bank for a year on deputation in 1992-93, a turbulent period. I tried for and got repatriated a year short of the period of deputation. It was a forgettable period overall.

I inspected the Stressed Assets Branch and Foreign Department in 2002.

I visited in transit when I went to Port Blair and Singapore.

Calcutta attracted and repelled me. The tram was an attraction. In 2002, I went on a tram ride on a Sunday aimlessly. Calcutta zoo was better than Madras, but looked anaemic in 2002. In 1992, I went on a boat ride in Hooghly. I had also visited Mayapuri where ISKCON is headquartered, and Palassy, where battles that were watershed in colonial history took place, but the place looked barren and uninteresting. The way they maintain historic places in the west is remarkable.  

One thing that struck me was the milling crowds even at dead of night. I thought that half the population was floating around. Another notable feature was that many things (save rent perhaps) were cheap. Where things are cheap, quality of life may not be great. In 24 Parganas I used to take a riksha from the station to the mill quarters where my uncle lived and the charge would be ridiculously low compared to other places. They lived hand to mouth pitiably.

The place is flush with water and fertile soil and has been supporting bare life tirelessly for years on. The idea of prosperity has been looked down upon as sinful and poverty has been glorified. In the organised sector money was welcome more and more for less and less of output. It was undemocratic to oppose this undercurrent.

I told a director in UCo Bank in the presence of the GM who was a Calcuttan too, that to revive UCo Bank, its head office must be shifted out of Bengal. Both laughed.

There were quite a few who used to do quality work in conceptual areas and when I was in C.O., it was a great exercise to get a response from the circle, but it used to be worth it.

Hope the place regains its past glory, what it was more than a century back. It produced great thinkers and reformers and we owe them a deal for preservation of our treasure of knowledge and custom.

 

Canonisation

Ordinary individuals who do extraordinarily in one field or another are elevated in public mind or ritualistically to sainthood. Some go with the honorific of Swami.

There was a demand to canonise Diana, which to my mind looked diabolical. But. I am going to write against the whole concept.

Individuals who do great deeds have developed that ability by assiduous application, diligence and long haul. It may be true that they were born with certain abilities like for instance flair for poetry, but whatever they did cannot be explained by innate genius. M K Gandhi was a phenomenon. Einstein said rightly that posterity might not believe that there lived a man like him. But, he was unknown when he started and all that he did was hard work on the back of rocky conviction. Adi Sankara mastered scriptures, logic and honed his discernment by observation and experience and wrote the watershed works. One frontline musician said that composing is possible through hard learning and practice, not by some magic. Unfortunately, it is not documented, he said. MS was not just gifted, she worked hard and intelligently to master music. It is not just her voice that made her successful. She herself felt bad when her success was attributed to her gift of voice.

Some out of humility or tradition ascribe their achievement to an inscrutable force, but that does not help build the profession or train the posterity. It is quite in the fitness of things to acknowledge good breaks and something beyond only our effort, but not if the whole thing is explained by it.

Thiruvalluvar, a handy source for quotations, is to the point:

“செயற்கரிய செய்வர் பெரியோர். Those who do the difficult tasks are great.”

That is it. They are great. The greatness is achieved, not pulled from thin air. Where it is thrust, it is sham and does not merit consideration.

To believe in humanness of human beings is what can give us inspiration and conviction. If we make them gods and worship, we will lower ourselves. We can learn if their path to greatness is carefully documented.

Circumstances and luck always play a part. That is true for all of us.

 

15/10/18

Caveat Emptor or buyer beware

We studied this in economics. It is very useful for life. We can enlarge it to Caveat User: consumers beware.

In whatever field we are dealing, the vendor or service provider is likely to take us for a ride.

A doctor will put us to all tests, try all medicines and charge all the fees.

A lawyer will goad us to litigate. In London, to start with, the solicitors advised a bank that there was a strong case for the bank. Down the line, they advised that there were chinks in the case and that a compromise was preferable. The difference was that they earned in the process.

I had given my house construction to a contractor. Later, I came to know that he used wall paint for wood also, and saved money in many ways by buying inferior stuff.

Some banks used to have hidden charges.

You can add any number of professions.

To get on reasonably well in life, we must acquire smatterings of all that concern us and be wary when we buy anything, engage any specialist or avail of any service. “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

But, there are charms in care-free life as well, taking things as they are. That is for the real life Richard Thaler creatures!

(Richard Thaler got Nobel for his theory based on the assumption that people are irrational).

 

 

Read this quote in a whatsup group:

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw.

A friend forwarded a list of new slangs. One was ‘talking to the hand’ which means talking on without caring whether the audience is listening. We have seen it pretty much.

Another friend forwarded an anecdote in which Kanchi Paramacharya asks a discourser whether the audience followed what he said. The discourser was at sea. He said, ‘How to know?’ Acharya explained:

"நாம் சொல்வதை சரியாக புரிந்து கொள்கிறார்களா, இல்லையா என்பதைக் கேட்பவர் முகபாவத்தைப் பார்த்தே புரிந்து கொள்ளலாம். அது தெரியாமல் பேசிக்கொண்டே போவதில் பயனில்லை. கேட்பவர் திறமையை எடை போட்டு அதற்கு ஏற்றாற் போல் பேச வேண்டும்!"

“We can make out whether the listener follows or not from his facial expression. There is no point continuing to talk reckoning such feedback. We must gauge the preparedness of the audience and talk accordingly.’

An astute singer also sizes up the audience and renders the pieces to reach them without letting up classicism.

 

October 03, 2014

Comparison

Thou shall not compare - Religion.

Benchmark - business wisdom

There appears to be a dichotomy between worldly pursuits and spiritual quest.

I studied this poem in school:

தம்மின் மெலியாரை நோக்கித் தமதுடைமை

அம்மா பெரிதென் றகமகிழ்க - தம்மினும்

கற்றாரை நோக்கிக் கருத்தழிக கற்றதெல்லாம்

எற்றே யிவர்க்குநா மென்று.

(. நீதிநெறி விளக்கம் - ஸரீகுமரகுருபர சுவாமிகள் அருளியது)

It says: Look at those worse off than you and be happy how your possessions are huge; as regards knowledge, look at those who are more knowledgeable and feel humble how you are so small before them.

In material possessions, contentment is advised and for knowledge desire for more is advised. Good to follow for happiness in life.

 

Contentment

June 2001

यल्लभसे निजकर्मोपात्तं वित्तं तेन विनोदय चित्तं

'Let your mind be pleased with the wealth attained through your efforts (karma).' Ill-gotten wealth also is acquired through efforts, but karma rules it out. this seeks to instil faith in action and earning.

विधिवत् प्राप्तेन संतुष्यतां

'Be happy with that which destiny ordains for you.'

The message is destructive and cannot do credit to its author and will lead to a self-anninhilating world. Ignore. The previous message is apt.

April 18, 2014

Contentment is dicey advice. It cannot be universal advice. Sankara says, 'Gratify your mind with wealth earned by your own efforts.' Avvaiyar says, 'Earn going overseas if necessary.' Both have given sumptuous didactic poetry. Both have led a spartan life, not attached to the snares of the world. When I am paid to do a job, I cannot be contented without doing it. When I marry and raise a family, I cannot be contented without providing for them. Contentment is being resigned to what comes after reasonable, purposive and diligent effort. It is not acquiescence at status quo.

 

June 06, 2014

Control

There is a grocery shop next door to our house. As I met an ex-colleague in the bank near the shop, he observed that the business of the retailer has gone up several times, judging by the time taken to unload the arrival of replenishment now as compared to a year ago. A keen observation! I mentioned it to the retailer and suggested to him to open a departmental store. He remarked, ‘Yes. I can scale up, but maintaining will be an issue.’ What he meant was control. That is the key to business. Business flounders not by size, but for lack of control.

What I read in Drucker flashed in my mind. He says that it is not the size, but span of control that determines viability. He adds that dinosaurs became extinct not owing to size, but inability of brain to co-ordinate. I also read how fast a body can move is determined by control system and not by magnitude. A plane travels very fast, but mostly safely thanks to the control system. I also remember a teacher explaining how uniform speed resembles state of rest (a bullock cart moves slowly, but you can scarcely read or write travelling in it, a bus is a little better, a train much better, and a plane almost perfect save when it hits air-pockets). The heavenly bodies hurtle at great speed, including the earth, but we hardly feel it.

In the eighties, James Raj Committee said SBI was too big and should be split up. One counter-argument that was put up was that if small were manageable, banks of the size of Dena Bank must have been more healthy, but they were not. Good sense prevailed and JR report was shelved. SBI has grown by leaps and bounds since and has survived.

(In lighter vein: As someone working in the bank, it appeared a miracle. Well-meaning efforts to derail it have come unstuck. Those who wonder why I believe in God should read this.)

 

May 17, 2016

Self control

आत्मवशं सुखं परवशं दुःखं

Being in self-control is happiness.

Being under the control of others is pain.

We should not subject ourselves to be controlled by any outside influence, gurus and religion included. They are for guidance, not to control us.

 

April 18, 2017 ·

Conventions

The ‘why’ syndrome is widespread. From an early age, we get into it. As we grow in experience and knowledge, we discover that the answers we got were fallacious at times. Perhaps, the questions were wrong, or we have no means to arrive at the answers.

But, we overdo it at times when we carry the syndrome into conventions.

It is by convention that we keep to the left, call electron negatively charged, keep the knife to the right, decide what to lead from ace and king in a suit in bridge, and so on. The very name right and left to the two halves of our body is by convention. At least, I am not aware of any reason for it.

By and large, we follow the conventions. I wonder if any child abroad asked why knife should be to the right. In fact, I would personally prefer the fork to the right as it is easy for me to eat with the right hand. Luckily, I use my hand or at times a spoon only and no problem.

A convention becomes at times deep-rooted in our psyche and dishonouring it is frowned upon. It may be as offensive to the upholders of the convention if it is violated as for the heretic to follow something because he is told to do so.

By some convention, I write contrarian views!

 

30/7/18

Decisions

A decision cannot wait for all information. If all information is available, the decision will be timed out.

A decision is not a wish. It needs commitment and efforts of the decision making authority in its implementation.

A decision should not be judged by the result. Results are a feedback to make better decisions in future.

A decision which takes away the freedom to take decisions down the line is a death warrant of the organization.

A decision is a risk. That is why a proposal to lend is recommended as a fair banking risk.

A decision which will never be implemented (most decisions on staff matters in PSBs) is a fraud and a trap for the innocent.

All people are not competent to take decisions. Choice of the right people for posts that involve decision making is a top priority of managements. It cannot be democratic or left to pressure groups.

A decision with ulterior motive for personal benefit is corruption.

However, the overriding consideration has been not to risk promotion and pension!

Decisions

Decisions are always subjective incl. judgments. When the same criteria, vetted against theory and efficacy, are applied across the board, we call them objective. But, the criteria, and how a person apples them, will still be subjective. Thus, whatever the decision, there will be complaint. See how we have differences about team selection, conferment of awards, judgments, etc.

There is often this myth that if something is expressed in numbers, it is objective. Thus we have number in confidential reports, but no one would agree that they are objective. A number by itself is neutral, but when we assign it to an individual or anything for that matter, it becomes subjective. There are as yet no established correlations between ‘accurately measured’ (a near impossibility) performance and a number.

We see this in credit appraisal too. We have advanced techniques like DCF and NPV methods which arrive at optimum decision choice very scientifically. But, the numbers we choose for the future are judgmental. No one knows the future and there is no reliable method to capture it in credible number.

It is only the quacks called astrologers who profess to predict the future by looking at the planets and stars whose movements are calculable precisely. The trouble is that the correlation between that and the fate of a person imagined to be under their distant gaze is suspect.

In other words, there are at play numerous influences and opaque parameters that clutter perception and judgment. These will stay and decisions will be subjective and there will be those who exploit them.

The best solution is what we have – checks and balances, and review.

How can we improve this?

 

We have differences because of partial perception and dogmatic conception, unverified assumptions and prejudiced presumptions, woolly thinking and vague expression.

 

Digital travel

I have downloaded a number of e-books to be read over several births. If all of them are in hard copy, it would require considerable space. This led to a fanciful thought. If all human beings can be digitally transformed, the accommodation problem would be solved. Hope someone works on this wonderful idea and helps Modi in reaching the target of accommodation for all Indians!

