Objectivity - A lesson from Yuganta!

Irawati Karve offers a wonderful lesson in Yuganta, through an imaginative conversation between Gandhari and Dhritarashtra. The scene is one from the last few days of the lives of Kunti, Dhritarashtra, Vidura and Gandhari, as they live together in the forest, awaiting their death. Dhritarashtra says to Gandhari -

'Every person gets entangled in a mesh of injustices. I wronged you. Pandu wronged Kunti. And whose wrong doing was it that Pandu and i should lead such fruitless lives? Can we say that wrongs done to our mothers, the misery they suffered brought this curse on us? Poor Vidura was the only one completely sound in mind and body. But because his mother was a servant, he could not become a king. He did not try to take revenge on anyone for his life's disappointments. Kunti and Vidura were the only two people in our whole clan who were consciously watchful. You feel, Gandhari, that you have been cheated and deceived, but think for a moment: in the three generations of our family every person has been cheated and deceived. I am pleading with you to not merely ask for forgiveness, but to persuade you to give up your fight against life. Give up your anger, not only against me, but against life itself. My injustice to you does not give you the right to do an injustice to your children, to your whole life. How can one wrong compensate another, Gandhari? At least now take off that blindfold. Learn to look at world, at human beings, and at your own past life objectively. Our life is nearly over. At least do not die with your eyes bound'.

I understand philosophy very less, but i was amazed and amused, at the same time, by this conversation. I almost burst out laughing at the line 'in three generations of our family every person has been cheated and deceived'. How ironical!

It is very difficult to digest such learnings ,irrespective of the whether you believe in Karma, luck, fate and other such things. But maybe, just by knowing this point of view, you can be little a closer to implementing it.

Learn to look at life objectively!

Yuganta is a small but beautiful collection of essays on the characters of the great epic Mahabharata. It is an anthropologist's take on their lives, looking beyond the myths associated with them. She takes the critical edition of Mahabharata as a base and mercilessly dissects these characters exploring their motives, weaknesses and strengths.

A good review of the book can be found at
http://jaiarjun.blogspot.in/2007/10/irawati-karve-and-yuganta.html

An online edition of the book is available at
http://books.google.co.in/books/about/Yuganta_The_End_of_an_Epoch_2nd_Edn.html?id=uJz4ZWsRcsAC&redir_esc=y

Cross posted on Facebook.

Sacred Games

Below is a post of mine in one of the orkut communities in a thread related to Sacred games. I had initially of thought of writing this directly on my blog but thought it will be better to put it in discussion.


I have just started reading "Sacred Games" and it has been amazing till now. The central characters of the book, Ganesh Gaitonde (an underworld don) and Sartaj Singh(a police inspector) are very interesting. A distinctive point about the style is the use of Indian languages, especially local slangs, without hindrances like italics, footnotes etc. This adds an extra punch to the narrative.You can read more about the book including reviews here[http://sacredgames.typepad.com].
There's another point I’d like to raise in concern with the book, which I would like to generalize to any work of function.There is a context in the book, where a police officer(Sartaj Singh) is searching a woman's house, trying to seek out some clues as well as her black money. Here author writes and I quote,"...Hema Malini and Meena Kumari and a half-dozen other heroines had been caught with cash in their loos."
I am not in any way concerned about Meena Kumari or for that matter any heroine's image albeit I did try to verify this, at which I was unsuccessful.
The point I'd like to make is does fiction writing give the author a free hand to disparage any celebrated figure, living or dead. Also has writing something sensational or something outrightly deriding become an easy way to publicize your work. This second part doesn't concern "Sacred Games" because it was published way back in 2006,and I don't think Vikram Chandra had any such intentions.
I personally take a lot of pride in calling myself a libertarian but I do feel use of such techniques like unnecessarily maligning somebody,a little repulsive.Any thoughts on this?

The world that is..

The whims and caprices of few men, are largely responsible for the difference between the world that is and the world that could have been or the world that should have been or the world that might have been, for many others.


So,there was Howard Huges,the aviator,who built Hercules the largest flying boat with the largest wingspan marrying a soon-to-be outdated technology — flying boats — to a massive airframe using some truly ingenious engineering innovations.

After lots requests to N number of friends to download the movie for me and after missing it N-1 times on the TV, I was finally able to catch the last part of the movie yesterday and I truly loved it.

