RANGAN'S ROOFTOP

KNOWING HINDUISM - The Great Master

2011-08-13T21:22:00.001+05:30

The Great Master

Books have been written aplenty in any school of thought in Hinduism.

Abstract treatises abound on any strand of thinking.

Even on Sri Vaishnava Sampradaya, the books I have may fill up a library.

But all the books, all the treatises, on all the schools have their bearing, have their anchor in Vedantha.

Even the Agamas which centre their ideology on temple worship and theology have their locus in Vedantha.

Knowing Vedantha is knowing its methodology. Knowing Vedantha is explicating the world of Upanishads into consistent study of the Ultimate Truth.

The commentaries of the old, tutor this methodology and inculcate the Vedanthic thinking.

But we have a blessing in Swami Vivekananda. He is the great Master of Modern Hinduism.

His complete works provide a cogent text book of Hinduism and lends an efficient work table to improve oneself upon.

For the young generations and coming ages there is no other workable hypothesis better than reading the Great Sage.

Fortunately his works are online here

http://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_1/vol_1_frame.htm

***

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

Some of my poems (contd..)

2011-08-10T08:25:00.001+05:30

Again these are some more melodies from the eternal harp. The fingers are fragile. The fervor is a bit too assuming. But does a child know that its prattles lack a grammar? So be these to those timeless years.

11) Month of Margazhi

It was a premature morn;

A simple thought was stirring in my mind.

The slow eyes beating the slipping wake;

The cow is calling in the courtyard;

The cow-herd cajoling the animal tethered;

The streets have become midwives

of the new-born morn;

The twenty ninth song of Tiruppavai

cradling the craving sky air-borne.

'in the little small early dawn

having come to thee and worshiped'

Slowly I opened a corner of the blanket,

the childish morn caught my neck

and kissed my cheek to daily chores.

Morn-caught murmuring I came out to the doors.

The cow was all Lakshmi bathed in fresh rays.

The twenty ninth day was born.

***

12) Dream

The loud-cry lone-crowd of myself,

Transporting structures in shambles

from the out world in.

Dreaming, suddenly in action

in strange and similar plots,

some thickness of impasse;

Dropping horizons in the back,

darkly visible stretches ahead,

I expand the space around;

Is it mental? who said?

Duplicating myself?

Me from one medium to another;

The web in-weaved in memory;

A return aggression of the world onto the self;

Is it a wake of the sleep,

in the sleeping waking world?

Dream --

Is it reality-not-happened ?

Or happened-reality not in space-time?

Or unreal happening in space and time?

Yea it is easier to dream

than to theorize it.

***

13) Poetry

Don't tell me children are god;

They are too childish to be one.

May be you mean to say

Gods are like children.

Quite likely, they never grow in time.

Don't tell me you write the poems;

Poems are not written that way.

Perhaps you mean to say,

Poems are written through you.

May be you have a point there;

Poems do but reflect You,

That is inscribed in those through you.

***

14) Elusive Pursuit

The telephone was ringing;

I wanted to answer hello,

Reached out to the receiver,

when the ringing stopped.

I'm sure it was you.

I saw you across a street,

I wanted to talk to you,

Rushed only to go past you,

turning to find that you were not there,

but somebody like you.

I heard your voice in a mob;

I came and searched every moving face;

The crowd dispersed;

The voice was heard no more;

But the doubt lingered behind the crowd.

How to meet you?

Where to see you?

Whom to ask?

Which door to knock?

Knowing nothing

I am not equal to the task.

Suddenly I heard you somewhere

Felt your presence neighboring mine;

Yet I saw you not,

knew not where to find you,

The same, the same, the self-same you.

Me, the one following you;

You, the self-same elusive you.

***

15) The Wakeful Night

It is night;

The society has slept;

perhaps the people are dreaming

in the multi universe of their minds.

The crows are steeped in leafy silence;

The dogs have left an interval in their barking.

Vehicles have become sparse;

There is traffic of smells in the air;

I am awake

and the sky is all eyes.

The thoughts have become audible

and the wind has overheard

and afoot to spread the secrets wide.

Space is warming its wings of expansiveness.

It is leisure time,

the night,

but business time

for elemental things of the world.

***

16) Flower and mind

A flower in the green;

Yea, a flower in the green;

Like a mind in the flesh.

Beautiful to see

Sublime to understand

Profound in implications

A flower in the green

Not for the sake of me

has it blossomed forth

But out of its inherent laws.

A flower in the green.

Yea a flower in the green

Like a mind blossoming in the body.

***

17) A New Grammar

Pedagogic grammar is easy to know;

But what is this? pediatric grammar!

It is so hard;

One way it makes sense;

In another way strange.

My father and mother

gave birth to a child;

The child was me.

Me, who am now a man.

OK got it.

My father and mother gave birth to me

And I was born to my parents;

Strange.

Does it make sense?

Yea this pediatric grammar,

Again listen,...My father and mother...

***

18) The Immortal's sarcasm

Eastern morn,

The early Sun,

The sulking rays

surfacing the horizon.

Festive air

Was full of joy

Spreading wide

The flowers' puberty

The spanning sky

Was full of song

Birds in flight

Were full of dance.

Am I the Poet full

of the Poetry of the Heaven?

Can you the reader fulfill then?

Poetry Poet Reader

Triangular meaning in orgasm

Living life embodied

Is but the Immortal in sarcasm.

***

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

Some of my poems

2011-07-31T00:56:00.001+05:30

I intend to record here some of my poems written long back and turning brown in paper. May be online, they remain fresh. Is it not?

1) A Cyclist's Anthem

Space is dynamic

Time is adjustable

Legs weave miles into minutes

Threading destinations and recreations

I take a kind of Viswaroopa

Roads roll into me.

And my eyes spread the world before me.

The wind towels me like a mother;

Smells converse with my nose;

Sounds are parabolic off my ears;

It sweats into dryness;

People are transient

Places adhere,

Time becomes a vector,

Thoughts sojourn;

Water burns the travel

With the fueling food;

Man is different from the animals;

Repetition begets progression;

Nose goes in search of smells;

Senses visit the perceptions;

Poetical transportation

Of pious rowdyism indulging nature

Pedaled philosophy of imagination two-wheeled.

***

2) Books

Friends penned and bound;

Memory in paper;

Thoughts await forever

The prying lens of mind;

Past in backups

Formatting the future;

Algorithams of human endeavor

Flow-charts of experiences

Verbal hearts into written minds

Eternal giffs of ephemeral lives.

***

3) Viswamithra for a second time

Uparishravas! Don't fall down!

After all you have spoken the truth;

Why should you be pushed down,

so ruthless by Indra?

Uparishravas:--

How can I ever stop,

When Indra is at the top?

The wrath of Indra has wrought my fall;

He asked me 'Who is the greatest on earth?'

I told him, "I don't know;

When I was down there

people used to say of me so.'

He got wild.

'Are you my equal?

Dare you sit by me?

Down below is your place;

Drunk of your ego,

you've lost your grace;'

His wish tumbled me down

Too quick even to frown;

Uparishravas! Don't fall down!

Tell that retail trader

That you are way beyond his exchange;

Tell him that he after all

shines on glory dearly borrowed;

stand firm on your humanity.

To be a deva need not to be divine;

Uparishravas:--

Who are you, so kind and fair?

What can you do to stall my fall?

If anything please do it now;

Otherwise, pray! pity me not;

Pursue thy way and forget me what;

I am Viswamithra, friend of the world;

I can stop your fall,

Reverse you back

And rend asunder the gates of heaven;

No no Sage! don't send me back.

Rather make me born on earth

Fie you! a simple lover of earth?

mundane got you bound?

mortal flesh hath eaten thee mind and soul?

Nay Nay Sage! not so base;

Never the putrid taste of sensual

But I want to be born in the isle of Sriranga.

I heard my case argued by the great

Bhatta Parasara of Kuresa born;

That put me into shame

for all the pride I had

about my friendship with the deva-gang;

Only He, the Father, Mother and Friend of all

Will rejoice and rejoice still more,

When His child excels, shines and outshines;

Others will scale in envy,

and scape his fall with wrathful eyes, thousandfold.

Never I thought of Him;

Never I worshiped my own Father;

Never I slept on my own Mother's laps;

Never I cared for the One and Only Friend of men;

How many births I want to be born to make amends!

So my Sage! so be thy grace;

Your falling tears shall consecrate the blessing.

***

4) Agnihotra

Brahma Muhoortha.

Hour of gods.

Darkness about to beget its dawn

The early hours have begun their roads to morn.

The darkness is too thick and visible

The stove has begun to burn in the kitchen;

The flames remember the setting sun,

Tamed by the bowl of milk placed on.

I thought somebody was at my doors;

Some friend to chat in dhyan;

I came out to see

The East about to light its oven.

Perhaps it was the east that tapped my doors;

Ah me! I have forgotten my stove in the kitchen...

Oh! the milk has kissed the flames

and dropped to the stone beneath the burner.

I put it off and came to the front yard

to close the doors.

Who forgot to put off in the East?

The milk of Sun has kissed the Sky

And dropped to my doors beneath.

Who delivers the milk over there?

And where is agnihotra? here or there?

The calves are licking the dripping teats;

The rays of Sun touch everything

Agnihotra is complete.

***

5) Aging

Scaling the walls of Time

The tender feet turn into tottering legs.

The big boy turns grey

Revenging all the big things of his early life;

A pralaya measured from birth

Maturing in the mortal death.

Time universal metered in subjective stops;

The shrunken space is tanned again to distances;

Consciousness unawares being drawn

into several maps of experience;

mentally constant in a physical change

turns the code to a physical stop;

Mind walks where the legs were once

Dreaming through miles of spatial joy;

Man born as a little being

Grown tall to become a child again;

Vamana grows into Vikrama,

Becoming back again a Vamana,

Measuring the world in triple ways

Through body, mind and soul;

Leaving all he learnt

As the giant soul of the textual world,

Mahabali, the ever present scribe.

***

6) Markets

Markets are marvelous in a way;

Poets dislike them they say;

But I find them homely

And I can write their charms;

Anyhow they do me no harm.

A corner in a market is my coveted place;

The jostles surround

Leaving a sort of calmness in that bay;

Perhaps the left-over of everybody

Or further still the lost for ever of many;

The shops make you feel differently

Each in their own way uniquely;

One will make you feel an icon of style;

another one will make you a glutton;

still another makes you a flying angel;

yet another making you a connoisseur of arts;

But one shop is there, which I dislike;

The repair shop of anything;

What you have valued so far

is devalued with a vengeance there.

The road-side shops breathe

an air of anti-establishment, cheap and fair.

The soul of market is ennobling somehow;

I like to sit in a corner,

Where the passing jostles surround,

Leaving the bay in calmness.

***

7) Knotted fine little thread

Who is greater?

God turned into a man;

Or a man turned towards God;

Or a man whose God is a Man of God?

God descends to man

As an answer to abundant prayers;

Man ascends to God

By the rising call of aspiration;

A man devotes himself to a Man of God

Out of what?

The knotted fine little thread,

Not enough to tie,

The reason, do you know why?

Which is greater?

The knotted fine little thread

Or the reason that is behind?

None can say

or who can say?

Or how can anyone say?

***

8) The story of Yayati

The story of Yayati

in two words

once more

in one word

again

in one letter

wordless

dot dot.

Youth begetting old age,

getting a lease of youth

again to become old

forever.

***

9) May be

May be....

Sometimes you are made to think

It's better to be a petty-shop wala

Than to be a great soul.