In 1983 or so, a teenager son of a colleague said in allusion to the mythological travel of mystics from one place to another in a jiffy, ‘If human beings can be converted to light waves like sound waves in radio transmission with ease of reconversion at destination , it should be feasible in real life.’ He must now be nearing superannuation and seems not to have pursued the idea. If only he had, banks would not have financed high fliers and ended in NPAs!

For those who wonder what happened to me, it is called ageing!

 

Dog – a few ‘stray’ thoughts

1. “The dog was the first animal domesticated .. from about 15000 years ago. Dogs were used for hunting and fighting, and as an alarm system against wild beasts and human intruders.” “A 15000-year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between human and any other animal.” Yuval Noah Harari.

2. A dog is not just a watchdog, but much more. It is an emotional companion.

3. I read long ago that a doctor in London wrote in the case sheet of her patient, ‘She cares more for her dog than for her husband.’

4. The dog barks alright, but stops also!

5. I see how the dog is useful for practising control and exercise. I see people running to keep pace with the dog, or holding the leash with all the force in the world (maybe it will beat the best engine in HP).

6. I am dead scared of dogs. Its bark even from a house duly tethered makes my blood curl. Once bitten twice shy, literally. I was bitten in teens by a dog only because I tried to retrieve a ball which naughtily took cover under the tree where the dog was tied. It is a nightmare to walk in my locality which is the capital of Bengaluru dogs.

7. Robert Browning, how cheap of him, condemns dogs and adds apes to their company (not bad, we are siblings of apes after all). “What is time? Leave it to apes and dogs.’

8. Devdutt Pattanaik reminds us of unsavoury things:

“In traditional Hindu society, dogs are considered inauspicious. ..

Dogs were associated with death, as well as with pollution.

The earliest mention of the dog is in the Rigveda. In the Rigveda, we hear of a bitch called Sarama, who belongs to Indra, and helps in seeking out the cows of Indra, stolen by the Panis. So, one can consider Sarama as a hunting dog or a watchdog of Indra. Sarama’s children came to be called the Sarameya, and all the dogs in the world are considered to have descended from her. Specifically, the Rigveda mentions Shama and Shabala, the two children of Sarama, who are four-eyed animals, constantly associated with Yamaraj.

9. Phrases with ‘dog’:

‘Dog eat dog’ for fierce competition

Dog’s life for wretched life

‘Call a dog a bad name to hang it’ for condemning someone unreasonably

‘Go to the dogs’ for deteriorating

‘A dog in the manger’ for someone who neither enjoys not lets another enjoy.

10. “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”

—Andy Rooney (contributor, 60 Minutes)

 

Friday, August 22, 2014

Duty and Right:

Indian thought concerns itself with dharma (duty). Right (adhikara) is not talked of. Even where it is talked of, it is to action (karma). A friend said that the term adhikari means one who has to give service, but in practice, we do not see it so.

Right of speech must be taken as duty to speak the truth. Right of education should be taken as duty to study. Right of property should be taken as custodial duty (see Gandhi, Tamizh proverb 'the duty of the wealthy is supporting the kin'), right of religion should be taken as duty to follow one's own faith, right of use of public property should be taken as duty to protect it and keep it sanitary. It is only such a mindset that can bring peace and prosperity and a purposeful resolution of conflicts.

 

4/9/18

Earth

I want to tell you all a secret, I guarded closely for so long (I am in competition with Gambhir). ‘We live on the earth and it supports us.’ The reason for this sudden revelation is a post by a friend about contact with earth.

I read this in a book:

“.. small children, when brought on to low, moist ground from a high level, give loose to a sudden spontaneous gladness, running, shouting, and rolling over the grass just like dogs,..”

I remember Russell writing somewhere how contact with the earth (mud) gives a pleasant sensation.

As a boy, I used to play in the mud in the village. Several sports are played even in cities on the bare ground.

I used to love the smell of freshly plucked groundnut. I did not realise then that it was the smell of moist earth, not of the groundnut. We get that smell when there is rain and the earth turns damp. The smell has a word for it: petrichor.

These are simple delights, unexciting to modern people who need the speed and fantasy of virtual worlds.

 

Eating

Eating is the most essential activity of life.

There are two problems with eating.

1. A great many do not have enough to eat. (Undernutriton).

2. Many have everything to eat and believe that they should eat everything to heart’s content and as often as they feel like. (Health hazard).

There is a saying, ‘சுசி ருசி பாத்து சாப்பிடணும்.’ (One must look at cleanliness and taste while eating.) It is significant that cleanliness is first. There is a puritanical thinking that tasty things are unhealthy. It cannot be so because nature has provided us with taste buds for choosing food.

Being careful of what and where we eat, and being mindful while eating, and knowing when to stop will make us healthy and we need not bother about the low doctor ratio in the country.

 

 

Eating

Contrary to popular misconception, I am fond of eating and do not live on hot water (literally).

A person who is too fond of eating and hogs food rapaciously is called a glutton. A joke in a Tamizh weekly of 50 years ago defines a glutton. A man was rolling in discomfort on the pyol (thinnai) in front of the house. A friend who saw it asked him what the problem was. He replied that food he ate was up to his neck. The friend suggested that he drink water. He said, ‘If there was space for it, I would have eaten a few more vadais.’

A man who believes that enjoying good food is a principal occupation of one’s life is an epicure (materialist). Many of us are epicurean. There is no denying the necessity of eating and there is no point in not making a virtue of it!

In English, different terms are used for food taken according to time like breakfast (morning first meal), lunch (early afternoon), high tea (usually late afternoon) and supper (last meal of the day). Some people confuse supper with ‘Last Supper,’ and call the meal taken before going to bed as dinner. Dinner is a formal, multi-course, special meal, irrespective of time.

People who are underfed lose immunity and are prone to consumptive diseases.

People may starve because of poverty (let alone affording two square meals), but there are some who fast for religious or health reason. In mythology, there is the hype of someone going without food for long periods, but that could not have been in fact. Buddha was forthright and said that fasting makes one sick and weak. In Chandogya Upanishad, the guru makes the student realise how after about a few days of fasting, he was not able to recollect anything that he had learnt. Such is reality.

We drink a liquid and eat a solid (munch before swallowing, preferably), but in Tamizh, people may say ‘kapi sappidareengalaa?’ (will you eat kapi, literally). A friend pointed out this when I said ‘kudikkirathu’ ‘drinking’ which he considered infra dig. That looks strange.

Some people esp. children peck at food while gobbling up fatty and sugary items.

One may as well say why talk of all this in an undernourished country going through the paroxysm of chinavirus. Maybe because of it!

 

Ecology: Man vs Nature

There is a vigorous campaign for saving the planet from ecological disaster. The chemicals we let off create a hole in the sky and leads to global warming, raising the spectre of a deluge by melting of the glaciers, so say the greens. That however sees some red. They counter that the nature is its own destroyer. The volcanic eruptions do more to unbalance the ecology than the might of man can match, so they contend.

The volcanic eruptions caused the conditions for life, I remember having read. There is as yet no similar claim for human contribution.

Human action is limited in scope up to now. We are yet to reach a stage when nature will act at the behest of man. The argument that nature is formidable resembles fatalism. At any time our business is with what is in our power.

The global warming may come sooner or later, with no help from man. But, we need a semblance of ecological balance to go through life in relative safety. We may be entitled to clean air, potable water and healthy food. Our actions of using fossil fuels, nicotine and chemicals are making our life precarious. There is sense in the call to moderate our use of pollutants.

 

In another group, the topic for discussion was on ‘decolonising Indian mind.’

My mind went at a tangent.

Mind is a colony of ideas. If you decolonise mind, it will disappear; we have no idea what it means. Seriously, Yuval Noah Harari says:

“Today all humans are European in dress, thought and taste. .. Almost everyone on the planet views politics, medicine, war and economics through European eyes. .. Even today’s burgeoning Chinese economy is built on a European model of production and finance. ..”

We may think and utter many things to be different from the European mindset, but it is the way we act and live that defines us. I suspect that Harari has got it right and that we are European in that light. A few exceptions will not disprove it.

It must be mentioned that there are earnest attempts to restore ‘Being Different’ (Rajiv Malhotra), but the response is limited.

February 15, 2015 ·

Emotion

In 1971, a friend of mine told me that he was trying to do away with emotion as it is a waste. He was turning to (or turned) an agnostic from orthodoxy. Then, it appeared to me that he was on a noble path. I remembered this when I saw a Buddhist teaching that 'Feeling as a banal ever recurring reactivity...' The life I lived since 1971 makes me feel (?) that feeling is an essential part of life and that awareness must accommodate feeling and feeling is not an impediment to knowledge so long as we have a clear mind. Buddha was compassion personified and Sankara was an advocate of bhakti. The two great authorities on awareness and knowledge have shown us the way. 

Jul 1999

Evolution is not the final word. I feel evolution is a subset of the inter-relationship we sense and experience in the world.

Food is not the origin of life. There is a food-life continuum. One life becomes the food of another. Thus life is interactive and mutually supportive. Compare with other continuums: space-time, wave-particle, etc.

 

October 13, 2016 ·

Fan following

We have a fixation about the public figures, be it sports, politics, music, film or any art. We feel that we should remember their heyday and support them even when their day is over. I feel differently. The current form and suitability must be the only criterion to go by. If they need support, we need to look at it with consideration, but to persist with them in the field that calls for competence even when it is conspicuously absent is obsession or misplaced sense of support.

 

Fantasy

Harry Potter books used to be around and I picked up one and read. It did not keep me glued to it. I fast forwarded and condemned it. But, it is a craze among people and Rowling is famous and wealthy.

Human beings have been trying to overcome physical limitations by fantasy. We have achieved so much in so little time by science and technology, but nothing has changed in the process or pace of organic life. Organic life is unhurried and methodical. There is no way we can change it. It is subject to growth, decay and death. The agricultural-pastoral life is dull and unexciting. We have progressed and become civilised, that is we have moved from rural setting to urban setting creating faster modes of moving around, gaining distant vision instantly, and fighting with miraculous weapons better than Brahmastra. 

Fantasy created supernatural powers that will short circuit natural processes, granting man life for ever against death in the only life we know of. Our imagination produced a child straight from semen without the labour of nine months odd or unisexual reproduction or made a dead person come alive, and ever so many stories. We visualised one being fight heroically and successfully against hundreds and thousands. Or, just by a sound or word of curse the enemy may be put down grievously. It is not as though they rested as stories; they became a matter of ardent faith and very big economic and cultural activity revolves round it.

In modern times, virtual world has overtaken real world. Things life video games, films like superman or spiderman and so on have conquered the minds of people. They will dominate unless we are taken back to days when food has to come from hunting or tilling the land laboriously and precariously on a day-to-day basis.

We live today not in Newton’s or Einstein’s world of fixed bodies moving in predetermined path in space-time, but in the world that our mind can reorder and live in with a crescendo of excitement and sense of heroism. We sit dumbly before intelligent monitors and travel all around, racing like mad in cars and doing so many fantastic things god forgot to add to his insipid creation. A few centuries ago, this was possible only with brewed barley or grapes.

We are on cloud nine. We have regained the paradise. Milton is awaited to write a modified epic.

 

Fear

December 10, 2017 ·

Bhayam

Often, we may not get a synonym for words across languages because of different paradigms in which societies and hence languages have evolved.

Bhayam or accham in Tamizh may not exactly be fear.

We talk of bhaya-bhakthi for god, not fear of god. Bhayam is more of respect here.

There is an expression – udambile bhayam illai (no fear in body, literally) – used when someone does something slipshod or carelessly. Bhayam is instinctive for living beings, safety being of utmost concern in survival. Lacking it is unnatural.

Fear as a motive for performance is inferior, but not entirely faulty. Many act only in fear. To remove that primer is unwise.

Penalty for offences is based on fear of penalty. It is too daft or too sinister to argue against penalties citing some empirical evidence. We can never produce credible evidence how many people stayed away from offence because of fear and how many by conviction.

There are things we have to be afraid of. Barking dogs, for instance. They may not bite, but why take a chance? There is a kural which says that not fearing what is to be feared is naivete, amidst a myriad that extol valour, courage and bravery.

I have set down my thoughts fearlessly; maybe I should have shrunk in fear!

 

‘Food’ for thought

अन्नाद्भवन्ति भूतानि Life comes out of food. That was declared long before modern science said so. ‘Anna’ stands for matter also in philosophy.

अन्नं हि ब्रह्म. Food is god. Seems extreme or like an epigram of an epicure.