Coming back to the theme of the post imagine what would have been of the most of the world if the Soviet had not invaded Afghanistan,Osama Bin Laden and much of the terrorism would not be there.There are ofcourse and will always be several other examples to support this theory. These days I prefer to call all of my vacuous thoughts as theories.

I am thrown back into a deluge of unrestrained thoughts everytime I think of the book Animal Farm and Geroge Orwell's profound words

"All animals(men) are equal,but some animals(men) are more equal"

Found the english translation of my favorite poem by Mirza ghalib "Hazaaron khwahishen aisi" on this wonderful website which is an anthology of some of the most beautiful poems ever written.

These words truly encircle and might for a long time to come define my state of mind.

HazaaroN KHwahishaiN ‘eisee ke har KHwahish pe dam nikle
bohot nikle mere armaaN lekin fir bhee kam nikle

Here's the translation..

A thousand desires such as these,that each takes a lifetime (an eternity)
I found many desires and yet they aren’t enough

Violence

I am a firmly believe in the ideology that "Violence always begets violence". Anybody who has gone through the history of middle east clubed with jewish history will agree.


Here is an interesting article related current scenario of Israel -Lebanon conflict.

Still...

" At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life ..."


Well they say people like me are still sleeping.

But here's the good news there's a new bookstore in Vadodara,huge,almost three times as big as crossword which was the only one till date.Real feast I must say,got myself "War and Peace " by leo Tolstoy and "Made in America" by Sam Walton.


In case I forgot to mention I didn't die in floods.Because we make a tryst with destiny every new day.

If only I knew

If you would be in my shoes you would understand that most exasperating and hillarious thing in the world is to have sudden sporadic mild strokes of alzheimer's disease.Imagine staring the computer screen,rather flat computer screen after opening blogger window because you have forgotten what you wanted to write.

I wanted to tell you about ghettos,my experience with them,of why I believe ghettoism is most detrimental thing to happen to versimilary united India.

I wanted to tell you about, "The arguementative Indian" and the veritable ingenuity in Amartya Sen's approach to focus on the argumentative tradition in India in his writings on Indian culture and history, away from the banal and trite religious approach.Infact I was really suprised to read about Caravaka,the atheist school of thought in ancient India.I was absolutely ecstatic after reading this line in the book,a quote by Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

"Imagine how terrible the day of your death would be,when people would go on speaking and you wouldn't be able to argue back"

And atlast about the magic Gregory David Roberts aka Shantaram can create with his literary prowess.
But I am in no mood right now,I have come to realise that just as success after hardwork can be the most beautiful thing in the world to happen to you,failure after the same can be the most bewildering thing in the world.

Money

"There's just as much money to be made in the wreck of a civilization as in upbuilding of one"

-Rhett Butler, Gone with the wind.

Absolute brilliance I must say. It all depends on your buccaneering prowess. Philosophically speaking,however grim the circumstances be,there's always a way to take advantage of the situation.

As the Gita says," All that happens ,happens for good."

Update:Rhett Butler seems to be the master of nuggets and aphorisms,here's another one

"Marry for convenience and love for pleasure."

Well quite true, because if you think logically,marriage as an institution originated mainly to set inheritance boundaries and social structure. But that does not mean that marriage is just a societal obligation. More views on subject later.

I expect more aphorisms from Rhett,as I read on.

Long Live Popcorn Patriotism

A thought that popped into my mind after I saw Rangde Basanti. A nice movie, does enamor a bit, good solid screenplay and amazing performances by Aamir khan, Atul Kulkarni and Soha Ali Khan. By the way the site rocks too, do check it out.

Anyways I didn't notice this one on the graffiti wall during the film completely, but found it on the site.Here it goes...

" Go slow, someone is wetting for you"

Nice, I would say,hope you get the pun.

With republic day just past i wanted to write two conflicting posts, spurting from two conflicting theories in my mind. Inspiration for the first one came from the book i am reading by Alvin Tofler called the Third wave and second about Popcorn patriotism and reviewing Rangde combined with lack of freedom in china and something more that i recently learned about China.

Unfortunately as the case i find myself invariably short of time, may be I will write something in future.

Till then go and watch Rangde if you get a chance.