Sometimes you feel...

May be.

***

10) Darkness is soluble

Power-cuts for two evenings

Unbearable

wretchedness man-made

Darkness tangible stretching time

till midnight

downloaded from the sky

and the sparks uploaded

overseeing our avastha.

Thick of guilt is tanned

by the invisible hands.

Consciousness made more visible

Cosmic scales rehearse the final showdown

Blinkers in the sky

bear the contrast

for the dotted darkness around the candles.

Prometheus deceived by men

And Zeus in laugh over the unchained god.

Is that the laugh?

Or perhaps the aeroplane is on.

Whatever, darkness is soluble in poetry.

***

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

***

Knowing Hinduism -- Triple Lights

2011-06-12T12:32:00.001+05:30

THE TRIPLE LIGHTS

Divine Revelation

Debating Reason

Devotional experience

These are the triple lights that form the basic canons of Hinduism.

Vedas or Shruthi is the light of Divine Revelation.

Brahma Sutras is the light of debating Reason.

Srimad Bhagavad Gita is the light of Devotional Experience.

All the three lights bring to vision the same reality.

What Reason understands of the Revelation, Experience confirms.

Shruthi, Yukthi, Anubhava are the words used by the great Adisankara for Revelation, Reason and Experience.

But what is the basic proof of Religion according to Hinduism?

Is it reading, debating, being emotional, building an empire of the faith?

Not anyone of these. They mean nothing, if the basic proof is not there.

The basic proof is not believing something.

It is 'Seeing God'.

To see God is the basic proof of Religion.

It is the Vision, which the words explicate.

Beholding is the base, believing may be only a prop on the way.

The Vision is not concrete. It is the Transcendental Vision.

Words are not mundane but they descend to the earth carrying the pure warmth of Divinity, only to form the ascend back along with men.

Some years back I wrote in the series "ethu bhakthi?" dealing with what is devotion this observation --

Unless and until one understands that Bhakthi is something which encompasses man's reason totally, it should be understood that his dawn is yet to come.

Hinduism is the project of man, which started when he discovered that there is really, God.

***

Knowing Hinduism -- 6

2011-06-12T11:50:00.001+05:30

All the world religions talk about something in Heaven, which man must reach.

Religion is other-worldly, according to them.

They compensate that aspect of their religions by doing social service, as the main practice of their faith.

Of course they combine it with propaganda.

But the main idea is that Divinity is something from above into man or from outside into man's life.

So religion as an institution of training men to mourn and wish for a super reality is inherent in world religions.

But Hinduism never talks of religion as such.

It always speaks of Dharma.

Dharma is the reality as it is in principles.

From atom to cosmos Dharma runs like a golden thread.

The sustained, becomes the sustainer, through out nature.

It is best for man to find out as early as possible his place in this universe.

Fulfill your place in nature and that in turn will fulfill your nature as a man.

According to Dharma, you have the final beatitude always in you, carrying it through all stages of the growth.

The troubles start when you act in neglect of your value in Dharma.

Divinity is not somewhere. It is, has been, and will be shining in your heart.

In the heart of every being, He resides and moves the world.

***

Knowing Hinduism 5

2011-04-28T23:48:00.001+05:30

To speak of abstractions is good.

But life happens to run on details.

That too daily, domestic concerns and cares.

We are impelled to actions more out of necessity than out of intellectual commitment.

Human being is an acting being as much as a willing being, as much as a knowing being.

To know, to will and to act form the three facets of the self-same soul.

Jnathruthvam - the faculty of knowing;

karthruthvam -- the faculty of acting;

bhogthruthvam -- the faculty of enjoying

describe the three facets of the Soul.

These three facets form the basic psychology of any individual.

So any spiritual practice must incorporate in itself different strands of these triads.

Hinduism has devised four such modus operandi -- viz.,

the four Yogas -- the Jnana Yoga, the Karma Yoga, the Bhakthi Yoga and the Raja Yoga or the psychological Yoga proper.

***

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

Knowing Hinduism 4

2011-04-28T23:47:00.001+05:30

It is great and grand enough to be universal and all inclusive, just like the Sky and the Sea.

Hinduism is of course a beautiful circle.

But are there any books of reference, in times of preparatory years and the beginning steps of one's spirituality.

Any definite anchor to stay floating and not to drift aimlessly.

Even birds which fly inter-continentally, do carry some chart of instincts in their flights.

The Soul after all, does have its beginning in self-realization, in the mortal coil.

Books are indispensable in any religion, even in those religions which have dispensed with gods.

Hinduism prescribes three prime most important books.

It has garnered all its spiritual values in there, in those three books.

Upanishads,

Brahma Sutras

Bhagavath Gita.

Upanishads proper are called the Vedantha, the culminations and conclusions of the Vedic inquiries.

Vedanthas are also called the Sruthis, the Revelations heard.

These three books are called Prasthana Thraya.

Three Books based on the primacy of three facets of spiritual quest.

What are those?

Sruthi,

Yukthi,

Anubhava

Revelation, Reasoning, Experiencing.

The Book that is based on the Revelation is Vedanthas or Upanishads.

The Book that is based on Reasoning is Brahma Sutras.

The Book that is based on Experiencing is Bhagavath Gita.

Man comes to know of God only when He informs of His presence through some ways.

He is not of the category of concrete things.

He is definitely abstract.

He is the abstraction of abstractions.

So He is known more clearly through Words.

For only words can connote more than concrete the abstractions.

Hence the Book of Revelations.

Then comes the Book of Reasoned out arguments on the Upanishadic concepts.

Human Reason is given full scope to analyze and understand the Heard Book of The Divine.

Textual exegesis and hermeneutics form very important tools along with the philosophical understanding of the Grammar.

Only then ensues the study of Brahma Sutras or Vedantha Mimamsa.

Then comes the Book of Experiencing, viz., Bhagavath Gita.

The whole Gita pours out of the involved experiencing of Sri Krishna, the greatest Vedanthic teacher ever born.

***

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

Knowing Hinduism - 3

2011-04-18T20:09:00.001+05:30

The Devotee's passion is to see his Chosen God as the Ultimate and God Almighty of the universe.

The Jnani's passion is to merge in the Ultimate.

Both ways are seeing the same thing from different perspectives, provided, you don't get sabotaged by fanaticism or snobbery of intellectualism.

If by becoming narrow in your chosen devotion, you become more spiritual, then your narrowness is blessed.

If by becoming more universal and more abstract in your inner most mind, you go nearer to the Ultimate Soul, then your universal and abstract outlook is blessed.

What matters is, are you going towards the Centre?

If the circumference takes you towards the centre, then it serves its central Soul.

If the radii take you away from the Centre, then the radius is wretched.

But Hinduism is a Beautiful Circle.

The radii never take you away.

And the circumference never makes you dry.

Did I say a beautiful circle?

Yes, and more than that, an enchanting spiral and an engulfing spherical.

An expert artist is fond of free variations of his tunes.

Never is he content in striking a mono chord.

The God of the Hindus is highly aesthetic.

Art seems to be Its passion.

It rejoices in the sight of the ardent soul.

It comes unseen as the abstract vastness.

It hides Itself in the heart as the possessing Love.

Treading the solo path, the soul takes to wings every now and then.

To arrest it in any single walk may become an injustice to the Infinite.

To feign a vastness where you have to feel pangs of Love may be an act of deserting the Centre.

Who knows which soul is in what delicate equilibrium of spiritual growth?

It is this mystical humility, the real concern imbued with spiritual expectation, that is at the heart of all the systems and paths of Hinduism.

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

***

Knowing Hinduism - 2

2011-04-17T21:59:00.001+05:30

The meaning of the word Ishta Devatha Nishta is -

Ishta - one's own liking;

Devatha -- Godhead

Nishta -- deeply involved practice.

So this 'deeply involved devotion towards one's Choice of Godhead' is never allowed to become, in any way, fanaticism.

Because, even from the Vedic times, the Universal Idea has been firmly implanted in the Hindu's mind.

'There is but one Truth; Sages have been calling it by different names'

'The water falls from the Sky and flows through many ways to the self-same Sea; likewise the devotions towards many Gods ultimately reach the self-same Kesava'

The same thought is given in a sloka of Siva Mahimna stotra.

So the General and Universal aspect of Hinduism always worked in tandem with the individual worships of Chosen Gods.

This two layered structure was organic rather than artificial.

It was not an outwardly agreed upon arrangement but something which was evolved through the internal exercise of coupling the vast spiritual freedom with inevitable human limitations.

The human nature was at no time ignored.

The transcendence of abstractions was at no time lost sight of.

The whole field of Religion was a veritable education for the Hindus.

Any human being can start anywhere and go by his own path unhampered by any sort of sojourners' pressure.

You unto your path

Me unto mine

And for us there is

Always the Divine.

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

***

Knowing Hinduism - 1

2011-04-17T11:03:00.001+05:30

I was thinking of starting something on 'What is Hinduism?'.

For long it was getting postponed, one thing or another came in to cause the delay.

On transfer I had to commute between a far off village and my residence. It was taking me more than one and a half hours of train journey.

How to kill time and boredom?

Books, yea, they have been my very good friends all along.

So some book or another came to my help and kept me company, in a great way.

So it started I think in that way.

Young students, IT boys and girls, talking about sundry things, how we locked into this interest, into What is Hinduism? It is difficult to recapitulate now.

Some body asked something like 'Was there anything like Hinduism in the past?' Is not the name itself something new and given by others?

May be . What of that? In fact no religion bears the very same name which it had in the beginning. Was Christianity called so by Christ and the disciples?

Buddha himself called his path as Arya Dharma, not Buddhism.

Therefore can we say 'There was not any Buddhism in the past'?

The same holds good for Hinduism.

Why should double standards be adopted whenever Hinduism is talked about?

Perhaps some vested interests at home and abroad have their own reasons to pop up such doubts in the minds of the Hindu people themselves.

While talking about Hinduism we will be careful enough not to fall a prey to such shifts in approach.

Also we must give Hinduism all the margins that we allow for other religions.

And another point. Who am I to explain about Hinduism?

Am I any realized soul? No.

I am born in Hinduism. I was brought up by my parents, taught by my teachers and I grew in Hinduism.

I have grown in Hinduism and Hinduism has gone into my feelings and emotions.

Of course I have studied a lot. Right from the Vedas, across the scriptures of the World Religions, lots of literature, philosophy, science -- enough to make a talkative of me.

But always I shy away from imposing my ideas on others.

Management theory may say, 'Hey! you lack the basic quality of management'.

But what to do? men are different. And I prefer to stay as myself.

Perhaps that was the reason why those young minds were fond of asking me such questions and also pursuing in getting my replies.

Anyhow it was gala time and my travel was a joy. Otherwise what a boredom would have set in the two and a half years commuting.

Thank you little hearts. You all sweetened my time.

What is Hinduism?

If you call it a Religion, then why are there so many religions within it?

Any religion, does it not fall into a simple formula like, say, 'one God, one Book, one Master'.

Can you say that Hinduism has this simple pattern?

If yes what is that?

If no, then, can you explain how Hinduism can be called a religion?

One religion is not like another religion.

There are some common aspects, but again there are aspects peculiar to that religion alone.

We can't say Christianity is exactly like Islam, or like Buddhism and so on.

That too, when we are talking about a very great ancient religion, passing through various times of Hindu society, we can't apply blindly this formula.

There are very real structural differences between religions. Thats the point.