I heard this episode in a talk. Kamaraj was going in a car in the south when he saw a few lads grazing cattle. He called them and asked them why they did not go to school when education was free. They did not know that he was CM and retorted whether he would feed them. That set him thinking and he introduced midday meal in school.

There was a custom once that people would look for a guest to feed before eating. Guest is not a relative or friend, but a wayfarer. Those days, there were no restaurants. Choultries were there in a few prominent places. Feeding another was in the tradition.

Recently TN and Karnataka have come up with restaurants run by the govt. providing cheap food.

It may be a good idea to see that govt., well-to-do people, temples, schools and colleges feed people and see that no one has to starve. Freebies can be stopped and subsidies can be slashed. All donation by way of money to beggars may be discouraged. If they want food they will get. If they want anything more they must work in some way. It may be a feasible idea if given serious consideration.

 

‘Foot’ for thought

A contentious passage in Purusha Sukta: पद्भ्यां शूद्रो अजायत

The foot is considered lowly in general, erroneously I would say, but considered holy if it is foot of god or saints.

It is our tradition to fall at the feet of elders. Sycophants prostrate in public at the feet of even younger party leaders to curry favour. (In some culture, it is kneeling and bowing.)

While I too have been following this tradition, it has long festered in my mind whether such a practice is not adverse to one’s dignity. Why should we think that we respect a person if we touch his feet or venerate it? Why can’t the respect be principled and suggestive? If the same god is in each of us as our tradition instils in us, is it not an indignity to the god in us?

Just a thought, not a rebellion.

 

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune:

Four hundred years ago Shakespeare gave crisp expression to the woes of the common man. The syndrome must have been persisting ever since humans formed society and laws.

“…………………….. the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,”

How do we fare now after four hundred years of exponential growth of knowledge through science, and miraculous conveniences and outreaches? Is human experience better at the individual level? I am afraid the problems have become more acute as the haves are more empowered to dominate.

 

I got driving licence in 1969 but rarely had chance to drive. When I bought a vehicle in 1993 (I have driven in between in Kolkata sporadically), a brave soul, who was sitting by my side, said, ‘Ignore the traffic from behind.’

In many ways, we can draw lessons from driving. The above advice is one such. While it is not literally correct, it is generally valid. We have to look ahead and not behind while driving. In life also, we have to focus on what is to come rather than pine about what is gone.

In relationships also, it is forward looking. I read in RD a titbit, ‘Parents love their children, and the children love their children.’ That is as it should be and we must accept it. When we shower our affection and do all we can for the development of children, we do it from heart. It gives happiness while doing it. Not that it is an investment that must fetch returns. Jaya Bacchan replied when asked about sacrificing her career for her children, ‘What sacrifice? I loved to be with my children as they were growing.’ (We have a strong family tradition where children do care for parents. That is a positive. My point is that it should not be an expectation.)

 

February 28, 2014

FORWARDS

I receive a number of forwards every day. So would all that are connected in net.

As I was turning in bed expecting the elusive sleep, my mind did a taxonomy of the forwards. Taxonomy is normally done of living things. Forwards are very much alive though fleetingly. Life as we experience is itself fleeting, isn’t it?

There are those that forward everything by click of a button as it were. It reminds me of my work experience. I saw a colleague of mine with his table free of papers always and mentioned this in lunch talk. His boss quipped, “Why will it not be? He marks everything to me either for information or instruction.” I realized how useful talking shop at lunch could be, but my boss was not as genial a soul.

Then, there are some who sit and sort them deleting the original forward reference and making it appear as emanating from them. After a few forwards, it becomes clear as the former type has preempted him and you get a feeling of déjà vu though the exact trace-back to the earlier message may not strike you.

Some add comments like ‘wonderful’ and so on raising your expectation though your sense of wonder may turn out to be at variance with theirs.

On the subject of the forwards one sees a variety. Some are versatile covering a wide gamut from sex to spirituality (not that the two are wide apart, but that they alliterate).

Some persist with double entendre.

Some forward tenaciously health advice, often extolling the miracles packed in simple things like ginger and turmeric. I would imagine initially that pharmacies would shut shop in view of such powerful remedies available dirt cheap, with what naiveté!

Some send contents, missing which would be a serious error and a huge missed opportunity.

Some send messages that have to be forwarded to 50 or so people for receiving special favours, what is worse, failure to do so would incur scourge from heaven (My heavens, if it sends scourges, why is it called heaven?)

Well, I can go on, but I need to stop to check the forwards.

 

January 25, 2015

Freedom of Speech

What does it amount to? Right to say anything?

Remember the person who was swirling his umbrella claiming his right to do what he liked with it, and his neighbour correcting him to the limitation to do so where his nose started?

Hurting others’ feelings may not be the decent extension of freedom of speech, but death penalty cannot be the just desserts for it, that too dealt by rabid and barbaric terrorists.

There need be universal acceptance of limits to freedom of speech well administered impartially. It can have nothing to do with scriptures or the greed of people like Mahesh Bhat who want to make money under such freedom in transgression of social decency.

Young minds that will shape the society of tomorrow are under the influence of media and celluloid and some restraint is necessary in the interests of society.

Let it be looked after outside religion, commerce and politics (government), through institutions like courts. Not that they are impeccable, but are inevitable.

 

October 16, 2014

Friend

There is so much expectation as to who a friend should be. He should be a friend in need, of course not his own need, but ours; he should not talk of us except to say our good points (real or imagined) when we are not there; the list goes on. A friend is someone with whom we have a free interaction, find that our time with him is well spent, and there is no mutual expectation. Let us expect nothing from a friend except his time when possible. No one else makes us what we are in totality. We owe it to ourselves as adults.

 

Gandhi

Gandhi may be a saint, but a politician-saint, said a lecturer in Loyola. He was in politics where compromises are inevitable. The greatness of Gandhi should be judged from the good work he has done, not marred by the blunders in politics. It was wrong to credit him with the achievement of independence, which came because of the sacrifice of thousands of people whose names even are not known, and by efflux of time. In hindsight, it would have come anyway. But, Gandhi’s method was unique and commends itself. In a world where violence is the reigning monarch, the message of non-violence is acutely relevant.

Many of our leaders made it a policy that protecting the Muslims at any cost was needed. That has not fostered religious amity, instead it has engulfed the people. Gandhi was seen as a ‘Hindu’ in derogatory terms by Jinnah and he has not won the affection of the community. What was needed was that we should not see any issue on religious lines, but from the criterion of what is fair in a given context, and support what is fair. Only fairness can win convincingly. The policy of blind support of one group or another is flawed ab initio and can only divide us further and further. Unfortunately, there is no one in politics today who will see issues divorced from religion. Even the western press, The Economist included, is severely blinkered, and sees all issues as ‘Hindu’ or ‘Muslim’ or ‘Christian’, and encourage news that stacks facts arbitrarily to endorse a preconceived conclusion. Sense is called for, but it is in hiding.

Just as Gandhi was not the chief architect of India’s independence, he is also not a chief contributor to any of our problems today. We should let him rest in his grave which a mad fanatic prepared.

 

All about gay!

When I was a student and learnt that 'gaiety' is the abstract noun for 'gay', I was pleased with the knowledge of a weird word formation. I never imagined for a long time that 'gay' itself would become weird in meaning. I am gay in the old sense of the word!

Is gay natural? Two men feel an attraction for each other and it is obviously natural, so runs the argument. It may be good in no mean way if gays and lesbians abound and the earth is unburdened of unwanted human beings.

But, the way of nature is that it wants to perpetuate life and the heterosexual attraction is nature’s choice. So biologically homosexuality is not the idea of nature.

Is it a sin? We should get rid of the idea of sin. We should look at what is socially desirable and what is not. There is no sin – duplicate or original. The idea of sin has caused more real suffering than sin.

Will homosexuality lead to any aberrations in evolution, or even extinction of human species? Scientists may know, but nature will decide.

I wondered why the gays must bother about marriage, but a friend put me wise saying that it matters in succession, etc.

When a gay referred to his partner as ‘my husband’, I was confused. How do they decide who is the husband? Then I thought that each is the husband of the other. Some problem like about twins! But, why should it bother me? The same way FB bothers me. As I was writing this, I heard Malladi brothers sing, ‘Makelara vicharamu?’

 

May 17, 2016

Good and bad

We know, thanks to science, that our blood vessels carry pure and impure blood. Mercifully, there is no attempt to make the body of only pure blood. We do not call the pure blood carriers (arteries except pulmonary) good and the impure blood carriers (veins except pulmonary) bad. The two are vitally necessary for life.

Is life in its totality also similar? Is our conception of good and bad an aberration? Is there perhaps a natural system that generates and treats the ‘bad’ and human intervention is only muddying the water?

 

Grievances

January 4, 2016 ·

Kurai onrum illai.

In a discourse, I heard (50years ago), "If we asked anyone, even a farmer, about their welfare, they used to reply positively. Today, even a boy has a litany of complaints. Our culture has been turned on its head."

I do not know whether 100 years ago, things were really hunky dory, but the consciousness of rights and what is due to us seems to have grown gigantically and a sense of unfulfilled wishes appears to be pervasive.

 

Groupism

August 27, 2017

Group and groupism

I felt for a long time that group culture is not bad and read recently in a scientific book how forming groups is an evolved feature.

It is in our make-up to want to ally with like-minded people and promote common interests through pooled efforts and resources. Family is the first small and often cohesive and viable group that we belong to voluntarily. A community, a geographic affinity, etc. are larger units, that have varying degrees of loyalty and stability.

There seems nothing wrong in this innate gregarious tendency, or even feeling pride as a member of a group say as a Tamizhan. The call that we should not feel such affinity and pretend that we are just Indian is unreasonable. If feeling as member of a smaller group is detrimental, it does not stand to reason that allegiance to a bigger group is beneficial. One must think like Russell and opt for world government – vasudhaiva kutumbakam. I feel that it will never happen as it is basically not possible.

What is wrong is not group affinity, but fostering a conflict mindset. Just as I may have affinity for Tamizh group, there are others with affinity for other groups. Their interests are as just.

We also belong to several groups based on the interests we wish to pursue. All that is the natural and legitimate human pursuit and giving up on any of it will weaken, not strengthen, the polity of a state.

Quote from The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson:

"The origin of the human condition is best explained by the natural selections for social interactions- the inherited propensities to communicate, recognise, evaluate, bond, cooperate, compete, and from all these the deep warm pleasure of belonging to your own special group.

The creation of the group from the personal and intimate mutual knowledge was the unique achievement of the humanity."

 

 

January 18, 2014

Haste is waste

Doing things fast may be a source of boredom. Unoccupied time is boredom. If work is done spread over time, it reduces unoccupied time. Parkinson’s Law is nothing more than statement of human tendency to avoid idle time. Except when time has to be solidified into useful work either for human welfare or economic gain, it does not pay to hurry. Efficiency also is not in speed, but in delivery of the right products/services in good time. Speed often lends itself open to waste or redoing thus curtailing efficiency/productivity.

 

May 19, 2015

Two useful adverbs: How and Now

Asking questions is a useful habit, but we must know how to deal with the answers. Some questions are academic or metaphysical, just satisfying idle curiosity with speculative answers. Many ‘why’s fall in that category. The question ‘how’ can be useful. How to live is more practical than why to live, which can have no definite answer. Life is a process and living it in a satisfying way is to the point. Even in eating, how to eat is important as most problems arise from bad eating habits. While watching an action (even a game), it is useful to know how it is done, but we are infatuated by the actor, player, miracles, etc. We know the value of knowhow, but stop short of building it in us.

Another endless debate is about time. Is time real or not? What is time? They are significant scientific (could produce some change in our life if mastered) and philosophic (its usefulness may be intellectual) enquiries, but ordinary mortals have no immediate advantage from indulgence in it. The only part of time that is real and significant is ‘now’. Being alive (as a whole being) in the ‘now’ is to the point.

 

HRD policy

31/8/2001

The dharma of an individual and of an organization may not be congruent. The HRD policy of an organization may not be congruent. The HRD policy of an organization cannot be based on the dharma of an individual. An individual has to contend with life and make its passage smooth and enjoyable. He has to take in his stride success and failure. An organization will collapse if its HR policy is based on this dharma an individual. An organization has to spot talent, promise and potential and reward performance. It has to create fits and be satisfied with what happens.

We shun decisions thinking an unpleasant consequence may arise if our decision is found to be wrong by hindsight. It is not often that such unpleasant consequence results. Even if we are put to suffering, it is an immature mind which fears suffering. We suffer more in our mind than because of the outside world. While we need not espouse suffering, we should not court the cosiness inaction or indecision may apparently afford. It is poor leadership.

 

What do we owe the ills of the present day to?

To my mind, it is technology and accelerated pace. Technology makes use of natural resources faster than they can be replaced. Technology increases manifold human capacity to manifest its raw passions to deadly consequences. Technology fouls up the environment and unbalances the ecology. Technology makes human effort look silly and stupid. Technology is the real Frankenstein’s master or Bhasmasura.

What technology does externally, the quickened pace does internally. We are thrown out of rhythm with nature. Our heart beat, duration of digestion, sleep cycle, etc. cannot cope with the habit of hurry, the impatience to speed up the clock as it were.

 

Incomes

As a pensioner I draw a sum more than what the fruit vendor out the door there or the sales girls a block away in the superstore earn by toil of many hours. A person who has invested in shares sees his wealth soar as he sits surfing the computer or one who has bought a piece of land reaps fabulous returns by appreciation of the property for no other input of his. I am too primitive and do not really understand how such capital appreciation is earning. I am left wondering what equality and justice we can find in raw nature or organized society. I do not believe in another world or another birth to feel that justice awaits us in future. I am simply thankful that I am on the pleasant side of injustice.

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling." 

It may, however, be futile to fight inequality. What matters is not whether we are equal with others, but whether we have freedom and opportunity to actualise our potential, whether we have relative ease of life and a reasonably secure living. Common man must be assured of comfort and dignity of life and a chance to rise up the social scale rather than the power to raze it all to the ground.

 

Intelligence

25/4/1978

Some people think that intelligence will solve problems. Intelligence is of no value when interpersonal effectiveness is required. Love is what cements people together. Only through love we can bring togetherness, unity of purpose and co-operation. Mere intelligence breeds arrogance and strained human relations either on the surface or deep beneath. 

Intelligence by itself is not an asset except to learn. A senior executive said, ‘Intelligent people only argue.’ There is an opinion that intelligent people are unhappy.

One must use intelligence to build knowledge, apply and make the knowledge workable. ‘When knowledge matures and lodges securely in the mind, it becomes wisdom,’ said Rajaji.

Wisdom shows in pregnant silence, apt intervention and crisp speech or direction when a situation demands.

Rural imagery

Intelligence is seed, knowledge is plant and wisdom is fruit.

Pastoral imagery

Intelligence is fodder, knowledge is masticated cud and wisdom is milk.

Industrial imagery

Intelligence is raw material, knowledge is work-in-progress and wisdom is finished product.

Biological imagery

Intelligence is sperm and ovum, knowledge is conception and wisdom is baby.

 

September 15, 2014

Episode from an interview

When I was on the panel to interview candidates for PO of associate banks, a girl came from SC/ST from a marginal farmer's family. Her English will put the city-bred to shame; she answered questions splendidly and her participation in group discussion was balanced. At the end of the interview, I told her, 'Convey our compliments to your father.' A panel member said after she left, 'You have given her a message that she will be selected.' The Chairman of the panel said, 'What is wrong?' It was a touching experience. How many of them may be languishing!

 

November 07, 2015

Jadatvam (Inertia)

Jadam is something insentient. It is gross as opposed to the sentient. A stone or lump of wood is jadam. When it is applied to human beings, it shows stubbornness, impermeability, non-receptivity to fresh evidence and revision of one’s understanding.

All of us have a trace of jadatvam, but it is not evident to us. We see clearly the jadatvam in others readily as we can see a speck of dirt in another’s face, but even a lump in our face will not be visible to us.

Jadatvam manifests in various forms.

One form is when we judge another person. A wrong done by him once is remembered by us for all time as it looms large in our mind. His subsequent deeds and conduct are held to be of no merit. We stereotype people based on such incident(s).

In a way, learning is made possible by categorization. A definition is often defective because of this jadatvam in its formulation. We assign decisive weightage to a particular behaviour and make it the fulcrum of a definition, but it fails comprehensiveness test. That is in the nature of what we study and ourselves.

There is so much jadatvam in all religions. The followers believe implicitly everything said at a distant past and are unable to distinguish between mere symbolism and the spirit because the scriptures disallow any change in what they say. Little do people think how there can be so many varying commands and assurances with finality emanating from the same source. Should it not lead one to suspect that all scriptures are as humanly received and not in the language of God? How can god give his message in a language which is not universally understood if he wanted to communicate? We say a particular language is devabhasha and perhaps it is understood by devas today. The same goes even for other languages where there are people who speak it. God speaks in the uniform language of nature and the scriptures are human interpretation of nature. How can god be partial and make himself understood to only a chosen few and at a time of his choice and expect all who have not been so favoured to be sheep? Enquiry is the only way to understand anything. Jadatvam is a serious handicap to understanding and improvement. Belief is helpful, but not enough.

 

We apply principles of justice selectively.

When we support someone, he is presumed innocent until proved guilty. When we do not, we now the truth, because media said so and hearsay reports affirm it. They are guilty before trial and even after being acquitted up to the highest court, because we know and because the system of justice is faulty and not dependable.

 

Kerala·     

My first visit to Kerala was in 1970 when I visited Thrissur and Guruvayur from Erode. Soon I was posted to Kozhikkod in July 1970 and it was monsoon season. ·     

The places I have visited in Kerala include Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Talasseri. ·     

Kerala temples are special. Any shrine looks divine in appearance and observance of temple rituals. Gents have to go to the shrines with bare chest and in dhoti. Once I went to Guruvayur temple wearing a dhoti over the pant. The colleague who was with me warned me of being caught, but I tried to carry on. But, I was caught and the friend chuckled. ·     

Kerala has a large number of people buffed to Carnatic music and there are many talented musicians also, but they are like frogs in the well unless they migrate to Chennai. Many prominent musicians hail from Palghat. Swathi Tirunal was a composer and the royal family has been preserving the tradition and fostering Carnatic music and honouring the musicians.·     

People who worked in Kerala (bank) branches had a tough time, but many would come out with accounts of their contrary experience. The beauty of life is that we accept and adapt – Darwin made a discovery of that!

Bharathiyar had a keen eye and a poetic gift and makes a laudatory comment about Kerala women.

சிந்து நதியின் மிசை நிலவினிலே,

சேரநன்னாட்டிளம் பெண்களுடனே,

சுந்தரத் தெலுங்கினில் பாட்டிசைத்து,

தோணிகளோட்டி விளையாடி வருவோம்.

(In the moonlight In Sidhu River, we will enjoy boating with the damsels of Kerala singing in sweet Telugu).

The whole poem is on national integration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-vBoYX9d6k    

Keralites are everywhere. A tea shop is typical Kerala symbol.

Once, someone remarked that if you go the moon, there too, you would see a Kerala tea shop.

Kerala is for the moment the last bastion of Marxism.

 

 

Could light be the source of the universe? Light means all electromagnetic energy.

OT says: And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

Upanishads also describe Brahman (God/soul) as self-luminous.

Religion tries to concretise abstract principles for mass consumption and such stories as are found in scripture could be allegorical.

I am not clear what science says there was before Big Bang. Maybe there was just energy, no matter.

Is it likely that the universe will disappear after eons into energy again?

 

August 18, 2015

Making a mark outside one’s habitat

We see that a number of people of Indian origin make a mark outside India or in multinationals of non-Indian origin and control. Some have won Nobel, etc. It is glibly assumed that these men could make it big in India also. The achievement of these people has come on top of the work of decades of many in a system that is relentlessly merit and result-oriented and in conditions of affluence. It is a long haul for India to provide that quality of a habitat.

The same goes for SBI men outside SBI.

 

 

Macro and micro laws

27/7/18

Macro and micro level laws may be different. To apply one to the other may be inappropriate.

Fate refers in the main to macro level or long duration things, like say evolution or planetary movements. They are not amenable to manipulation or our will, at least not yet. It is perhaps wrong to apply it to action by individuals in a limited sphere and under known environment. Things that are not knowable are like macro level things. Our action at any time concerns the known things.

 

Mistakes

14/12/1996

We pass through several stages in life.

We do not criticize mistakes in children. In fact, we enjoy their mistakes. ‘Naughty,’ a mother tells proudly of her child. But, when one grows up, we do not appreciate such mistakes.

Two aberrations take place. One is, parents tend to tolerate or encourage continuation of childhood mistakes in their children even as they grow up. Second, there are some who are less appreciative of the mistakes in others’ children.

 

Monkey tricks

The assembly session has ended.

A few monkeys have been active in my neighbourhood.

I found that water was coming from the terrace. I was puzzled whether the overhead tank was overflowing, but the motor was off. I went to the terrace and was surprised to find the tap in the terrace open and water draining off. As there are no children who would have meddled with the tap, I could not make out who would have opened it. As I came down, I saw a monkey on the parapet wall. That solved the mystery. It had happened before also. I brought some chord and tied the tap valve and found that the valve could not be turned. But, I did not allow for the monkey wrench! A day later the same thing recurred. I made it tighter, but am keeping fingers crossed.

The next day as I emerged into the bed room I saw a monkey sitting near the balcony door. It did not stir. I took a stick and waved it at the monkey. It left reluctantly. As I stepped into the balcony, I saw another monkey with the Vaseline dubba. I tried flailing my hands and making noise, but the monkey jumped into the next building with the Vaseline firmly in its grip. It sat on the sill of the next building window and stared eating the Vaseline. When it could scoop no more, it dropped it in the next compound as the software youth living in groves in BTM throw things around. That Vaseline could be food for monkey was new. I thought paraffin wax was a laxative and the famished monkey might have had further exhaustion. Poor thing!

 

September 24 ·

Morning is a precious time. Already we have ruined it by the habit of reading newspaper first thing in the morning. Looking for coffee/tea and newspaper as we wake up is part of our routine.

Some of us go for a walk. Walk is for relaxation of both the body and the mind. That is not the time for us to share what we lack (may look paradoxical). Most of us lack nothing but an appreciative mind. In the morning, we must do things that charge the mind with being and well-being. Look at nature, a bough gently swaying in the niggardly breeze, a bird chirping and cooing, a child smiling, a calf frolicking, and if we should break the silence, talk of pleasant things over which no further action lies. Keep off phone and earphones. Be with what is around.

Everything else can wait. They will certainly not go away. We owe it to others to brighten their day.

A tough call in crowded cities with only hoots and shouts all around, and people lost in the rat race.

 

Myths

We will do well not to believe the following:

(1) Samskrtam is the mother of all languages. It is used in computers or NASA.

(2) Vedas contain all knowledge. All religions started in India.

(3) Vedic mathematics is supreme.

(4) Ancient India knew the upshots of modern theoretical physics.

(5) Any religion is better than the other religions.

(6) There is a good opinion in the west about India now.

(7) Aryan invasion theory has been disproved.

(8) ‘Om’ is a primordial sound and reverberates in the cosmic space.

 

What’s in a name?

The founders of PNB spelt ‘Punjab’ rather than ‘Panjab’ presumably because ‘u’ in the word ‘pun’ corresponds to the अ sound in ‘Punjab’. But the perverse English would pronounce it as ‘पुन्जाब्’ for some reason. Even though they would have heard all Indians pronounce it the right way, it is beneath their dignity to learn from pagans. Boycott took sweet revenge on them by saying insistently रून for ‘run’.

The English distorted all our proper names just as they did to our culture. For instance, Kanchipuram became ‘Conjeevaram’. Probably they heard this apocryphal story: A devotee while approaching Varadaraja temple said aloud ‘Kanji Varadappa’. A starving beggar at the entrance asked eagerly, ‘Where?’

When the names were being restored, the pseudo-intellectuals were upset that we were defacing history. The vandalizing history of the recent past is to them more important than the longer history which created magnificent art and culture which the recent history defaced, if not destroyed. Even now many consider it inferior to say ‘Bengaluru’, ‘Mysuru’, etc.

Ennamo ponga sir vellaikkaaran namba mele vellai adicchi moonjiyile kari poosittu poyittaan.

(The white people have whitewashed us and blackened our face).

 

Names and pronunciation

In the bank, a colleague was not happy that I said Hindi. He asked me how I pronounce H-I-N-D-U. I said Hindu. His face fell. Most Tamizh people say Hindu, not Hindhu. We also say Modi, not Modhi. Possibly, we do not want it to rhyme with another word that may suit his much advertised initiative!