Seemingly there is a similarity, like -- God, Book, Master.

This GBM formula holds good for the various paths within the fold of Hinduism.

SriVaishnavism, Saivism, Saktham, Kaumaram, Ganaapatyam, all so many separate paths or Sampradayas or Samayas, they all fulfill this formula viz., GBM -- GOD, BOOK, MASTER.

Just ask any devotee of Vishnu. He will say clearly what is his chosen God? what are his prescribed books? and Who are the Masters of his path?

He will be as clear as any other religious devotee.

The same with a Saivaite, he is very clear about his books, God, Masters.

A Saktha is also like that.

But in Hinduism these devoted worships of the Chosen God are called Ishta Devata Nishta.

Is this Ishta Devata Nishta in any way a form of fanaticism?

Most definitely not.

Because in fanaticism, what you choose to follow, you begin to think as the only truth. And all other religions become so many barren paths in wilderness.

Your duty becomes changing other people.

To tolerate such blasphemies becomes a sacrilege, according to what has been preached to you.

You become bad in the eyes of your Most Righteous God, if you don't obey your scriptural commands, exhorting you to make the world, a uniform place for your One and Only God.

Such a mentality is fanaticism.

But in Ishta Devata Nishta, the idea is 'I want to worship the Ultimate Soul in this form. I know that it is really He, who resides in everything and also is the soul of others' Gods. He has assumed various forms to cater to the devotions of various types of religious people throughout the world. But this is my chosen Ideal. I prefer to worship in this way. In the same way, I do understand your choice of your own God. I respect your right to your chosen way of worship. Afterall is it not true, that all worships go to my Beloved in reality? Then why should I not wish you good luck in your spiritual endeavours. God speed!

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

***

Down the memory lane

2010-12-10T01:35:00.001+05:30

Down the memory lane
You stand some blocks away
Dipping into the heart
I behold your secret sway
Ripping all my pretences
Revel thee in thine ever-presence
Roaring laughter rearing a doubt
Round about ways of the winning fate
Abounding glory, abiding grace
Thwarted desires, thirsting passions
But ever and ever your Hand is there
Somewhere, somehow, salvaging me
Standing atop the Hills, south or north,
Reclining across the rivery beds
A rare stealth of vision I beg of Thee
Just to compose my hungry soul
That you are the self-same You
Down my memory lane.

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

Doing Sangam Poetry Again

2010-09-20T07:21:00.001+05:30

I am composing some pieces in AintiNais in lines of Sangam poetry. This poem is an instance.

AintiNais are poetic topos of love symbolised by the actual landscapes of hills, forests, lands, seas and deserts. These symbolise the feelings of Intimacy, Waiting, bickerings of love, pangs of uncertain isolation and separation respectively.In Tamil grammar these are named as kuruJji, mullai, marudam, neydal and pAlai.

I am following the global scheme in transliteration here.)

kaDalalaich cErppak kaZindupaDu pANAL

vaLaiyudirp pazalai poGgu nuRai pUppa

aLaie ArvamoDu kAnalaG kurukum

talaippaDu piLLaich cettena tanAatu

mInmaRap puNNum mennaDai azaie

kAnan mAlaik kAmar neJjam

tuyarpaTat tOnRum tolliruL ollena

payiRRinir pAnmaip paLiGkuTai nuNkaN

kuyiRRiya cilkatirp paTimaiya kATTi

nilavu kuvittanna nIniRa neDuGkaDal

pulavu nARum punnaiyam veNmaNal

kalavi nIttanna kanniyin pazandu

nAvAy maiyiTaip pirindanam

mEvA tuRaivan pARpaTu neJjE

கடலலைச் சேர்ப்ப கழிந்துபடு பாணாள்

வளையுதிர்ப் பசலை பொங்கு நுரை பூப்ப

அளைஇ ஆர்வமொடு கானலங் குருகும்

தலைப்படு பிள்ளைச் செத்தென தனாஅது

மீன்மறப் புண்ணும் மென்னடை அசைஇ

கானன் மாலைக் காமர் நெஞ்சம்

துயர்படத் தோன்றும் தொல்லிருள் ஒல்லென

பயிற்றினிர் பான்மைப் பளிங்குடை நுண்கண்

குயிற்றிய சில்கதிர்ப் படிமைய காட்டி

நிலவு குவித்தன்ன நீனிற நெடுங்கடல்

புலவு நாறும் புன்னையம் வெண்மணல்

கலவி நீத்தன்ன கன்னியின் பசந்து

நாவாய் மையிடைப் பிரிந்தநம்

மேவா துறைவன் பாற்படு நெஞ்சே.

This belongs to neydal tiNai (poetic topos of uncertain isolation symbolized by the landscape of seas). The tuRai (psycho-drama or the mental flow of the dialogues of the personae) of this poem is the exchange between the Lady and her friends.

To do a workable translation of this piece --

"The wasted day is about to end

Like waves of seas in strife with banks

The colourless pangs of separation

Loosen the bangles off the wrists

Abounding like ripples of wasted waves

Kuruku, the charming bird of sea-bed gardens

Always searching for its choicest preys

Forgetting fish walks indrawn in slow pace

As if bearing the first blossom of life.

My enchanting heart in gardens of this eventime

Should it suffer still more? Lo the darkness there

Coming in speed with speedy haste.

With photo lens of supreme quality

You who show the captured pics!

The blue long seas and heaps of moon-drop sands

Smelling dead fish now with wasted sands of punnai

Look pale and whitish bleached like a deprived virgin

My heart, alone here, separated

From The Lover sea-borne on that day."

(Of course I have to work a lot on this translation. You can see this link for the Tamil version and also for the two commentaries I have written on this, one general and another in lines of the South-Indian SriVaishnava mysticism. )

Srirangam V Mohanarangan

Passing Clouds

2009-10-02T20:42:00.001+05:30

Words are passing clouds

Men are hills, standing tall.

The clouds do cap the crests,

Becoming prone to pour.

But they, the clouds do drift,

heeding not the calls of hills.

Answer they the prayer

Of parched lands somewhere.

Clouds do reachback

To commune with hills and crests.

Again they hear the call,

Adrift away from persistent hills,

Towards thirsty lands somewhere

Or over dense forests on the way.

Hinduism the phenomenon vs 'Hinduism' the nomenclature

2009-09-30T23:35:00.001+05:30

Are you a Hindu? If asked in a stray meeting with someone our answer will be yes. Are you a Saivaite, a Vaishnavaite? Yes as the individual tradition may be, in which one is born. How do you say that you are a Hindu and at the same time say a Vaishnavaite or a Saivaite? This question has occurred to many outsiders. But for us this dual identity or more appropriately concentric identity comes natural. This is due to the unique cultural heritage we have inhered.

As persons belonging to the individual traditions, we follow the path we are born to with all the steadfastness and devotion. But as participants of the shared identity with the co- traditionists we study our own faiths and those of kindred traditions as radial ways to the same goal or serially inter - connected steps of development. We have not only a tradition of faith but also a heritage of knowledge. We uphold faith in our practice and knowledge in our self and communal understandings. The books of each tradition may concentrate and stress upon unique viewpoints. They may even sometimes openly exclude other traditions from the focus. But the arguments and weaving of meanings will be having a common backdrop of references. The intertextuality of the canonical books of various traditions makes the differences more of prevariations of the basic tunes. This hegemony of various traditions voicing their views in the backdrop of shared references and in the contexts structured by the intertextuality of the books characterise the phenomenon viz., Hinduism. This phenomenon is more than two millenia old, even though the nomenclature 'Hinduism' may be a recent one. Even Agamas were a punctuation of this 'phenomenon-processing'. It was this time-nurtured phenomenon which was voicing through Swami Vivekananda as 'the religious ideas of the Hindus.' As Sister Nivedita rightly puts it, 'when Swami Vivekananda ended his epoch-making speech, he has already chartered in so many precise terms Hinduism.

Why did Sri Ramanuja choose Paancharaatra over Vaikaanasa?

2009-09-27T14:08:00.001+05:30

In the great life of Sri Ramanuja, we find many moments of decision-making, which we will be unable to explain by contemporary contexts or what went ahead before him. His whole surrounding world would have been talking in one way whereas his voice was always having a take-off moment in-built in it. But the genius of the Master was his voice was always in harmony with the basic tune. So never his improvements were to be seen as breaking with the past. To put this in simple terms I will illustrate by the example of his choosing Paancharaatra over Vaikaanasa.

Both are agamas of Vishnu worship and both centre around temple complexes as instituting processes of the Divine Space. If it was simply for the sake of worship, then any Agama would have been handy. Especially when the concept of Kainkaryaa was in the process being understood as superior to the Karmic duties of the Varnaasrama dharmaa given any instance of having to choose one over another, preferring one Agama over another one would have been pointless. But exactly this moment of decision proves abundantly the unique genius of Sri Ramanuja. How? He had been having his vision fixed in future, when the Great Sri Vaishnava Sampradaya would comprehend the growing society of believers as participents of the same religion. He was having the vision about a Religious Community rather than merely maintaining the inhered status of the Vedic Dharma. Again his method was not cancelling or shedding off what had been inherited from the hoary past. His brilliant method was one of inclusion, by imbibing the essence of Vedic Dharma and extending the focus to accomadate new social formations and passionate personal transformations. 'One who excels in Devotion' began to occupy more enviable status than mere 'doer of Vedic injunctions'. The best Agama which suited the supreme futuristic vision of the Master was Paancharaatra rather than Vaikaanasa. Hence his preferrence.

Who is in there? --2

2009-09-27T11:59:00.001+05:30

The other day I was talking to a friend.

She was asking me

'how could you do that?'.

Well it is customary in my experience that people do ask me sometime or other this question. They have known me before. Based on that they have least expected that I will be able to do that. But really even I do not know that I can do somethings which I have done. Examples will be tedious. You can find one even from your own experience.

The point is why I can't be sure about myself.

Sometimes I am tempted to say, as I said to her on that day, 'Nowadays I am not able to predict or predicate anything of me. Rather I resist to rely on any of my own self-normations. If I am not sounding mystical I can say 'I am but a gatekeeper to the fellow inside, whom I don't know about except what he gives me to know.' The funny thing is the fellow inside is really -- me !

We are born to the knowledge we profess and we transcend the same in no time.
Right from the moment of birth somebody is writing the story -- from inside out and reading the scenario from outside in.

He is calling himself as he was and, so far, many identities have been changing over and over with time. A small boy with shorts kicking an imaginary football in a wayward pebble thru the streets, taking out the groundnut cookies from the trouser pockets and pelleting in as going along and singing some ditties and hooing back to the call of some buddies ---Is he the same script-writer, the one just now?

May be or may be not.

Who is in there?

2009-09-27T11:57:00.001+05:30

I am interested in thinking, in understanding me, my life and the world around. My whole life has been a persistent effort in those lines. In some way, if I have to say that I cannot become old, I am able to understand that it is true in some essential sense. My emotions are so valuable when I read them in the context of my personality. They bring it immediate, the animal, that is, me.

My aches, my desires, my pains, my pleasures make me so interesting and make the world so much classified. My reason is such a light, whether as science or philosophy or theoretical analysis
or analogous encoding of emotions. I remember me as a small boy in the West Chitra Street, Srirangam studying in Saraswathy Patasala elementary school, when I find myself immersed in Aristotelian philosophy or Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy or in sanskrit philosophical and logical nuances or facing the world geniuses of literature in intense moments of reading or doing poetry in fervent raptures of creation..