Should not proper names be preserved true to the original to the extent possible? That does not seem to be the case. Tamizh purists changed the proper names taken from other languages like Ilakkuvan for Lakshmana, Susaiappar for St. Joseph, etc. There is some scheme for such change with rules in phonetics.

The British carried on the tradition changing the names as suited their tongue at its first wagging.

At least with names of people now living, we must stick to the way they write and pronounce their names. Most people are sensitive to the way they are addressed. Gavaskar was annoyed that Tamizh people do not pronounce it as Gaavaskar. I saw a tweet about a news reader pronouncing ‘Chidaambaram’.

Do what you like, but keep me as Chellappa so long as it has currency.

 

Natural urges:

1.    To be the first.

2.    To have the last word.

3.    To look for spicy (prurient) gossip.

4.    ‘I knew’, ‘I told you so’.

5.    To suggest a doctor or treatment when someone mentions an illness.

6.    To laugh when someone slips.

7.    To look for company in trouble. (No, not Kingfisher!)

 

Nature is effective in creating and perpetuating life, but may not be efficient on a human reckoning. Nature has taken eons for evolving, whereas humans have created many things in much shorter time, but humans cannot compete with nature on nature's scale as nature has infinite time compared to our about 50 years of productive life.

 

Neutrality

January 20, 2017

Neutrality is a misused yardstick. If we know definitely that some X has done harm to some Y, not to speak against X for Y is not neutrality, but cravenness. It comes in different shades at different times.

We live in a relative world (this was known practically before Einstein said it with proof in science) and neutrality on the basis of absolute standards is utopian and useless. We have to take a view based on what is known and choose optimally.

 

I like nonsense.

Meaningless things keep us engaged and give us a sense of fulfilment, like sweet nothings in love, endless chat with friends with no message, and blind faith in an unknown power.

 

Nothing

From my diary (21/12/2010) We live in a world of make-believe. We have covered by many layers what is essentially nothing. Onion when peeled successively leaves nothing behind. There is nothing inside to discover. The Shunyata of Buddhism, the Chidaambara rahasyam, etc. point to this.

30/12/2002 

I stare into emptiness. There was emptiness in the beginning and there will be emptiness in the end. Emptiness is all-pervasive. The emptiness becomes creative with waves that are caused for no known reason. The disturbance of emptiness divides human minds into matter and spirit. The so-called posthumous glory in the presence of God is an expression of inveterate human vanity. To disappear into emptiness is frightening. 

 

NOW

It is a great insight that what matters is ‘now’. To be fully with ‘now’ is the best we can do.

But, look at those who deliver this message with aplomb, making a fortune in the process. They draw on the past and prepare us (at least themselves) for the future.

Practically, efflux of time is felt by us, until and unless we overcome it and become Brahman. The past is with us through evolution and memory, with impressions stored in the gene and the brain.

We seem to slide on a time scale (though officially it is the prerogative of the babus – IAS).

What a tame ending after a grand opening! But, does not such an abrupt end occur to life which began with much fanfare?

 

 

January 17, 2017 ·

Opinions

What matters – opinions or facts?

Facts are objective and opinions are subjective. Is it not what we are trained to think?

Objective is a dubious word. There is a myth that if something can be quantified, it is objective. Giving numbers instead of adjectives is considered an improvement. But, how are the numbers arrived at? Discounted cash flow is a fine technique to assess the soundness of an investment, but the technique is as good as the assumptions underlying the figures. Everything we consider objective has a strong subjective bias to it.

Now, on opinions. Which matters? Opinions or facts?

Consider the extreme case – judgment of a court. We consider it sacrosanct or are asked to. It is after all an opinion. It prevails unless it is on disputed water or cricket board.

How are confidential reports written? Purely based on opinions. How do the electorate vote? Based on opinions.

In anything that matters, it is opinion that matters.

Yes, facts may back opinions. Often facts are adjusted to fit opinions! I have seen this happen in credit decisions.

We have to spend our time while in school, college and calm moods to gather facts and fine tune opinions, but in the end we act in the nick of the moment on opinion or judgment.

 

Change of opinion

April 10, 2017 ·

What i write tomorrow may differ from what i write today. But, it will be as honest and sincere as today. A fresh fact, a fresh understanding or a fresh fancy that has seized hold of me will be the reason why i write differently.

Whatever i write is an opinion. An opinion is neither right nor wrong.

A vote is also an opinion. When so many votes are cast in favour of a candidate, so many people have a favourable opinion of him. But, that does not tell us what exactly influenced the opinion. Media and others speculate and while doing so, they are guided by their opinion. It is opinion of an opinion, a shadow of a shadow, to use a very pregnant phrase of Shakespeare.

Much of what we fight about are opinions. To believe that we are right and others wrong is a basic fixation with most of us. That is the root of intolerance. Many people who cried foul on the issue of intolerance did not consider for a moment that they were guilty of that which they complained about.

Truth in the affairs of the world is variable depending on the development of our mind in understanding. When understanding rather than reason or dogma rules our opinions, peace will be assured. It is the duty of responsible people to promote understanding, more than in shaping opinions. It will not only be an uninteresting world, but an impossible one, where everyone will have the same opinion. Religion, politics, etc. come into conflict of a disastrous kind because of an attempt to force uniformity which nature rules out.

Hopefully i will not change this opinion of mine drastically.

 

Our general suggestions based on our experience will be valid but wasted on an audience which is not the target we have in mind. But, it is joy to keep throwing them in. There are others willing to pick and keep the ball rolling.

 

From my mail to a friend:

“When I read English novels, I get a feeling that societies have been more or less alike without really any contact. We read that India also was a great civilisation once. I think that the blind admiration of western society and replicating their model of success goes against nature. There is perhaps a lesson in the body rejecting a transplant. Organic development is what can sustain.

 

May 06, 2015

Originality

Sankara gives us a well argued and compact philosophy of Advaita, communicated in beautiful language. Sankara acknowledges that he is only an exponent of what he has received from a long line of teachers. While his own stamp must be there in his exposition and it could stand on its own, he relates it to Vedas as the source (pramana). In so doing, he honours tradition and also provides testimonial authority as in matters so abstruse as the soul, evidence from perception is impossible. His submission that it was not his original (we do not have any earlier treatise on Advaita as elaborate and as cogently argued as by Sankara's) is not merely in humility. No matter how great a person, he represents a link in a chain, even if a golden link. All that he understands and narrates do not proceed straight from his brain.

Einstein acknowledges as much. His epoch making theories did not come as a bolt from the blue, but as an advance from the then current state of knowledge, but he did provide a leap.

Sanjay Subrahmanyan says about his music that whatever he presents is drawn from what he has heard. He quotes GNB who has said that what appears novel in his recital is a combination of the styles he has observed in the best singers of his time.

When a CGM was promoted and junior colleagues congratulated him, he said, ‘You have done the work and I am rewarded.’ It is not modesty pure, but has a grain of truth.

The point is that there is no real originality. Things proceed in an invisible chain and some are smart to mark a new streak unobserved by others. No achievement can be the making of a single individual. Even Ramanujan must have had the benefit of the development of mathematics at a stage from where he leapfrogged it ahead of his time. It is not to deny genius and individual contribution, but to see it as a continuing process rather than as a discrete event.

In a word, humility may never be misplaced.

 

Overtime

Sharing some experiences over time

As we were behind the syllabus in school, I asked the teacher whether he could take special classes. The teacher said, ‘We have to take permission for special class. When I approached the previous headmaster (Sri K Rangaswamy Iyengar), he asked me what happened in the regular classes.’

Usually, the speakers in public functions, discourses, etc. have no sense of time. They hurry towards the end when mercifully they keep to the time. I have not heard Sri K V Jagannathan, but I was told that he would be precise and keep to the timing. V K Krishna Menon, I believe, gave a marathon talk in UN. Hope someone listened. The Chinese used the time to prepare for an attack on India.

In work situation, some bosses used to do extra-curricular activities during the office hours like networking on the phone and personal mails, chats, etc. and would start looking at the papers when it is time to wind up.

I read that working beyond a limit reduces efficiency.

 

A leader must show patience and ability to increase the efficiency of a unit under him. It does not happen by itself or by decree. It calls for understanding the system, the role clarity, coordination, attitude, and so on. The leader has to spot the weak link and see how it can be addressed. Often a well-meaning manager or a political leader may fail because he goes about setting goals without attending to the parts of it that are malfunctioning.

If we apply this yardstick, we can understand why things do not happen as we wish. It is doubtful that anyone of us would make too great a difference if we do not address the weak links in the group, and show realism as to what to expect.

 

Have patience.

There is no wizard and no wiseacre.

There is no genius and no idiot.

Each acts to its potential, an ant to a mammoth.

Each has its place, cosy and shifting.

Each sees to the limit of its faculty.

Each is endowed in limit to a purpose.

Each is an integral part of the whole and will stick in its place for its duration.

Have patience to let others have it for us.

 

March 25 at 10:37 AM ·

Pattaam Pasali (Old Timer)

In the village and a co-tenancy rat-hole accommodation in overcrowded part of Madras, I was told to:

- to mind cleanliness (suchi) before deliciousness (ruchi)

- to clean the house and bathe before preparing food and eating

- to avoid physical contact (madi)

- to wash hands and feet when coming back from outside or toilet

- to bathe immediately on return from the barber’s shop.

- to avoid carried over food (fridge was not known then, but even with fridge, is it not better to use it sparingly?)

After graduation and getting a job, and entering affluent times, these superstations were discarded.

 

Way to peace in the world

Impossible conditions

1.    Stop all false promises. False promises emanate from politics, religion and commerce. People try to dominate and rule over others’ minds and promise things that are chimera. Such promises raise expectations and heightened consciousness which is impossible to control.

2.    Stop all conversions. Religion is the major source of conflicts. It is a ridiculous claim that any religion can get us a utopia. There is absolutely no evidence or indication of a better place to occupy by some incantation or prayer. Since science has debunked the myths of religions, some religions shut out science even today. Such obscurantism must stop.

3.    Destroy all weapons.

4.    Make use of bio-power as far as possible.

5.    Avoid synthetics.

Just as this is a mad list, the hope of a world without conflicts and with abiding peace is also a mad one. So long as religion, politics and commerce rule, there will be strife, tension and disquiet. All we can do is desist from creating breach of peace as individuals. We should also work for peace no matter that the odds are against.

உலகிலே சாந்தி நிலவ வேண்டும் (peace must prevail in the world)

 

Perseverance

1.4.2002

An actor on stage plays out a part a thousand times. He has to do nearly the same thing over and over again. It is in doing such repetition ceaselessly that he pleases the audience and fulfils his role.

A devout man similarly does puja everyday, the same rote but with undiminished, nay, ever increasing fervour.

A man seeking success in life has to adopt a similar attitude. Fools give up half way in despair.

Success in life depends on engaging the faculties fully, detaching the mind to the extent possible. Such success is graceful and brings bliss.

Spiritual attainment is the reverse. It calls for engagement of the mind fully keeping to the minimum the use of physical faculties.

In godhood there is either total cessation of the two or total engagement in full awareness and control.

 

Pound

May 12, 2017 ·

I saw the news that a buffalo was arrested in UP. That does not come to me as unusual. Before I say why, my flippant side wants to comment that many who are arrested are far inferior to buffaloes.

In my village, there used to be a pound (system from British times if not earlier) used to keep cattle that trespass into others’ lands grazing the crop, etc. (The expression ‘impound’ might have originated from this use of ‘pound’). It was generally not used because of the hassles. The person who brings the animal to the pound must provide fodder during the period of confinement. (Lalu was not there those days!). The owner will pay the fine to the govt. for keeping the animal and the cost of the fodder.

 

February 11, 2015 ·

POVERTY

A myth is around that poverty is virtuous. Many rich people may live by and in sin, but that does not make poverty virtuous. Religions try to attract people by this myth that God is for the poor and waiting to reward them in the next world in return for their faith and suffering in this world. No one believes seriously in this call.

Poverty is the bait not only of religion but of communism as well. That is not surprising as communism is a quasi-religion. Poverty can only breed crime and violence. The widespread naxalism in India is perhaps encouraged by poverty.

Simple living and contentedness with the just fruits of one’s labour are virtues. That does not imply poverty or that one should espouse poverty. It only implies that one should make just endeavours and that a system must be in place to check unjust endeavours. It implies that one should secure the means to fulfill his wants and insulate his mind against greed and multiplication of wants. It does not make accumulation of wealth by itself a sin, but hoarding unproductive wealth is a social crime.

Wealth is like reservoir of water. Water reservoirs help in irrigation, ecology, supply of water for consumption, etc. If all water drains into the sea, perhaps life will be threatened. In much the same way, if everyone is equally poor, there will be no capital formation and no economic activity.

The socialists believed that if wealth is in the hands of the state, it will serve egalitarianism. Though it was flawed at root, it has been followed in many places and has been proved to be a mirage. The state is not an efficient user of wealth. It breeds only other ills and evils.

In India, we have reason to despise the rich as many have accumulated wealth by dubious means, live in vulgar ostentation, and do not contribute to general welfare as in many capitalist countries. The state has failed in governance. Still, it is far wrong to infer that wealth is evil by itself.

A harmonious society is possible only by making all live in satisfaction of their basic wants by earning for it. It is necessary as a first step to lay aside glorification of poverty and make earning possible.

Saturday, December 02, 2017

Praise

To be able to praise is a gift – that we have the heart to praise and that there is someone or something to praise.

I had once done a project and got the report bound classily. The DMD who saw it praised it – not the content but the sleek binding.

I once drafted a letter to RBI (opposing drawee bill system). The C.O. who took it to the chairman gave it back to me signed and said that the chairman praised it. Only to add with a mischievous smile, “After signing, he asked me what was written in it.”

Never mind that some praise is tongue-in-cheek. We must not miss the euphoric moments. Everything fades sooner than later. We must not waste life not enjoying when it lasts. Sometimes it may produce long term results!

 

Privacy:

Privacy is needed for decency- a civilisational constraint, and when we want to hide something, usually a wrong- a mental fixation, or a social imposition. Of course, in money matters we need to protect PW, etc.

Often we wish for contradictory things. We want to be noticed, but complain if we are noticed in a way we don't like. How is it ever possible to dictate how others would view?

I see this in me-too also. It is a matter of choice how I dress, but others must see me only if I wish and allow. This is a manufacturing defect and the manufacturer is absconding. I do not think law and technology are going to fix it.

Same with city and publicity. We have no control once we get in. We cannot have a smart city at least in a populated country, and we cannot have publicity of the right type and magnitude.

 

October 28, 2004

Problem

A lot of people are busy offering us solutions to our problems. It is worth examining whether we have a problem and if it requires outside help. A number of problems are situational or caused by our mind set. They either pass on their own or abate when we relax. Think well before engaging with a healer.

 

June 05, 2015

Problems and solutions

I read in a management book, never take your problem to your senior unless you have yourself thought of a solution. The idea is that the best answer is what you can find. Over time, you improve. If you take the answer of another, you look for answers all the time from others. You end up with questions, as if you are a quiz master. An A.O. told me that his officer put up everything to him for information or instructions.

If you ask a question sensibly, you must know the possible answers and you are just looking for others’ experience. That is rare.

 

Punctuality

September 11 ·

I heard this mentioned 50 years ago pointing out how the student gave no valid explanation, but still the teacher appeared satisfied:

Teacher: en late? (Why late?)

Student: late aayidutthu, sir. (I happened to be late).

Teacher: sari, poyi utkaaru. (OK, go and sit).

Some 30 years ago in Central Office:

A CGM was absent when his turn came for review of circle performance. He came late and waited in the lounge awaiting his rescheduled turn. He remarked, “I slept off, but will of course blame it on the traffic.”

The boy comes off in good light. He did not invent a lie or a scapegoat.

 

Quarantine

In the village when a family had incidence of small pox/measles, they would put up a twig of neem tree in front of the house, and spread neem leaves on the bed of the patient, who would not circulate. The family would not visit others and others, noticing the neem twig, would not visit the family.

In India gods multiplied and keep multiplying, it seems anything invisible and powerful (someone said that power means capacity to do harm), was deified. So was this virus and the deity was called Mari Amman and a temple erected for the deity. Annually in summer there would be a festival. Karakam (a pot with ornamental floral covering) would be got up. Anyone present when this ritual commences should not leave the village until the Karakam is ritually dismantled, a sort of quarantine.

There has been a belief (only among Brahmins?) that women in period were contaminated and they were too quarantined, but it is gone bur for some stray instances.

 

May 03, 2015

Are we asking the right question?

If certain questions eluded sensible answers to the best of minds over the ages, it is possibly that we have been asking the wrong questions. Many questions presume a simple back sequence. For example, chicken and egg question. Possibly, it evolved in a different way, rather than as egg or chicken first. Similarly, how the world came about may be wrong. It may not be that there was a time when there was nothing. The same thing exists for ever and appears to be changing including evolution and involution. The advantage of directing the gaze to another paradigm is to see if the available clues fit in better. Maybe a still different imagination may be required.

 

Questioning

We must stop asking questions at some stage. At what stage? Reason would tell us that we must stop until we are satisfied. Satisfaction is not dependent on the question or answer, but us. We do not easily realise this. We think that there is an objective answer and everyone is going to reach it with effort. That works with mathematics and logic, but not in anything connected with life. We are at various stages and all are not going to reach the same stage. While our progress to relativity is commendable, it is not life-defining. I have no belief that we will one day solve everything and after that we can relax. Maybe that will be the doomsday!

The stage at which we stop depends on our ability to understand, not reason.

It foxed me in ‘limit’, precursor to calculus, why we do not apply ‘x = 0’ to start with and only at a later stage. So, too with god. At some stage we give up as inexplicable. Why not at the start? Why assume god who seems scared of us and is hiding?

The same problem with me. Why do I insanely work on such irrelevant issues?

 

Rains

11/6/1982

Mr. M and I were playing shuttle cock or rather were trying to as I connected not even my services. Thick drizzles drove us inside the house. Mr. M was agog with praise that the monsoon pundits are right after all; they predicted 10th as the most probable date for monsoon to arrive. I told him it was perhaps a statistical guesswork. Even with the worst-placed no-luck persons, once in a way it happens. I was neither serious nor light.

Later in the day, Mr. C was emphatic that the light shower of the morning was at best a remote precursor to the monsoon, not the initial phase of the monsoon proper as the ignorant assumed. I remained tight-lipped, believe me for once, for I knew not to distinguish between a monsoon rain and the other type.

On 11/6 also there were downpours, more frequent than 10/6. I wondered: What is monsoon rain? What is a weak current and what is a monsoon rain?

 

December 02, 2013

Talk with Mr. Ramaswamy

Mr.Ramaswamy* did much talking. He was involved in one institute called Institute of Hindu Studies. I took a brochure from him with the commitment to work for it. He claimed that Indian sages had discovered several phenomena attributed to western scientists long back by the process of meditation. 82 such phenomena are listed in the brochure. I wondered whether we had developed science but not technology and also whether we should start from the present level of knowledge or from where the sages have left. He remarked that we need to acknowledge the contribution by India, which is not publicised enough. I opined that in India we have two issues, one is number and the other culture. R gave a contrarian view regarding population. Suppose our population today is 100 million and not 1000 million, it would have been, say, 20 million in 1800 and the Europeans would have run over India like they have done in other places and we may be living as tribals. The Europeans have colonised Americas, Australia and part of Africa, destroying the aboriginal culture and reducing the natives to second class citizens. If they had stayed put in Europe, their number would have been oppressive. He said, prompted by a sardarji close at hand, that the Punjabis were the gatekeepers for our culture. We would have lost everything but for their brave resistance. They have seen 69 invasions. No temple of the stature of the South Indian ones could be maintained there because of the invasions. He acknowledged that unlike the other invaders the British did not destroy our culture. But for the British, we would have become a Muslim nation. He presided over a seminar on conversion. The dalits said that they would convert if a mass conversion could be organised. The Muslims said that it would have been easy if partition had not taken place because the number of Muslims would have been large enough to steamroller conversions. Partition is a blessing in disguise. He advised that we should have a few aims in life, as many and as diverse as possible and that all our actions (whatever we do) should be focused on those aims. That will give a sense of purpose. Mr. Ramaswamy (no more) was founder of IIM, Bengaluru and a recipient of several awards.

 

Rambling

10/4/18

It is rare to find people stick to a point. We have an urge to tell what we know.

In an exam on Maths, a student was writing some essay on Hamlet. The invigilator asked him about it and he replied seriously that he was preparing for the English exam. What he wrote was right in itself, but not in answer to the question. It is not enough that what we write is right, but it must be relevant.

We have had long training on such discursive talk in meetings and committees and it stands us in good stead in social media.

 

Reading

22/3/81

In interpreting a text, some go astray by clinging to the first impression, without reading the whole and understanding it in context. Imagine a judge pronouncing judgement on each piece of evidence, trivial or otherwise. We often fall into this error in our comments. We fly off the handle just by reading the caption or an opening sentence. It is excusable when in jest, but when serious conclusions are reached on that basis, it is immature.

December 05, 2014

Stray thoughts: Reading

I went to a concert and saw that a function was just commenced with invocation, for conferring a title on the singers.. I had taken kindle and started reading  A Tale of Two Cities. Speeches followed in Kannada. I wondered whether I would have looked up at the speaker if it was in Tamizh (listening is involuntary). I thought the better of it and thanked that it was in Kannada because it did not quite interfere with my reading and I got the gist of what was being said (often you may get it even without being there as it is stereotyped). It is part of the package as without it music may not be on offer.

In the book, an expression, ‘he worried his breakfast rather than ate it,’ attracted me and reminded me the way it was with me from school days to retirement, and now as it has become a habit.

I wondered whether the present generation of net and jet age would ever be interested in reading such books that proceed at a leisurely pace with long-winding prose.

 

If reason and belief are pitted against each other, reason must be examined critically as it is not possible to examine belief. If reason is unyielding, belief must be junked.

 

Reforms

21/1/18

I would think that the rains would clean Mumbai. I realized that it only redistributed the filth.

Avvaiyar has observed how the mounds and pits in a river change after a flood and said that wealth also behaved likewise (ஆறிடும் மேடும் மடுவும் போலாம் செல்வம்).

Social reformation also only seems to change the beneficiaries, not reform but switch.

It is interesting that there was a FB post about Americans who were attracted to socialism increasingly.

Society is in a constant flux.

 

Respect

August 30, 2017 ·

Mariyathai (Respect)

Tamizh (like other native languages) introduces (a problematic?) distinction between singular and plural in addressing another person (second person), unlike the simple and convenient common 'you' in English.

We address elders in plural and youngsters or peers in singular. What about parents and grandparents? I used to address my parents and grandmas in singular. That was considered by some uncivilised. In some families, mother was addressed in singular while father was addressed in plural. While these are only conventions, some attribute values to these and social stigmas are assigned.

Among colleagues, use of singular signifies informality if not intimacy. ‘Da’ in Tamih signifies superintimacy among peers!

Normally, we address younger ones, esp. children, in singular. It was a little amusing to watch in TV shows a grown-up person addressing a kid in plural.

Many Tamizh husbands add a loving (or commanding?) ‘di’ while addressing their wives. Generally, I have not found wives returning that warmth! I found that in the north husbands add ‘ji’ to their wives also. That seems to be good diplomacy worth emulating!

 

Rules, Ethics, and Epics

Is there a distinction between rule and ethics? If a rule allows a thing, is there any other consideration that is imperative?

There is public opinion. Public opinion follows unwritten rules. It may be divided.

In Ramayana, Ravana stands forlorn in battle with Rama. Rama could have killed him and there would be no stigma, but Rama let Ravana off. He would rather that Ravana was reformed than killed. In today’s world, that may misfire.

In contrast, Karna was stuck with his chariot wheel not moving and Krishna tells Arjuna not to spare him as it would be difficult to find another chance to kill Karna, and Karna was appealing for consideration which he overlooked in several instances.

 

July 09, 2014

Sex, morals and vegetarianism

Y.Soni: Mahatma Gandhi practised brahmcharya after a certain age. The premise, though just a conjecture, was that not letting go may be helping in longevity and general well being.

 

Kv Chellappa Rajaji also practised Brahmacharya as he was widowed early in life. These may be exceptions. A normal life is one where one uses his faculties and energy without excess and in harmony with nature.

Two things: First, sex is good with morality. Morality is not just normative, it is based on physical and psychological health. Second, anything is good to the extent you can afford and enjoy it. Even exercise that strains may be harmful. The message in anything that comes to us has to be taken as is appropriate to us. Luckily, we pass on all messages and pass it over.