My insatiable curiosity is, who was then who has become now the person who could have been in there..! A boy, the son of Mr R Venugopal and Mrs Anasuya and a being who can understand that he can be afterall consciousness and could have been all along.. A place to understand this transmorphication if logged may be called Rangan's life, while yet the panting animal perseveres.

Srirangam memoirs

2009-09-27T11:52:00.001+05:30

'Srirangam is like any other town of heritage and tradition'--if you are able to say this I can only envy you, for, it is an impossibility with me. The whole town is so palpable and seems to speak from every stone and sing from every twig. 'I will rather be a stone inlaid on the steps towards your portals and enjoy the blissful sight of your sweet lips'---so sings the Kulasekara, the Alwar from the hilly regions of the South India. He was right given his involvement, drowned in the love of the Divine, reclining in between the two rivers, the Cauvery and the Kollidam.

See the original fervour of the Alwars and the Teachers like Alavandar, Ramanuja running thru the participants in the foray in the picture capturing a scene that happens every year in November-December on the 7th day of the Nights of ten - Iraap pattu. The occasion is about a theft that happened, involving one of the 12 Alwar saints of SriVaishnavism, viz., Thirumangai Alwar or Kaliyan or Parakaalan. This Kaliyan seems to have been a chieftain of the place Thirumangai before being chosen by the Divine Recliner in Srirangam, that is before becoming an Alwar and he was a terror to his enemies and also at times to the wealthy, plundering them to feed Vishnu's devotees, so it is told in the chronicles of old. Why he chose to become a militant communist for the cause of SriVaishnavism at those times is elusive and awaits careful analysis. But this anamoly between precepts and practice was perhaps brought home to him and he was put in proper tracks, it seems , as hinted by this story handed down thru tradition and the old chronicles.

The story is : Kaliyan, in his usual plundering spree, seems to have one day laid upon an unusual couple, newely wed and returning back with their retinue of relatives and matrimonially ceded wealth. The unique couple were unresenting in parting with their riches, much to the surprise of the waylayer. Ofcourse he had a lingering doubt that behind all these docility there may be afterall a play of magical charms or binding by mantras. But everything went ok and it could have been left at that. But it was not to be. While tying the final knot of flyoff, a ring at the finger, somehow seems to have escaped the scrutiny, was glinting as if mocking the expertise of decades. It was too much and the bridegroom at least could have volunteered. So smug He stands thinking he can make off with this jewel. But He seems to hesitate to part with even after threatening and smilingly suggests that he can take the ring if he can remove it from the finger. All this audocity and keeping cool, something is wrong from the start! But Kaliyan bent on his perfection even tried with his teeth to get a purchase on the slippery ring.

But in a moment,.... what happened to him?, something is wrong from the start, is it so ? , after all he may be wrong; only now everything is becoming ok, what am I doing all these days? why ? for what ? What is this change of mind that is happening? Is this person real ? or is he adept in some black magic or is it black magic or revealing magic of wisdom that I have been in search in vain all these days. Is he the one blessing me by the chance contact I ventured. So childlike he seems but this calmness and the sure air about him is something odd but I have to give it to him that he is bewitching.

Hey.. you..what mantra have you been chanting? come on... what is the magic? You can't move away without telling me. Suddenly I am loosing all the interests in my old ways and a change is coming over my mind. Comeon, tell me that mantra! That mantra,.. hey you!

The bridegroom beckoned him to come near, for, he can spell the mantra only in his ears, which should not be audible to others if at all it has to be effective. Reluctantly the plunderer went near his prey and lent his ears and the chronicle says that he never came away from that delicate vicinity and not only his ears but his all soul, mind, words and actions he dedicated to the mantra he heard at the decisive moment.

The chronicle says that it was the plunderer who became the plundered at last, plundered in more than one ways and pledged to new realisations, which he was postponing by himself all these days.

The overture just before the said moment is the kinesthetic foray that is captured by this picture[shot by Surendar]

http://thiruvarangan.blogspot.com/2005/12/blog-post_01.html

Homage To Aristotle

2009-09-27T11:13:00.001+05:30

He has erred in some places of his huge output. Men were not lacking in trying to adjust their burdens of debt by shifting over critically on his errors. But the change of shoulders underlines the debt rather than undermine it. Say whatever one likes, no one can deny the immense clearing he did in the field of methodology.

Last but not least, is his unassailable contribution of the law of identity, which says that the existence and the non-existence of anything can never be true in the same instant. Simple ! you think ! But do you know the whole logbooks of human destruction and repeated sacrileges on life and thought the world over can be zipped into a mere footnote of ignoring this seemingly tautological law. The more I study Indian systems of thought, western philosophies, logics of Nyaya and navya nyaya, the literary theories of the east and the west, systems of China and Persia, the intellectual output of Syrian, Hebrew, Arabic and Latin aristotelians of Middle Ages, the more I perspire in reverence towards this Master. He has taught me that this wide world is my home.

TWILIGHT

2009-09-14T02:38:00.002+05:30

Down the river on the banks
Walking with the doubting Sun behind
Donkeys being dutiful
Driven through the twilight to dark huts
Barbing birds were lisping
Blossoms of night
The spying wind beating through
The chatting river grows silent
Fish do hear a chant
Fearing the secretive sky
The lame clown is whistling forth
On the rails from bank to bank
An old song is calibrating
Memory through the empty space
The speakers cough the aged tunes
Rough pebbles make a quiet laugh
A silent thought is born
The east is at rest
Waiting for its morn.

ROOTS UP IN THE SKY

2009-09-14T02:31:00.002+05:30

The raging heart retaliates thunder

Shooting lightnings through the head

Breaking passes of brief meditations

Breathe the eternal air through time

Beneathe the yonder eye of heaven

Bellows of living begetting man

Brows of ape browsing the nadir

Furrowing through footprints in time

Fun in wars frolicking peace

Pun in progress prefacing destiny

We have come through ages past

With roots up in the sky

Aswattha thus spake the Divine

As we cyber-kins connect again

Connetting sparks of the Divine.

New Year Greetings with a child's artsmile

2007-12-31T00:35:00.000+05:30

When I visited my brother's daughter, a little child, she was entertaining me with her world of interests about the dragon fly sitting on the leaves of a tree, a garden lizard sleeping in its couch of mud hole in the ground, the caterpillar and oh a world, a world really, of things and concerns.!! How much I miss that world of little great concerns! When I started, she wanted to present me with an artwork of her, freshly penciled for my sake just before I came and this is that one. I am staring at this work, wondering what colors have gone into her language. Green, orange, yellow form one layer of her expression. Green margins the layers of pink and red on the bed of black. In between these a splash of thick blue and sky blue buffers the two statements. Yea, a New Year's greetings from a child's mind reads in me multi-meanings coloring suggestions again and again.

Textual deferrance on the Vision

2007-10-24T09:07:00.000+05:30

Vedanta talks of ' tat upanishat '. Here upanishat resolves into upa + ni + sat. 'Upa' is to be near. 'ni ' is before; 'sat' is to be. i.e. upanishat is to be in close proximity before or in front of. As a free adaptation we can say ' to be in close encounter with truth'. In the thought level we can say to approach truth is to do many levels of abstraction and attain the ultimate concept by removing the hiding layers of concreteness by the process of abstraction. When such a moment of conceptual realisation occurs, the Vedantins of the Forest-books always indicates such moments as ' this is upanishat'. We can say in other words that the concrete levels screened off the truth or the process of abstraction prepares the aspirant for 'seeing the truth'. This preparatory process consisted of ' hearing, thinking, meditating' -- sravana, manana, nidhidhyasanam --reading, studying, understanding and being totally involved in the concept.

The same epistemological formations were rolled into the concrete model of ' Archa ' , viz.,the temple. The physical screen delayed the vision and deferred the experience and in the mean time giving scope for reciting the canons. The text operates on the 'delay' and ' deference ' till the moment of ' vision' happens. Waiting for the vision is actually going thru the process of abstraction, which process is mapped out in the texts of the canon and hence going thru texts is expected to be of the rigor and value of the process of abstraction. Hence, the recitation of texts before the screen and before the vision. 'I know how to wait ' - so says the protagonist of the novel Siddhartha, by H.Hesse.' Be hungry, be alone, be awake ' so says the Tamil saint. Waiting is an art, not ofpatience, but of acceptance. To live with the creative tension of hope and possibility, and total acceptance of the given moment as an accomplished target calls for unique sensibilities of the soul. But only a poet knows how to loose the balance of mind during waiting, only to encash it as immortality of words.
Thirumangai Mannan, the robber-turned-saint of SriVaishnavism, in great hunger of the concrete visions of the Transcendent Divinity, explored all the templed spaces of theological fervor and in his go-around, he came to the place of Thiruvindalur. It was offtime for the vision, with the curtain postponing the DARSANAM--revelation. The saint became frustrated and in a shrugg-off he comments, ' Indalureerae ! vaazhndaepom neerae !! ' --' Thou Lord of the town Indalur ! Be like this foever rejoicing in thine own vision unto thyself [not giving me your Darsanam] '
Surely, it will not be for the reason that the temple gates are closed in the nonscheduled hours, that the saint is frustrated. But he is waiting in more than one level for the multiple visions of the abstract and his frustration is a way ofdilating the recessed meanings of the tension. The whole transaction of the saint is made unavailable to us not because of the opaqueness of the words, but because we may not enter the enclosure as we should. What we lack in the propriety and preparedness, we may make good by artful sharing of the words, which map out the tension and manipulate the vision.
This was an instance of a devotee already sharing by involvement the canonical space created by faith and textual attributions. To see another instance of a poet proper entering the hyper space of devotion in his own right as a man of poetry, and waiting at the threshold of vision and meeting a like situation of deferred DARSANAM,

' Open the gate, thou gate keeper !God of the wheel and Lord of the oceancommitted ourselves to Him, by devotion,dipping in births daring ports at last , at the edge of time, before the turn around before the towering bell turns the clockwe have entered the portals rich, And open the gates longlive. '[aazhi iraivarkkae aatpattu yaam palkaal paazhir piravi patindhu thurai pukunthu, oozhikkadai naalin ongu mani vaayililae vaazhi ivann adaindhom, vaayiloi ! thaall thirravaai]---tr. of a verse of Thiruloka Seethaaram.

Here the poet awaits confirmation rather than the vision. For him, the vision has been already vouchsafed by the poetic perception of the plural possibilties of the word and the world in tandem. Here he is trying to attain the abstract certainty of the poetically epistemical ' visions' he lodged at the outset.

Some musings on the sonnets of Shakespeare

2007-10-24T09:04:00.000+05:30

I was translating some sonnets of Shakespeare into Tamil. I was wondering why the bard thought it so important to advice a young man like me to marry without fail and to impress on the mind of the lad the sanctity of wedding and begetting. Was it perhaps to himself? Was it a soliloquy? Naturally talking about marriage engenders considerations of immortality and furtherance of life which otherwise ends with the individual. People have speculated long about the dark lady, the young man, even a Lord and what not. But why a poet like Shakespeare should dilate so much on a predominantly prevalent theme like marriage for a total length of say 156 or 154 sonnets? I am trying to read in between lines and attempting various interpretations but the persistant mystery seems to be evading.
'Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spendUpon thyself thy beauty's legacy?Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,And being frank she lends to those are free.Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuseThe bounteous largess given thee to give?Profitless usurer, why dost thou useSo great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?For having traffic with thyself alone,Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,What acceptable audit canst thou leave?Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee,Which, used, lives th' executor to be'
Was it death or progeny or pragmatic sensibilty which prompted W.S. or none of these but something else? I am having my mind open to any chance hints or insights from the poem or anywherelse.