Meat eating seems to have been common in Vedic times. Agastya was served goat's meat in a sraddha. The goat was a rakshasa metamorphosed. Agastya does not allow him to get out of his stomach, as was the rakshasa's wont. There are many instances. Rama ate meat. Lakshmana would hunt and bring the game which was cooked and eaten. A Pouranika said that meat-eating was prohibited for Brahmins in Kali Yuga only. That still meant meat-eating was not prohibited for others. Historians tell us that vegetarianism is a change introduced by Buddhists and Jains. Asceticism and taboo on sex also have come from these religions, it would appear. Hinduism kept changing assimilating many things. I heard that we have taken many things from the invaders also. Is meat-eating a sin? Since it involves killing, it is a sin. We commit many sins like that for our living. We can reason that our suffering is because of such sins.

Verily, we are characterised by our choices. In fact, we should appreciate people by their choices and not results. Results depend on many factors, most of which are even beyond our grasp. To digress, I would look at Modi for what he chooses to do; he may fail, but not fall in my esteem. Despite the imponderables, our choices (choice has no meaning if efforts are not directed in its train, just as a paper decision is a statement of wish - that is Drucker) have consequences. That is Karma. Well, it is a vast subject. Vegetarianism is good or bad on factors other than the percentage that adopt it. The correct position may be amoral, it is not to be subjected to moral judgement at all.

 

Sincerity

We must infuse life into what we say and do. We do not know who put life into us but we must do it when we create anything in word or deed. Those that do, add meaning to life. We like them and feel happy to be around them. It is more difficult to put life into words and so we must be sparing in their use. (FB is exempted).

 

Spend or bequeathe?

‘Spend it. Don’t leave it.’

This is another advice that one gets periodically.

To have sufficient money itself gives comfort for the bad day when we may have to enrich doctors and hospitals, or even basic necessities in a majority of cases. If we know how long we would live and what contingencies may arise, we may spend more liberally. What happens to the money we leave behind is of no value to a dead man. If we so wish we can leave a will allocating it for noble causes.

My maxim is that I should spend as much as I feel like regardless of how much I have, but within what I have.

 

September 17, 2018 ·

Spiritual Trip!

I travelled to the bank from home.

I saw a poster: “Muharram is not a festival. It is a month of mourning.”

I met a colleague in the bank. He said, “I retired in May. I am now learning Vedas, spending time on pranayama, yoga and puja. That keeps me busy.”

On the way back, I saw an auto display, “Jesus is coming.”

 

Status Symbols

July 24, 2016 ·

In India, status symbols are:

Not wishing back;

Turning up late;

Breaking the queue, law, etc.

Letting juniors pick up the bills.

 

Tamizh is Tamizh; Hindi is Hindi.

The two do not see eye to eye.

1.

First, unlike many other Indian languages Tamizh and Hindi do not have a one-to-one correspondence of alphabet.

While in college, a friend who used to tease me about Samskrtam, which was my second language, said, ‘Normally, refinement comes later. Tamizh has no aspirated consonants while Samskrtam has, which is a refinement. That lends credence to the belief that Samskrtam must have been of later origin.’ I did not know how to counter this, though that is not a clinching argument as to the question which came in vogue first. The fact remains that it is difficult to transliterate Samskrtam words in Tamizh.

Tamizh has the peculiar letter ‘zha’ which is there only in Malayalam, undeniably a derivative from Tamizh. People outside these two states often slur over the letter to ‘la’, and the English transliteration has sanctified this usage, so to say. Being an irritable man (thanks to IBS!), I am annoyed when people mispronounce the letter. Even some Tamizhars slur.

This presents difficulty in learning Hindi for Tamizhars and vice versa.

2.

Tamizh is to a large extent independent of Samskrtam (S) in vocabulary, unlike Hindi and many other Indian languages that owe a heavy debt to it.

To illustrate: ‘Saappidu’ is to eat (T). In Hindi we have ‘khavo’ which is from ‘Khadati’ (S). ‘Kudi’ is ‘to drink’ (T) unlike piyo from pibati (S). There are innumerable words that do not have any resemblance to Samskrtam. Thus learning Hindi for a Tamizhar is more difficult than for people of other Indian languages as mother tongue.

It must be admitted that strenuous efforts have been made by Tamizhars from the period of Azhwars and Naynamars to exclude Samskrtam words or to morph them in line with Tamzih phonetics, and later during the Dravidian churning.

In school, my Tamizh teacher got a marriage invitation which had the heading ‘Vivaaha Subha murtha aahvaana pathrikaa’. He exclaimed, ‘Not a single Tamizh word is there.’ People from other languages may not feel that as striking. I asked him how it should read. He said, ‘Thirumana azhaippidazh’ or ‘manral azhaippidah.’ I resolved that I would do so for my marriage, but it met with the usual fate of resolutions.

The fact remains that Tamizh has a distict identity that makes it distant from Hindi.

3.

Tamizhars have a pride, not wholly justified or utterly vain, about the antiquity of the language that flows down to this day unlike any other classical language (barring perhaps Arabic). Its literature ranks in style and content and antiquity with Samskrtam.

They are not willing to sacrifice the pride of place of Tamizh by letting Hindi become the language replacing Tamizh. My son and daughter-in-law speak in Hindi between themselves. It may look far-fetched now, but gradually, it will become the rule. It cannot happen with English.

4.

We hear a few voices from TN here supporting Hindi. They are voices of a few that hail from urban milieu and have had some acquaintance with Samskrtam culturally or traditionally. Their voice is not a sample of Tamizhar sentiment in general. The general sentiment is heavily stacked against Hindi being imposed. It is not wise to ride roughshod over it.

Teacher

The most useful and sacred profession after, say, cooking.

Acharya Kripalani said in the sixties in an article, ‘We had teachers who knew and who were kind. That is missing now.’

But, my post here is about the word in Samskrtam, the language I love after Tamizh and before English.

There are many words, but what is the difference? I give my half-baked idea. The idea is that others can bake it fully!

Amarakosam:

उपाध्यायोsध्यापकोsथ स्यान्निषेकादिकृद्गुरुः I

मन्रव्याख्याकृदाचार्य आदेष्टा त्वध्वरे व्रती I

Upadhayaya:

Etymologically, it means one who studies together. That is pregnant. Teaching is often the best way to learn.

In Tamizh, it has become vadyar. And in the chaste Madras Tamizh (I am sparing Chennai hoping it is different), it may mean many things. It may be a celebrity, an intimate friend, or a persona non grata. You may sing merrily ‘va vadyare oottande ni varangatti nan udamatten.’ To be sure, it is a decent word to refer to a teacher. (In a talk, a male speaker said that when he mentioned that he was a teacher the listener laughed it off as a joke because in the exalted notion of many, teacher can only be a lady teacher.)

A friend advised me that it is used for a paid teacher.

Adhyapaka

Adhyayanam is study and adhyapanam is making another study. This is the term used to describe the dharma of a Brahmana. An adhyapaka assists in upanayanam, initiation of a dvija to brahmacharya.

Acharya

Though used for adhyapaka also, it has a special import in usage. An Acharya is an initiator or upholder of a tradition. One with the right conduct only can be an Acharya going by the meaning of Achara. Thus we have Acharyas of different schools of philosophy.

Guru

Guru is used in the generic sense, but in usage it may imply one-to-one relationship with the disciple and also spiritual connotation. In music they talk of Guru. Brahmavidya is imparted by a Guru. Guru’s teaching may not be verbal or formal, but subtle and exemplary for transfer of gnana.

Tamizh has colloquial uses for Guru like for vadyar.

Siskhaka

It is an ambiguous word meaning both learner and teacher as I look up the dictionary. Perhaps, it may be used for coaching or training.

(I am only a siskhaka, not a sikshaka!)

The officiators at sacrifices have special names.

Rig Veda: Hotru

Yajur Veda: Adhvaryu

Sama Veda: Udgatru

Atharva Veda: Brahman

 

THREE

The number 3 seems to have been special.

In Samskrtam, the declension and conjugation are in one, two, many (three or more). This appears to be unique to Samskriam. I wonder why the grammarians, who must have been very familiar with numbers, thought two as special. Of course, it would have been impossible to have a case for each number. We have first person, second person and third person. In English, we have three degrees of comparison.

In classifying according to quality, we have उत्तम, मध्यम and अधम (top, middle and bottom).

Men are grouped as देव, मनुष्य or राक्षस. Qualities are सत्व, रजस and तमस.

(It is not as though the above two are watertight compartments. All have a mixture of all the three, with the dominant one being used as the criterion).

We think of creation, maintenance and collapse. In Christianity also they talk of a holy trinity.

In philosophy, we have the classic categories of self, world and god.

Subatomic world appeared elegant with three particles, but later scientists complicated the issue.

In the current craze (cricket), the stumps are three.

In music, we talk of mandara sthayi, madhayama sthayi and tara sthayi.

The primary colours are three.

Time is thought of as past, present and future.

One can go on. We will end on a high and then a sobering note.

Happiness and happy hour go with three cheers.

Spirituality goes with three invocations for peace:

ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः

 

Time

4/10/18

I read ‘killing time’, a popular expression for finding time hanging heavy.

In our mythology, it is time (kalan in Tamizh) that kills all. Kalo hi jagadbhakshakah. Bharathiyar sang heroically of killing Kalan, but was taken away prematurely, but he is immortal by his trend-setting poetry. Einstein killed time in a sense, by removing the separate existence of time from space. The tussle is on, we have to see whether man will overpower time. As they say, time alone can tell.

 

Tradition

March 27, 2016

Change is the order of life, while tradition is clinging to the past. Tradition is not the opposite of change, but it opposes sacrifice of aesthetics, and whimsical changes. Tradition is perpetuation of a culmination. While welcoming the new, we retain a past attainment. It may die if enough people do not support it.

 

Truth and candour

Truth has to be seen in the context in which it arises. If it has no significance for the decision or conclusion, there is no point in dwelling on it. I have often seen people being vexatious about minor things. The cardinal principle of materiality in accountancy applies in all business situations. To harp on such a point is being importunate, not being candid.

Now, let us take advances to weaker sections which comes down to us as instruction. I for one consider it as well conceived. If I feel that it is wrong, there is no point in raising my objection. But, if someone nominates people and dictates to me to lend to them, I must object if I am not satisfied about the creditworthiness of the persons.

Where we want to be candid, we must be somewhat submissive. Even juniors do not like if the message is received in an imperious tone. Seniors resenting anything that is challenging is not strange.

If we are mindful of materiality and politeness, candour is a virtue and will be respected more often than not.

 

May 04, 2015

Usury

Reading Nicholas Nickleby, I came upon the usurer, Ralph Nickleby. Dickens describes the practice of usury in his characteristic long-winding way humorously. That set my mind on what happened in my village. There was a landowner, Munuswamy Iyer, who had just a daughter. He used to lend to the distressed at exorbitant rates against land and over a period, not long, the land would be his as the borrower would have no means to meet the dues that multiplied fast. Some of the ancestral lands my father inherited became his property in this manner. I am not complaining, but recollecting. It also reminds me of what someone said about the aborigines whom the missionaries converted: when the missionaries came, they had the bible and we had the land; now, we have the bible and they have the land.

It is just a way to spend time, remembering and commenting. The word will carry on with similar happenings as greed and gullibility are good partners. Molecular behaviour exhibits similar tendencies, just to remind that being human is not all that great.

Village dinner plates

I go back some 60 years. The stainless steel plates had come in vogue, the poorer ones using aluminium ones. But, the orthodox shunned these as short of aachaaram (ecchil – salivated).

The plant products used to be the dinner plates. Banana leaves were the pick, but were costly even then. There used to be an almond tree and its leaves were broad. Three or four will be stitched together with wooden splints. But, more common was banyan leaves, smaller, but more abundant. The trouble with these is that the splints may come off and get stuck in the throat. One must be careful. Another trouble was with flowy stuff like rasam which may run off to the neighbour’s plate.

Lotus leaves were also used with the green side being the bottom. Children used to have some fun as hot rasam poured on it would bubble.

Manadara leaves were commonly in use. They have a good aroma. In restaurants, they used to spread a mandara leaf in the plate and also use it in parcel. With the smell of the leaf, the idli, vada, dosa used to be extra delicious.

Apart from aachaaram, it was also eco-friendly. The used leaves will be dropped in the manure pit. 

 

3/6/18

Quoting a westerner

We have two irreconcilable views on every subject almost. I like grey. I feel that nothing is so clear-cut in life. There are shades of truth. A truth holds in certain given conditions and these conditions are numerous. There is need to balance our ideas. Of course, there are certainly times we have to make up our mind and do it fast.