Who is inside?

2007-10-24T09:01:00.000+05:30

The other day I was talking to a friend. She was asking me 'how could you do that?'. Well it is customary in my experience that people do ask me at some time or other this question. They have known me before. They do not expect from that knowledge that I will be able to do that. But really even I do not know that I can do somethings which I have done. Examples will be tedious. You can replace any thing from your experience. The point is why I can't be sure about myself. Sometimes I am tempted to say, as I said to her on that day that 'Nowadays I am not able to predicate anything of me. Rather I am not able to be believing any of my own self definitions. To sound mystical I can say 'I am but a gatekeeper to the fellow inside, whom I don't know about except to the extent that he gives me to know about.' The funny thing is the fellow inside really is me !We are born to the knowledge we profess and we transcend the same in no time.Right from the moment of birth somebody is writing the story from inside out and reading the scenario from outside in. He is calling himself as he was and has been so far many identities changing over and over with time. A small boy with shorts kicking an imaginary football in a wayward pebble thru the streets, taking out the groundnut cookies from the trouser packets and pelleting in as going along and singing some ditties and hooing back to the call of some buddies---is he the same script writer as one just now? May be may be not.

FIRE, the early love of Man

2007-10-24T08:53:00.000+05:30

Fire, the old friend of man, is even now fresh and interesting to look at. Manifold forms of energy have not made this raw guest in any way less wonderful. But what was his reception in the days of old when darkness, dampness and dangers from the wild were making his absence acutely felt. He was a God once ! Now may be a utility. Who can access those primordial times and see his world, where men and cattle worshipped him devoutly? If at all we can do that, I think it should be through Rig Veda, the oldest log of subjective reactions to the outside world and the symbolising initiatives toward the abstractions. This god Fire, or Agni as he was called in Rig Vedic times enjoyed not only worship but also teasing and humour at the hands of the devotees.

In R.V.10.79 he is portrayed as a magnificient immortal making visible his might among the mortals. Do you know his might? With a touch of humour the poet says, "he is of two jaws rent asunder, devouring everything in without masticating anything". A glutton impatient even to chew!

His head is in a cavern safely sheltered off. His eyes are wide, viewing all. His tongue gulps in even a forest without chewing. So naturally the worshipper is doubly careful! He stands at a safe distance and raises his two hands up away from the touch of his tongues and offers oblations.

Not only that. He is born of the mother earth. But how he ravages her creeping over her as a child and swallowing trees and even licking out the hidden roots in her crevices.
He was made from the two logs of wood churned to friction. Once he is born, the Fire devours the parents! The poet makes a dig at Fire saying "see! I am so devoted to my parents and respect them. And I am only a mortal. But this one, he devours his parents immediately when he is born and He is called Immortal!"

The poet asks this god, "what wrong, what sin you have committed among the gods, that you are let down like this on the earth here to hunt for your food over dale and vale?"

The symbolisation and the subjective interaction with a primordial natural element being so much suffused with bristling humour speaks of that age in a modern tone and makes credible the possibility of not only fear and mystery, but also humour and certainty and subjective gregariousness with the greater questions of life being the initial conditions of theology.

Homer, the bard of the Mediterranean

2006-11-05T09:08:00.000+05:30

Tigris, Euphrates, Nile all these sisters abound around the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Reared between the cradling arms of the two rivers rose and fell the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilisations. The heaving of the Nile still keeps the beat for the steps of the Egypt however much it may be in a low key. Peeping beyond 4000 BCE all these have poured their fertility into the rise of the Achean, mingled with the Dorian to shape the wonder Greece. Another strain of undulating richness was Crete, from 3000 BCE, beaten down and blossoming up before spreading out to the Argos and towards North into the Troy. All these riches and pains transform themselves into the rarefied realms of literary expression in Homer. Why did he sing that long song? Why does the cock crow at the break of dawn? When Nature brings together certain things, teleology becomes our pet faith. May be we can say, Troy was a sore in the trade links across the Black sea, putting a toll-gate and taxing the plyers dear. And so the Achean confederation joined hands and jumped on the pretext of Helen abducted to put the Troy in its place or if possible, out of the picture. May be it was the reason and may be not. But Homer sings of the trade between the divine and the human, the prehistoric and the historic, the civilisation and the culture or the unconsciuos civilisation and the conscious civilisation. He stands at the juncture and raises his song, the poetic statement at once abysmal and commonplace, ethereal and everyday, superhuman and streetly. I am at an epic in Tamil about Man and hence sojourns with the masters of the word.

Philosophical fallouts of the blocking of the blogs

2006-08-19T20:15:00.000+05:30

Sometime back the blogger, the geocities and some other blog hosts were blocked for the Indian viewers. Mine was not visible to me as a surfer. My friends and readers were finding it difficult to access. Of course net-wise people were able to circumvent the problem. But after that I lost my enthu in blogging for the various philosophical ruminations I had been having from that instant. Of course you can say it was restored weeks back and wonder why I should mourn over it even now. I could have taken it in my strides and become happy to internetact with my readers. But the philosophical overtones of the issue bother me even now. Just over the past couple of days I am recovering from that stupor and you can take this as a net-soliloquy, this what I am blogging.

Now what are the philosophical issues I am referring about? First it concerns about the age old value of 'freedom of expression'. Of course as any social issue, 'freedom of expression' can't exist in a vacuum. There is a context always as of any social issue. At the same time no context can be justification enough to cause harm to 'the freedom of expression'. Now in this certain questions can be asked, viz., 'whose expression?', 'whose freedom?'. An anti social element, by the very act that that person has chosen to become enimical to the society as such, has excluded himself/herself from the extense of the operation of the right towards 'freedom of expression'. All the values become meaningful only when the basic foundation-value, viz., LIFE, is unambiguously cherished and actively upheld or atleast not forsaken by thought, word and deed.

The block was said to be caused at the instant of the anti-social activities of some miscreants who were using the blogging for their nefarious acts. Of course as a responsible citizen one has to cooperate with understanding and patience on such occasions. But the block was not of those blogs alone and the time of block-out was not discriminate on purely the basis, to identify the anti-social-content-blogs. Instead the fiasco seems to have resulted from the lack of communication or miscommunication or misunderstanding that resulted from the transactions between the government and the ISP companies. And bloggers had to take it to the notice of the authorities concerned repeatedly and drive home to them what has resulted among the IT public. And of course the government was good enough to clarify the issue and sort it out at last. But that which bothers me is the lack of trepidation on the part of the people or institutions who tread on the people's freedom, knowingly or unknowingly. Actually what should have happened is that the government should have issued a request to the people to bear with the temporary measures taken at the stated instant and the ISP companies should have issued apologies for trampling on the freedom of the innocent bloggers and net-readers inadvertently. I don't know if any such thing happened. As a matter of fact it was blocked and as a matter of fact it was lifted and left at that. Such lack of respect towards the sacredness of the freedom of expression of the innocent citizens defies any attempt of justification or rationalisation. But even these grave ethical lecuna can be kept in abeyance in a climate of terror and anti-social havoc. But now or later, these issues have to be addressed consciously by statesmen, law makers and political scientists. These public ethical issues of grave lacuna are like fissures in the body politic of social confidence, which if left unattended to, weakens the structure in due course. Let us hope our social conscience never sleeps on such issues.

But my dampening spirits were not due to this aspect alone. It goes much deeper in that thinking that such an innocent field of information highway is put to use to causes of pure destruction, a sort of dejection sets in. What this evil, should it be always sharing the tools of life and thought of humanity? Evil has no existence of its own, then where from it retains its strangle hold repeatedly in the history of humanity? The philosophical pop up of the issue teases the understanding and sometimes the misdirected ardour becomes callous enough not to notice the ethical concerns.

Translating the divine girl

2006-07-09T08:47:00.000+05:30

karuviLai oNmalarkAL ! kAyA malarkAL !
thirumAl uruvoLi kAttukinRIr,
enakku uyvazhakku onRuraiIr
thiruviLaiyAtu thiNtOL thirumAliruchOlai nambi
varivaLai ilpukunthu vanthipaRRum vazhakkuLathE !
(nAchchiyAr thirumozhi 9.3)

Lovely blossoms of karuviLai !
Flowers of kAyA !
You are showing me the complexion
Of ThirumAl's shining form.
Tell me a way to survive.
The great Lord, full and complete, of ThirumAlirunchOlai
Whose shoulders strong are the playful prop
Of the goddess of wealth, Thiru.
Is it just for him to enter our house
And snatch my lovely lined bangles by force?

When I read this to a friend, his ready comment was, 'it's too literal, do something about it !'. What is too literal and what is in proper idiom changes with the language.
Here, 'showing me the complexion of thirumAl's shining form' tries to translate the original, 'thirumAl uruvoLi kAttukinRIr'. The flowers kAyA and karuviLai, left untranslated with cognate names in English are addressed by the implied speaker as resembling thirumAl in complexion by means of their color and shine.

'ThirumAlirunchOlai nambi' of the original indicates the deity in the temple of the place, ThirumAlirunchOlai. The word 'nambi' means 'one who is full of good qualities,
accomplishments and exceedingly noble'. This word 'nambi' plays a vital role in suggesting a subtle humour to the poem. But the translation is yet to catch that humour.

'whose shoulders strong are the playful prop of the goddess of wealth, thiru' by being overly literal goes too awry from the passing of the proper mood and sense of the original, 'thiruviLaiyAdu thiNdOL'.

What is 'snatching one's bangles by force' as per the target idiom of English?

So the target language changes the poem and the translation, if successful, is but a deception. But this deception has to be made efficient in communicating the original, however. Shall we attempt at a deception now?

karuviLai ! kAyA !
Oh! you flowers and blossoms
of shine and color !
Form of ThirumAl you resemble,
Can you suggest me a way to survive?
The God of ThirumAlirunchOlai,
so noble is He and so strong-shouldered,
Thiru, the goddess of riches, ever rejoices in Him.
Is it right on His part to force His way into our home
And snatch everything, including the bangles on my wrist?

Victor Hugo

2006-06-18T10:10:00.000+05:30

It is just amazing what an appeal the French giant is able to make even now. Of course many criticisms have been levelled against Hugo to the effect that the writer is sometimes inordinately eloquent and the interludes become books by themselves so that the reader is left at largesses to manoeuver his way back to the link in the story. But, for myself, I found these interludes very interesting. And moreover as a man of India, southern Tamilnad, in Srirangam I had already been exposed to the epical styles in Ramayana and Mahabharatha and as a result Hugo found his peers in my reception of reading. More so, I think he was writing about the universal men in his characters, which justified perhaps the wide strokes he tended to make quite often. But how can he remain so gripping in his story telling, all the while so abstract in his philosophical observations. A good story telling means being attentive to the particulars and to match this with intense abstractions running to pages and more than that, altering between these two quite often. No wonder I call him a giant.

After I joined my job, the first thing I did was to buy a copy of Penguin Les Miserables and take that to Neyveli where my father was staying at that time and to read out to him pages after pages of cherished text-places. A transport of interests between father and son! Especially I remember the first scene where the priest goes into the woods to meet the renegade, dying of old age but still a terror in the quarters. One thing I found in Victor Hugo was in his novels the arguments and dialogues do act and do act right before your very eyes. I have found this talent in rare instances, may be a couple of them, right now the one other novelist coming to mind is Ayn Rand.
Another feature of Hugovian novels is the choice and the volitional thrust of decisions, which the characters make. The articulations of the deciding process are phenomenal.

Poetry

2006-05-06T00:39:00.000+05:30

The world has become too strange to poetry.
Poetry has to blossom in the person and become contagious.
Poetry can never become prose or its substitute
Infirmity in poetical perception covertly touts prose in its place
Poetry always happens
taking inputs from unforeseeable quarters
Poetry is creative irregularity
madness of connotation
A conflagration of words and meanings
Never a guided tour
Being a venture into unchartered regions

Philosophizing

2006-05-06T00:38:00.000+05:30

The intrinsic nature of any thing, characteristic, quality, movement, anything existing is called its tatvam in sanskrit. In Aristotilian parlance it is the qua being description of any 'existant'.(is there a word like this I don't know). Opinions, notions, and feelings thrust on us a streaming worldview, continuosly changing, but gripping all the while it lasts. We can become a plaything in the operation of such adhoc factors, we do become in the start and the run, if we don't recurrently take to active understanding by analysis and integration. This phase-lag between streaming concoction of world-views and the tested structuring of knowledge should not become too much. The process that helps clear this lag is what is called Tatva Vicharam or analytical grasp of reality.

Shakespeare for the stage

2006-05-06T00:35:00.000+05:30

Shakespeare is so well suited for the stage that without stage we understand Shakespeare poorly and Shakespeare so well illuminates the stage. When my father (R Venugopal) used to tell me that the Bard always had the stage in his mind whether he wrote about social, historical, philosophical themes or any situation for that matter. I thought then that was an overstatement intended as an highliter. But more and more I come to see that was merely a statement of fact.
I am doing some pieces for monoacting to upload to the sites and the Internet Archive and I have already uploaded some items, say, Shylock, Hamlet and some pics of my father on stage in the Shakesperian roles. My own acting acts as an interpretation for the play to me myself. Yea, my Dad was afterall right and it seems more and more true that the Bard lives in the acting rather than in the folios.

Ayn Rand's appeal to a young mind

2006-04-25T20:53:00.000+05:30

Life is interesting basically as an evolving structure out of elements external and internal. It is not only that the external world alone changes, but also the internal factors as well. The world as such, as the subsisting field of successive changes, maintains a continuity, thereby posting a changeless aspect in the epistemic level. The changes are interesting and again the reality to which these changes are chronicled is also interesting.

The child born before becoming the boy grown passes thru various models of outside world finished as per the active faculties during the time. But at no point it seems to be an incomplete world, not withstanding the fact that the completion is actually filling up by imagination, wishful thinking, feelings and opinions. The self-narrative about oneself seems always to demand a correlating cogent world picture. In a way it can be compared to the cocoon wrapping itself by the nest. But reality is always at work in breaking this pseudo totality and holding up the fragmentations to the attentive mind. The mind which resents such corrective measures of reality refrains from being attentive.

These abstractions were concretised in my instance many times and more volubily on the occasion of my chance reading of Ayn Rand. Born in the SriVaishnavaite family, in the theological complex of Srirangam surroundings, my initial conditions were in spiritual terms. Of course my father was a window to the rational and cultural world outside. And also in Srirangam, as it is any temple town of South India, religion chooses to be a bystander rather than a wayblocker. It is never thrust from outside but is active as an inclination from culturally inhered inside. Not only Vaishnavism, but the mother goddess worship at Tiruvaanaikkaval, very near to Srirangam and the Shiva worship in the same place, the neo literary movement at Trichy, my father's drama-overtures, a materialism prevalent in the surroundings, in the general walk of life contrasting the ritualistic patterns of religious activities, atheism discussed in the same veins of theistic dialogues, sexual concerns in the context of social taboos---all these and many more form part of the initial conditions. In this context I was an early riser, so to say, that is my philosophical quest started early, when I was around 14 and took me to various systems of thought SriRamakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Sankara, Aurobindo, Sri Ramana and many more. Sanskrit studies and Vedic studies coupled with western philosophy provided many hours of contemplation. Sexual fantasies came in as jarring interludes seeming to mock me down each time I began to cherish myself as highly rarefied. After reading Vivekananda I spent many days and long hours in deciding which was my path Jnana(knowledge), Bhakthi(devotion), Yoga(meditation) or combination of these. What was the value of logic and reason, what was reality? So many issues and so many forks to decide. Ramana's 'I' enquiry method seemed to have a lasting effect. I used to comment that the approach was so clean.

At that time during 1979,1980 in the clinic of the railway doctor Dr Kasi Viswanathan, one day we were having our usual chats on spiritual topics and we went from the clinic to his quarters. There he was having a copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, the back cover containing the words 'metaphysical novel'. I was exclaiming about it and the Dr was saying that it was suggested by one of his friends and it had remained with him for a long time unread and that I was welcome to take it and read it, provided I returned it at the earliest. Just as a curiosity I took the book home and began to read it. The book talked, the ideas conversed, the concepts changed and I was a different man with clear concepts. I didn't know about Ayn Rand prior to my reading the novel and her best was the first I read and it was the profile of the novelist also to me. Only later I came to know her bios and other non-fiction books. Immediate to Atlas Shrugged I hunted for Fountainhead and really worlds could open. Novel, as a genre, has its own magic, that apart, this novel was breaking all magic and appealed only to reason. The reality of a novel generally tries to smoothen the issues of the outside reality by way of its narration. But this novel was doing the exact reverse. It made the issues of the outside reality severely acute, thru all the challenges of full force to the thinking mind and no prop this novel was allowing between man and his reason. Such ruggedness in a novel and breaking all the parameters of the genre, this novel, it is beautiful only if you think. All my religious and spiritual ideas went a radical change and I had to once again redefine myself in terms of the new understanding. Oh! how many times I had to do it in my quest and at no other time it was so shockfully down to earth and truthfully deep into philosophy.

Voicesnap or mind-connect

2006-04-07T23:48:00.000+05:30

Recently I came across a very good utility in the way of a voice mail i.e. voicesnap. The whole idea seems to be based on the premise that instead of written or typed or keyedin text the spoken word can be directly the message carrier as the audio mail. Just like email they have given all the functions like send, forward, reply, organize into folders, address book, cc&bcc facilities.

Of course since it is basically audio, the usual functions of stop, pause, record are all there. But I couldn't find fforward and backward being given. But since the time of audio mail i.e. voice mail at present is 3mts these ff bck may not be all that needed now. But in future with the time slots offered in longer durations, these additional keys ff bck may be helpful. At present u have inbox, sent items, deletion of unwanted mails and a space accompanying each voice mail where u can enter text as usual to travel along with voice. For chatting and message conveying this 3mts strip may be enough. But for this voicesnap to be used more effectively in managerial communications, literary outputs, group activity on literary and cultural themes, a longer strip will be ideal.

Another good feature of this voicesnap is the offline facility it offers. Even when the internet is not connected, u can simply accumulate your voicemails of 3mts quota into the outer box. On the first instant of internet connection the mails will be Qed out to the to-addresses automatically. Of course as an additional feature u can use send/receive tab on the top right to ensure all mails are sent or received.

A utility seemingly so simple and so effective bespeaks much thought and attention by the developers, all the while remaining a freeware. When I contacted Mr Ganesh Padmanabhan, his enthu to make this voicesnap more versatile and vigorous was indicative of the team work behind. I tender my cheers for the team's success.

TALKING TO MYSELF

2006-03-17T13:52:00.000+05:30

Nachiketas to death:- 'Some say there is being after death and some say there
is no being after death. Only you know better. Tell me the reality.'

All these days I have been busy creating audio files of some scenes from Shakespeare monoacted and uploading them in ourmedia/my blog and in srirangamgroup and publishing by cc in Internet Archives. These audio files are great and I learnt a lot in the process, like recording, file formats, conversions, compressions and sound quality. Mp3 seems to be a great format in portabilty. I found that converting mp3 into au and again back to mp3 reduces the file size. May be this is valid or maybe not. But recordig in files comes great in quality, matching studio recordings even though I was doing it in just home conditions.

But I was thinking about another aspect during this escapade into innovative learning. That is, all right, we are storing texts, audios, videos of our self and what remains is concrete flesh and tangible touch. Say, Virtual Reality comes to stay as a viable format for movements to be saved in terms of files and made portable. Then only this concrete form will be remaining unfilized and unported. But the environment for experience and reaction to simulated stimuli will give rise to revisions in aesthetics and artistic and epistemological perceptions. In VR environment you are acting in a simulated reality, which is true to your perception and you can counterdict the reality of the VR environs only by the thinking, memory and inference while all the time your perception trying to negate your recapitulative proofs. Popularity of VR may be distanced in time but the possibilty has become immediate. So, what of the self survives the 'filization' of cyber-space-continuum, may be the actual core of being. If nothing survives then Philosophy has to start anew with the question 'what is being?'.

My father doing different face reactions somehow pops up in my mind at this time.
Maybe, the father provides the initial environ of reality in the beginning of childhood. He is the reality made palatable and comfortable to the infant.
May be the mother tones up the bearabilty. Hence I think the thoughts about the environs of reality spurs up the system to link to initial conditions and reaches back and forth in weaving meaning between change points.

Now an idea crops up. What if man becomes able to survive in terms of files and formats? This is a childish question, ofcourse, but it's tempting to get asked and perhaps jams with many cross questions or even pseudo-ones. The old question can even be reformatted into 'Is a human being the hardware or the software?'. The old form is ' body or mind '

Bhagavath Vishayam the great book

2006-02-20T23:01:00.000+05:30

In 1877 ThiruvAymozhi with 5 commentaries and 10 more books subsidiary to the commentaries were published in the Telugu script while the language of the work remained in Tamil. This came to be referred, for many decades by lineage of masters and disciples, as ' the Bhagavath Vishyam the great book'. It was a 10-volumed set of atlas- size pages. The book layout was unique in that any verse quoted carried its full meaning and the relevant commentary in a separate window in the very same page so that the students at work need not be distracted in searching for relevant text-places and respective books. The Telegu-script edition was begun to be transcripted into Tamil in 1916 with only the first two volumes covering 200 songs having come out so far as far as I have seen. [some say 3 volumes did come out] This is the title page of the first volume published in the year 'aananda', i.e., 90 years before. When this mega-project in Tamil got stuck up with the 2nd or 3rd volume, in 1925 a much sized down edition, leaving much of 'arumpathams'[meanings on commentaries], the window layout of extracoverage of the quotes and other subsidiary materials, came out from Triplicane, printed at Noble Press. It is the famous set that ruled the market for nearly three decades usually referred to as ' the edition of S.Krishnamachariar and V.M.Satakoparamanujachariar'. In 70s the mega-edition was again taken up by the editor of Sri Vaishnava Sudharsanam, Sri U. Ve. S.Krishnaswamy Iyengar, this time with much editorial vision and critical acumen. But again the project got stranded with 300 songs and the rest was made up by the photo-offset reprint of the sized down 1925 edition for the remaining 700 songs, as a compromise. But the mega project is still live, as I heard and making slow progress. Why can't the Vaishnava community as a whole take inspiration from the following instance and earn the pride of acheivement.

I remember to have heard a piece of information regarding the Telugu edition of 1877. It was proof-corrected by 7 old ladies, steeped in devotion and tradition and the printing errors that have escaped their fervent eyes in the extant 4800 big pages seem to be of only single digit number. Proof-correctors the world over may like to salute in their honour for a second.