What about seeking or seeing support from a westerner?

Our minds opened to the west beyond Turkey after East India Company came to trade and traded away our liberty and culture irretrievably. English language, which is seen by a majority as the symbol of slavishness and paradesi, did in fact throw before our minds new vistas of knowledge away from the spiritual and metaphysical, into mundane things with which ancient India seems to have been intimate, but the links seem to have snapped. Our knowledge bias today is western in the template. I see no way or salvation in turning to days before the British ‘corrupted’ us. In fact, India has been a reactor where different ingredients were mixed and new and newer identities kept evolving. Invasions took place not just after the middle eastern marauders, but long before.

When we are discussing everything in the western paradigm, it comes naturally to quote a westerner. Not that it is a decider, but that it adds a clarification or confirmation. Also, if what I am saying finds resonance in another who is not subject to the same bias as I am, I feel vindicated in an objective way.

More to the point, it is not any westerner we quote, but a knowledgeable one. It is the knowledge that is given the premium, not the colour of the skin.

Quoting anyone is unobjectionable. We must join issue on the content, not on the carrier.

 

 Mind is a colony of ideas. If you decolonise mind, it will disappear; we have no idea what it means.

Seriously, Yuval Noah Harari says:

“Today all humans are European in dress, thought and taste. .. Almost everyone on the planet views politics, medicine, war and economics through European eyes. .. Even today’s burgeoning Chinese economy is built on a European model of production and finance. ..”

We may think and utter many things to be different from the European mindset, but it is the way we act and live that defines us. I suspect that Harari has got it right and that we are European in that light. A few exceptions will not disprove it.

It must be mentioned that there are earnest attempts to restore ‘Being Different’ (Rajiv Malhotra), but the response is limited.

Who or what is wrong

An early lesson in management is, ‘Look at what is wrong, not who is wrong.’ Often, we are reminded that we should look at what is said, not who said it. The truth in this counsel is unexceptionable.

But, normally we do not follow this. The reason is not always prejudice, but practicability. When we get a message, we must decide whether to take it seriously. We cannot always examine it thoroughly and then decide. We form an opinion as to how reliable a person is. We can be fair in this opinion. It need not be partisan.

The necessity for taking an opinion on the strength of the person becomes crucial when the only source is testimonial knowledge.

In life, we follow trial and error method. If we are honest, we learn and refine our ability to decide what or whom to trust.

 

A fruit appears on a mature, healthy plant, not on a seed. Wisdom arises from application of intelligence in an active life in the field of current action, not on basic intelligence. Many of our views may be worthless as they are theoretical, based on our experience that has become history. Even when we were in service, we saw that what worked in one situation did not work in another, and what was possible for one person was not replicable for others. How do we think that our current ideas would work for those who do not get those ideas in their work situation?

There was an absorbing speech by one Mr.Singh in a programme that I attended some 30 years ago. (I think he was the one who passed away recently). He narrated the familiar story of the cap seller and the monkeys, how the father taught the son how to retrieve the caps which monkeys snatched and put on their heads. But, Mr.Singh added a twist. He said that later when the son tried to teach the same trick to his son (putting on a cap on the head and throwing it away), the monkeys did not follow suit. They had become wiser. That was to illustrate how competition is getting smarter by the day and constant learning on the feet is necessary.

 

Women

All societies treated women as lesser. Even now in some traditions, women are treated as property and toy. It was pathetic to hear a discourser say, ‘The restrictions on women are not for male domination but for their spiritual salvation.’

There were women who fought against the system subtly or stridently and made a name.

Bangalore Nagaratnamma, a devadasi, given up by her mother’s patron, grew up learning music, dance and languages, and unabashedly proclaiming her being a devadasi. She was devoted to Thyagaraja and built a temple over his Samadhi all from her earnings. She was a philanthropist.

M S Subbulakshmi broke away from the system of devadasis and honed her musical skill in a Brahmin household and was hailed as the queen of music and contributed her earnings for pubic causes.

Rukmini Arundale, fascinated by dance, swam against the current and nurtured her passion for dance and established Kalakshetra. Bharatanatyam was widely learned after the breakthrough.

Saraswathi Bai took to Harikatha, forbidden for Brahmins then, and became famous.

D K Pattammal was perhaps the first Brahmin woman to give stage performances in music.

Today we have several women prominent in various fields, some excelling men. However, this is still confined to forward communities and affluent sections. Much more ground is left to be covered.

 

 

Women at work

Orthodoxy confined women to home, for minding the kitchen and household, and bearing and rearing children. In fact, scripture and literature define a woman in these terms. This has been effectively challenged and changed in an irreversible way; but, nature cannot change. It is the rule of nature that a woman makes a home, a man is woefully inadequate for the task. Man can never equal woman. Nature will not any time soon wrest childbearing from woman and trust it with man. Managing the home, and motherhood are necessary and noble, not lowly. Woman guides man to right action and a steady life.

Women have done the traditional jobs with full passion.

I remember an old lady, aunt of my grandmother, who visited us in the village when my father was ill, and the house was teeming with people, and voluntarily positioned herself in the congested kitchen and struggled with the firewood that would not burn easily, in the heat of the arid village which knew no cooling device. My mother said that wherever she went she would do it. Hats off to her.

I am awed by the reputation of some women of Tamizh history like Mangayarkkarasi, Sembiam Madevi and Kundavai.

But, the women I have in mind are modern women that work in offices like men.

There were some who had a rock solid impression that women would not work. One became a chairman of a public sector bank. The ground reality does not support him, not all the way in any case.

A senior colleague recalled how she told her boss about her having to go earlier than others, ‘I do not have a wife at home.’ The women working like men have still to manage the home also. The sharing of work at home has not been the norm. They have to think of the children and other home responsibilities. That does make a difference. One may argue that they get paid as much as men.

In my experience, the attitude to work has no gender bias. If anything, more women work conscientiously, some excel men, I mean at work, not just in speech. I have seen women take up work of another desk when they have finished their work, in some exceptional cases. When I was just confirmed officer in Madurai, two lady staff who sat next to me were diligent and flawless workers. There was never any arrears of work in their area. I have had pleasant experience in many places. Of course, I have a gender bias!

A few women in the public glare attract me.

 Dr. Sudha Seshayyan

I came to know her as a competent Tamizh orator, well versed in scripture and literature and fluent and convincing in her discourse. It was amazing to know that she is a doctor in medicine holding high position, now as VC of TN Madras Medical University. She is also an ace compere and officiates in govt. functions. She has a pleasing countenance and graceful appearance.

Mrs. Bharathi Bhaskar

She came to prominence via Patti Manram, a Tamizh talk show (Tamizhars are indefatigable speakers), but her credentials are far better. She holds a B Tech Engg degree and MBA from Anna University, and is VP in CitiBank. She has decent memory ready wit and free flow in choice Tamizh diction. She holds the audience spell-bound.

It is amazing how these two women manage work, such pursuits and home. I just cited two examples.

 

June 16, 2016 ·

Nothing that man has done has changed the universe a wee bit. Nor has it changed man’s basic needs or nature. Yes, the story is unfolding, but most of us will be gone if it is going to bring an upheaval one day.

 

 

Changing world

June 14, 2016 ·

A thing is not the same when known as when unknown. It is not simply that my mind has moved, but the thing also has moved.

 

Changing world

July 14, 2015

We operate from some fixed positions. We brand people or organisations as good or bad and all our comments are dovetailed to it. Disagreement and disharmony stem from this fixation. It is neither secular nor ‘objective’. We change in a changing world and we act as much from our character as according to circumstances. Dialogue and open mind can lubricate the points of friction, but in the heat of things we do not do the analysis that cooler moments afford.

Not just political parties do it, we group ourselves ideologically and behave no differently. Many comments betray lack of understanding and any study.

We are never going to arrive at a world where it will follow the dictates of our fixed position. We will live in a world of opposites or in no world at all. Human purpose can only consist in organizing ourselves in such a way that the opposites co-exist and we define our space and leave others to their space.

 

 

World

What is world?

No, I am not sharing my advaita thoughts.

Normally, we think of the world as all that is on earth. Sometimes it is also used to refer to universe or cosmos.

But, in several expressions it is not characteristic or representative of the entire world.

World wars were not fought in the whole of the world, not even in most parts. Both the world wars started in Europe and was fought principally by Europeans. Still, as Europe is all that matters in the world, both were called world wars.

Out of some concession for the lesser mortals, they are content to be called the first world, the communists are the second world and the insignificant ones are dubbed the third world.

Will Durant finishes Asia, the most populous and the seat of several ancient civilisations, in one of eleven volumes of The Story of Civilisation and is dismissively apologetic, ‘We have passed in unwilling haste through four thousand years of history, and over the richest civilisations of the largest continent.’ It is understandable since his market was not the third world.

Look at the world cup. Some ten nations participate, but four are European sort of and so it must be world cup! Yes, it is open to all, but is confined narrowly.

Just as we have those that claim Vedas as the origin of everything, the western thinkers invariably find a link to the Greeks. Greece is the start of the world and even Big Bang started in Greece!

Many discoveries happened earlier than the European discovery of them, but history stands in the name of Europeans.

The Europeans think a world of themselves and so do we of them.

(This is a light piece. Europeans have distinguished themselves in science, technology, organisation and order, which we lack as a people.

Sriram V’s twitter: Oh the joy some Indians experience in extolling the virtues of the British in particular and Europeans in general. They roll the names around their tongues as though it were nectar.)

 

October 19, 2014

Is the world mechanistic?

My response: We need to understand what we mean by 'world' and 'mechanistic'. World seems to be divided against itself in micro and macro aspects. Mechanistic can mean mindless or according to a set order. I am talking of how I grasp it. If we are talking of the world in its 'objectivity' or 'totality', we are perhaps yet to understand it. Speculatively we have a wide range of views of the world from that it does not exist to that nothing else exists. 'Reflexivity' gets into play. The observed and observer cannot be isolated and when we do so, we get erratic views. This phenomenon has been expressed in different ways in different contexts. The uncertainty principle in QM, the waywardness of economic variables under observation, stock market behaviour vs an individual investor etc. The correct answer could be yes and no, depending on the ground from which you observe.

 

Writing

Writing is an art. It is not just putting together words with the right syntax. Sentences must be balanced and their meaning must be lucid. There must be flow. Each part must kindle interest to know what next and the writer must feed on the curiosity judiciously. Without flow it becomes scattered iron filings, which group under the magnet of a mature and fertile mind.

Smt. Aruna Sairam used to relate how she was singing the entire range of swaras in swaraprasthara, but a senior advised her to focus on smaller groups and elaborate. She demonstrated the difference by singing. It is a useful idea for writing also. Instead of saying a lot in one go, one may break them into manageable ideas and dwell on them in some detail before passing on to the next idea.

We get inspiration for good writing by reading good texts rather than by grinding at grammar and improving vocabulary from dictionary. In Tamizh, one forceful writer who pioneered a new style was Kalki. In music, Thyagaraja Kritis breathed new life into the classical music. Nehru was a great writer of English. His speech of tryst with destiny at midnight as India woke to freedom is a classic that was extempore. It is a different matter that action does not vindicate rhetoric.

Concrete holds attention more than the abstract. Relating what we have to say to real life sustains interest. In ‘abstract’ we may become abstruse and confused.

Using apt words, preferring simpler ones to rare ones, gives compactness to the narration. The passage must bring to the reader’s mind something from real life.

Some achieve style, but ordinary writing can be interesting without pretention to style. Great authors bring ornamentation to writing, but too much of it may mar the writing. Kalidasa was known for apt similes, Dandin for elegance of diction and Bharavi for depth of meaning, but Magha combined all these, says a hagiographer of Magha. That is by way of allusion to what style may imply, but we are concerned with normal writing by us.

There are actually no rules for good writing as for good music. In answer to a question whether one can sing abhang in a carnatic music concert since purists object to it, Sanjay said, ‘Forget about them. They are not your paymasters. You can sing even a French song. But, you must hold the attention of the audience.” That goes for writing. We must find good readers for what we write.

Then why did I write this? Hoping for some readers!

 

 

Modern Yaksha Prasna

Which is the largest laboratory?

Nature.

Which is the largest industry?

Production of news.

What is FB?

A gossip club.

Why are human beings a superior species?

Who said so? That is their vanity.

What is the feminine gender for Ravichandran?

Bhanumathi.

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