NammAzhvAr in 1916 line drawing

2006-02-20T22:20:00.000+05:30

SriVaishnavism is the religion worshiping God Vishnu as the Supreme Deity in the method as advocated by Sri, Lakshmi to Vishvaksena. This method is handed down thru Agamas. In Agamas regional languages are given importance and license to be used for worship. In Tamil regions from the first millenium AD many mystic-devotees called AzhvArs began to sing on SriVishnu in Tamil. Their songs put together came to be called Four Thousand Divine Compositions, 'nAlAyira Divyaprabandham'. AzhvArs are 12 in number and NammAzhvAr is the central and primemost. His main work is called 'ThiruvAymozhi', The Blessed Utterances. He was a child genius and right from his birth he was immersed in ecstasy and meditation under a tamarind tree in Alwarthirunagari in Tirunelveli dt. some fifteen centuries ago. The scribe for his occasional outpourings was Madhurakavi and the book was lost in the passing of time. The master who recovered the book along with a new set music choreographed to be sung in temples by a lineage of maestros called 'araiyars' was Nathamuni. Later in 11th cent AD SriRamanuja brought into focus of Vedantha the significance of Tamil Saint's work and fostered it by expounding at length to the disciples and commissioning a disciple to write a commentary on ThiruvAymozhi in the mixed language of Tamil and Sanskrit. What began with that commentary became a commentorial tradition spanning some 300 years of rich layered age of hermeneutics and involved exposition of engaged exegesis.

Study Tours to Srirangam -- II

2006-02-16T22:20:00.000+05:30

Our study tour to Srirangam was not only across spaces but also across time. I had to take the troupe to travel towards that past ethos with all that I had learned till then. People who were perched in the present cares had to feel the past responsibilities in all their total bearing to the future. I was not only accessing the past by way of study but also entering the future by way of interpretation and actually, all these happening thru creative imagination in the present. I taught my troupe, learned with them, and knew from them. What I taught to them was philosophical, what I learned with them was cultural and what I knew from them was reactional, in the sense, how the text is received by the current pocket of active listeners, no matter if they are not previously exposed.

I feel even now in vivid fibre the pristine occasion of my friend, Mr. T. Ramesh, one day announcing to me that the whole set of Bhagavath Vishayam, the 5- fold commentaries with ancient notes to the greatest of the 5 commentaries, viz., Idu, recorded by Vadakkuththiruveethip Pillai with no loss of even a syllable, whatever he was hearing from his master Nambillai expounding on the 1000 songs of ThiruvAimozhi, by NammAzhvAr --- was available as a free gift to me from his paternal aunt, who is the daughter-in-law of Mr. Ethirajulu Chettiar. I became impatient of the passing half an hour till we reached her house in Saidapet. She was so joyous to meet me, for the reason that she was thankful that I was able to link back Ramesh to the cherished heritage, kept up so fondly by Mr. Ethirajulu Chettiar, who was a disciple of Sri U. Ve. P.B. Annangarachariyar of Kancheepuram. They perhaps saw the Chettiyar alive again in my friend. To see such occasions of homecoming, psychologically and culturally and maybe ideologically gives unique instances of joy, with great flux of currents passing across generation gaps, eventing comradaries across times.

Now, what are these?, commentaries, Nammaalvaar, Bhagavath Vishayam, and such peculiar sounding names may be to your ears and a whole culture that has evolved around a text and sustains itself by active hermeneutics of the same even now. I will explain all these in another entry on ensuing occasions. Till then let it suffice that the picture shows the frontispage of the sthalapurana of Alwarthirunagari or Thirukkurukoor, in the Thirunelveli Dt, renowned as the birthplace of Nammaalvaar.

STUDY TOURS TO SRIRANGAM -- 1988 (CONTD)

2006-01-10T22:42:00.000+05:30

The first
photo is the
Thai Car
festival in
Srirangam.
I am giving my
Tamil poem
on the Temple Car in my Tamil Blog entry. The poem visualizes the Car or ThEr, as it is called in Tamil, as the symbolic form of the social communion of the whole society with its own values. It exhorts all and sundry to participate not only now but always in order to make meaningful and total the topographical filling of one's existence.

The second photo is a rare pic of the Shakespearean play
Merchant of Venice staged by my father and Prof C.S.Kamalapathi in aid of The Boys High School, Srirangam in
1980s.

See the lively action arrested in some ancient architect's work of an elephant being tamed!

Last one above is fundamental to the mythology of the Temple Town, Srirangam.
Srirangam temple is called in tradition as the Ikshvaaku Kuladhanam. The story
dates itself from the times of SriRaamaa, who on his coronation finals gave away
important gifts to his friends and associates in the hardtimes and the war. Vibheeshanaa, the brother of Raavanaa of SriLanka, was given a special gift of the
family tutelary deity of Ikshvaaku kulaa, viz., SriRanganaathaa. Vibheeshanaa chose this
place to consecrate the Deity and built the temple around. The local story is that
Vibheeshanaa comes even now in the mid of night, unseen to worship the Lord of the Lords, PERIYA PERUMAAL . In the snap shot of a statue on a pillar of Sesharaayar
Mandapam, Vibheeshanaa is portrayed as carrying the Divine Casket, perhaps towards Srirangam.

STUDY TOURS TO SRIRANGAM -- 1988

2006-01-10T19:43:00.000+05:30

About 1988 or so we went on consecutive study tours to

Srirangam
and other
places.
Srirangam
the headqrs
of theology
was our
favourite
roosting
place,
where each
was unto
his own
visions
and
understandings sought. SriRamanuja was becoming our
obsession. On the right you see the Math, where Udaiyavar
(SriRamanuja) stayed in the 11th centAD. Myself, Mahendran
and Ramesh from left to right are seen before the gate. Our
official fotographer was Raghuraaman seen in the picture left with the red shirt, myself, Ramesh, Mahendran on the backs of an excavated piece of elephantine
architecture, may be symbolic of our reexcavating the understanding of SriVaishnavism to ourselves.

In the first large picture myself, Raghu and Ramesh are seen with the committed couple of SriVaishnavism Sri U.Ve.Krishnaswami Iyengaar, Sri Vaishnava Sudharsanam.

VENU AND THIRULOKA SITHARAM

2006-01-07T18:30:00.000+05:30

It was a day of Naachiyaar Thiruk kolam* in Srirangam. It was the later part of 1970s. The Tamil poet, Thiruloka Seethaaram and other friends visited my father, nearing dusk. When refreshments were over, talks wandered here and there; topics were changing and discussions cropped up to dissolve in further musings.

My father was ever a terrible conversationalist and table talks were always lively whenever he was around. Slowly the drift was towards Shakespeare. My father commented that without the help of commentators like Bradley and others, it was always difficult to understand the Bard and hence the perrenial value of annotations on Shakespeare.

Thiruloka Seethaaram, a man of original thinking and independent development, sprang on the moment and countered my father saying, " how can you say that ? has the poet written directly for you or for any mediator to expound to others ? what are these commentators? throw them ! go to the poet directly ! labour pains and poetic strains can never be had by proxy." My father was a man never yielding to a point in arguments. Nothing was sacro- sanct and nobody towered high when he began to charge with his battery of arguments. He immediately countered back the Poet saying, " all such arguments are ok with regard to geniuses like yourself. But what of the common run and less endowed like us who need some prompting at least. Immediately the piece of soliloquy in Hamlet, ‘to be or not to be’, was taken as a test piece and analysed .

After some time other friends who were there were already feeling a little sleepy and assumed all sorts of resting postures. But the two concerned were not aware of the passing time, it was already 11 pm, and with recurrent renewal of energy were going on. Thiruloka Seethaaram was arguing that all commentaries were a waste standing in between the text and the reader. The text can and should speak for and by itself, that Prof. C S Kamalapathi, who was my father’s friend and guide in dramas had exploited the emotional involvement of my father and injected such slavish dependency on the commentators. ( I was wondering how my father would retort to that) But my father took it in his strides and replied , “ not so ..the said Professor out of sympathy for the students that they need not unnecessarily waste time on already clarified aspects has brought to the knowledge of us such foregone efforts, and thereby we can start from others’ endpoints. It is the natural way of growth, to learn, to accumulate lessons learnt and pass it on to the coming generations. Where the forerunners stumbled there the light for the later is lit. The ways of the excfeptional cases like the poet do but stress the natural process and never disprove it. At last it was half an hour past midnight and the two came to a halt of mutual appreciation , accepting to disagree . I remember it vividly even now as a battle of giants.

*Nachiyar Thirukkolam --In Srirangam temple during the month of November-December a festival of recitation of the whole corpous of 4000 divine hymns of Alwars is conducted for the past 1500 years. In the middle of the 21 days long festival comes Vaikunta Ekadasi, on which day the Deity himself act out the role of a religious aspirant towards salvation. The day previous to that , the Deity adorns himself as the goddess consort, Nachiyaar( the Lady of the divine household). It is called Nachiyar Thirukkolam- in the Guise of the Lady.
*my father-R.Venugopal

RARITIES AND PRIORITIES -- I

2006-01-01T20:54:00.000+05:30

The child on the tiny
bench is my father(Venu)
and the child on the
tricycle is Daram. These
jpg rarities belong to the
1930s and 1940s respy.
These two kids chose
Drama as their priority of
their prime time and you
can see them in action,
one with the striped coat,
right to the umbrella is
my father Venu and the
one with the coat in the next but right extreme is Meenakshisundaram or dramatically Daram. The
amateur-artists' committment in their hobby is visible in the unison
of action and reaction and the thematic focus in the kinesthetic
forefront of the stage, which is a bit difficult unless you know and feel the art in yourself.

VENU, THE MARVEL

2005-12-30T18:55:00.000+05:30

Drama was the extrovert front of Venu’s talents. His introvert mode of aesthetic realization was with poetry in the form of say, reading closely Kamba Ramayanam with the exegetical interpretations of Sri Vai.Mu.Ko swamy . I still remember the nascent glee when he bought the Sundara Kandam, Kamba Ramayanam with VMG’s urai in the Nambillai sannidhi in the south gate Srirangam. ‘Aandakai aandu av vinnnor Thurakka naadu arukil kandaan’—‘the manly one then beheld there the yonder world of heaven celestials well nigh to his watchful gaze’ so began the SK and there began my coaching in expounding Kamban on stage. Twenty hymns with the VMG’s explanations were targeted to my memory to be recited and narrated at any time on demand. A following Sunday found us in Dr. Vas’ stores in Thennur in the house of Sami Periyappa(eldest of my father and his brothers) I still hear the baritonical gurgling laugh which greeted me at the threshold. After a hot coffee I was commissioned to do an extempore exposition of Kamban - in – memory . Dr. Vas was jubilant and immediately commissioned all the inmates of the stores. There were ‘aahaas’ and ‘see this small boy’ in liberal measure.

The forum informal then reminiscenced about the days when my father was one of the inmates when he was a bachelor. There were lot of stories for the picking. For instance, there was the story about one Brhamma Kabaal swamigal, a mendicant noted for his coin –toss gimmick. The swami used to keep some rupees exchanged into brand mint coins and by a sleet of hand used to toss coins on the prostrating devotees giving them to believe that he had nothing to do with such divine signals. Venu was the ‘sando’(boxer) in the complex and sometimes argued a point with the hands when persuasions were pooh-poohed. So people brought now and then domestic cases to his panchayat. His judgements, decisions, lead and tacklings were always appreciated by Dr and others. The swami , perhaps fearing Venu used to placate him by saying that Venu had shed off 10 of his births by showing respects to him, the swami, whereas Rajappa , of the Dr.’s household increased 10 more by his disrespect towards him. Dr was a religious man and firmly believed in saluting the ochre robe wherever and whenever seen. Somehow the swami was made to abscond by himself, Venu’s hand in that not to be ruled out. Then there was the story of waiting for the Mahatma. Venu took the boy Ramakrishnan to see Gandhi. Dr Ramakrishnan still narrates with the nascent relish, the story of the waiting.

My father was an ardent admirer and associate of Prof. C.S.Kamalapathi(seen in the right)
and together they founded SHAKESPEARE HEAD PLAYERS and staged more than a dozen dramas of the Thespic Angel of the Avon.

Those were simple days and people were simple. The thatched roofs and the rustic porticos invited the people in , induced the people to go out, mingle among themselves and meet the strangers. The raised up vertical streets nowadays cleave even a single man into his sleeping part and waking part. He is now in the predicament of meeting himself first before beginning to come out. The generation at present is one which has not done its homework. The integration of the past , the interpretation of the present, and the intuitive construction of the future is a sadly neglected task . Heaping the blame on the modern way of life is but a meaningless excuse. The modern life has complemented what was lacking in the past only towards the materialization of the dreamt of bettered human conditions. What we do with the goodness of conditions is a matter of creative organization of effected good things from various specializations, the name for which faculty in the days of old , is wisdom. [a draft of this title was irretrievable till yesterday; hence this version]

A POET'S WAY OF CRITICISING ANOTHER POET

2005-12-12T10:50:00.000+05:30

I was reading the UttaRarama Charitham by Bhavaboothi. I find him so adept in portraying the poignant moods of characters. The time he has chosen is also apt. The later part of SriRama's life, given to much recapitulation and nostalgia, provides a suitable thematic space for Bhavaboothi( Ist quarter of 8th cent.- Dr. Bhandarkar).

There are some stories which speak of the connection between Kalidasa and Bhavaboothi, though not historically valid but show the veins of criticism, registered by the succeeding generations of readers. One such story is interesting. After finishing the URC , Bhavaboothi wanted to have an opinion of the master-poet, Kalidasa. So he approached him and found him playing the chaturanga, a form of chess. After hearing him thru, Kalidasa wanted to give a hint for bettering the text in one place. Perhaps he didn't want to do it openly, for the reason that Bhavaboothi may be estimated low in the eyes of the beholders, but all the while the hint should reach the literateur. So what he did you know, he took some chewing leaves and pasting it on the back with the edible lime, he commented that சுண்ணம்(calcium) is a bit excess. The onlookers thought that Kalidasa was commenting about the pan leaves and the lime paste overleaf. But the message reached Bhavaboothi and made him thankful. Let us see about that.

In the first anka of the play URC, 27th verse reads

kimapi kimapi mandam mandamAsakti yogAt
aviralita kapOlam jalpatOrakramENa
asitila parirambha vyApruta ekaikadOshNo:
avidita gatayAmA rAtrirEva vyaramsIt

we were mumbling in whispers soft, random
in deep love entangled, cheek to cheek
lying close, one in another's arms embraced
night alone was over
with its watches passing by.( translation mine)

In the line 'night alone was over', by adding one anusvara, m, in the original rathrirEva becomes rathrirEvam, meaning 'night was over thus'. Eva in sanskrit means 'only', 'alone'. Evam means 'thus', 'in this manner'. Bhavaboothi originally while reading out to Kalidasa wrote only 'Evam'. In the verse it meant that the lovers SriRama and Sita were calling back to memory the bygone days of lovemaking in the forests and on one such occasion of close intimacy the night time passed by in the manner described. Deascribing like this is not remarkable for a distinguished poet. So Kalidasa suggested that the letter m is an excess in the word 'Evam', removing it 'Eva' will be more natural,
aesthetic and apt. How? In close lovemaking, it is but natural for the lovers to be unmindful of the passing time, with their love still unsatiated even at the end of night.
So to say that night time only passed by leaving us still unexhausted in whispers of love-talks will be more aesthetic. In sanskrit this m is written at the top of the letter as a dot, which is called anusvara. So when Kalidasa, in his gentle way pasting the lime over the back of the pan-leaf and said one atom of lime was in excess, Bhavaboothi understood that he meant an anusvara, occurring in some place of love-making-descriptions, for , usually in such occasions pan- leaf-chewing becomes an act of warming up. After that to locate the exact spot of Evam was a child's play.

TRANSLATING NAMMAALVAAR FROM TAMIL

2005-12-04T17:01:00.000+05:30

For long I was anxious to start a blog in Tamil. I didn't know how to manage the Tamil fonts and I am only now shedding off my strangeness to unicode and other computer and web jargon. Thanks to Suratha Yazhvanan's and N. Kannan's jottings in their sites, I was somehow able to make good and tentatively with trepidation and a feeling of giveup I slowly typed the sentence 'anil vandathu' and switched the view blog to see if it appears in the same Tamil. When I saw the Tamil two-word sentence my joy knew no bounds. Immediately I sat down to write on Nammaalvaar, the Tamil saint and the arch-devotee of SriVishnu, especially SriRanganathaa of Srirangam. Here I am giving a translation of what I have entered on 29 November 2005.

Nammaalvaar is talking with somebody, which I overheard. Overhearing is bad!! Is it not? Maybe. Why? Ofcourse it is bad. But what you will say about overhearing a poet loudthinking in his poem? Is it bad? Then the whole field of hermeneutics and interpretation is bad. What we read in a poem is only our overhearing of the poet chatting with himself. Now, I find you curious, nevertheles , regarding what I overheard. Wait, wait, I will give it all as a dialogue. O. K. Now,

Nam: The highest good is what is most essential to attain in this life.
somebody: Highest? How can it be? Goodness can only be comparative.
Nam: What about that Goodness, which has neither comparison nor equal.
somebody: Ah! good imagination !!
Nam: If there is One who possesses that Goodness, peerless and incomparable ?
somebody: Who is that One?
Nam: He? He is the one who has given the faultless facility of cognitive comprehension. Without such faultless facility of mental calibre, it is impossible to understand that One, without an equal and a comparison.
somebody: Again, who is that One?
Nam: He? He is the Supreme Provider of those immortals, who know no exhaustion. Fault in cognition is the cause of the exhaustion in the communion with the incomparable Goodness. No fault in the mind means no exhaustion in the experiencing of the Goodness.
somebody: Verily He !!! The Supreme Provider of Immortals !!! Will He ever condescend to notice our presence at all? The Highest Good you talk of seems to be way beyond our reach.
Nam: Nay, nay, That One is grieving really.
somebody: Grieving !! You said He possesses the Highest Goodness? He grieving?
Nam: Yea, He remains the Supreme One of Highest Goodness and to understand Him, He has given the possibility of the faultless facility of mental comprehension, to be attained by the asking for the same. He remains the Goal and He provides the Way and all the souls need but only not to refuse the ever provided blessing. Till all the souls reach the goal, Himself, He will be grieving.
His presence is symbolised by His feet and He is but relieved of His grief by your non-refusal of His help and relationship, which what is named as saluting. Hey.... what you are doing? I have not finished. You have immersed yourself in one long act of saluting Him. Come on, rise up my mind ! It is not enough to remove His grief by you alone worshipping Him. He will shine brilliant in joy only when each and every soul has come to Him back. Come on we will set about doing that.

Now may be it is clear to whom He was talking. To his mind ? maybe, but is it only his mind ? it is my mind, your mind, and our mind. This chat can be overheard at any time in Nammaalvaar's first poem of his Tiruvaaymozi ( the blessed utterences )

The poem

The Great One, possessing highest goodness
without an equal and with no comparison
Who is He? He is that One
Who has given faultless facility of mental calibre
Who is He? He is that One,
Who is the Supreme Provider
Of the immortal ones,
Knowing no exhaustion in communing.
He !!!
Yea, He has a gnawing grief
Relieved, He shines
Saluting His feet,
Rise up, my mind !

aside
Now as long as this is poetry, this is quite interesting and harmless. But if somebody takes this up as a dogmatic religious doctrine, the first thing which vanishes from it is poetry and again it may remain harmless as a devout practice of somebody. But if someone becomes fanatic about it and goes about implementing it to the letter, then starts all havoc, to the literary sensibility first, to the man to man relationship, to the humanity at large, to the social hegemony and in many more ways. Happily, SriVaishnavism is a unique theology, which has its own checks and balances, which has not allowed inhumane fanaticism to grow out of itself and perhaps will never allow, provided people take its scriptures with all the checks and balances in place.

நம்மாழ்வார் அந்த மற்றொருவருடன் என்ன பேசினார்?

2005-11-29T17:41:00.000+05:30

அப்பாடா! தமிழில் வலைவரி எழுதுவது என்றால் எவ்வளவு சந்தோஷமாக இருக்கிறது.நன்றி சுரதா யாழ்வாணன் !! என் கண்ணன் !
கை துருதுருக்கிறது. ஏதாவது எழுதுகிறேன். இப்பொழுதுதான் ஒருவழியாக தமிழில் வலைப்பதிவு செய்வது எப்படி என்று புரிய ஆரம்பித்திருக்கிறது.
நம்மாழ்வார் வேறு ஒருவருடன் பேசிக்கொண்டிருந்தது என் காதில் விழுந்தது. அவசரப்படாதீர்கள். சொல்கிறேன் நடந்தபடியே.

ந: வாழ்க்கையில் நன்மை அதுவும் உயர்ந்த நலம் அதுதான் முக்கியம்.
வே: 'உயர்ந்த' என்றால் ஒன்றைவிட ஒன்று என்றபடி ஒப்புநோக்கு
உடையது.
ந: உயர்வற உயர்நலம் ?
வே: நல்ல கற்பனை.
ந: 'உயர்வற உயர்நலம் உடையவன்'
வே: எவனவன்?
ந: அவனா? எவன் 'மயர்வற மதிநலம் அருளினன்', அவன். உயர்வற உயர்நலம் என்ன என்று புரிய வேண்டும் என்றால் மயர்வற மதிநலம் வேண்டுமே!
வே: யவனவன்?
ந: அவனா! 'அயர்வறும் அமரர்கள் அதிபதி'---மதிநலத்தில் மயர்வேதும் இல்லாத காரணத்தால் உயர்வற உயர்நலத்தை அநுபவிப்பதில் அயர்வேதும் ஏற்படாத அமரர்கள், அவர்களுக்கு மிக உயர்ந்த நலத்தை அநுபவிக்கும் வழியும் தந்து அந்த வழியால் பெறும் மிக்குயர்ந்த பெரும்பயனாய் தானே இருப்பதால் அதிபதி யவனோ
வே: அவனா! அவன் என்றால் மிகப்பெரியவன் ஆயிற்றே ! நம்மை ஏரெடுத்தும் பார்ப்பானோ? உயர்நலம் எட்டா உயரத்தில் அன்றோ இருக்கும் போல் இருக்கிறது.
ந: அவன் ஒரு துயருடையவன்.
வே: அவனுக்கு ஒரு துயரா? அப்படி என்றால் உயர்வற உயர்நலம் உடையவன் என்றீரே!
ந: தான் தரும் உயர்நலத்தை அடைய தானே தரும் மயர்வற மதிநலத்தை பெறாதார் உள்ளவரை அவனுக்குத் துயரம். நாம் அவன் செய்யும் நன்மையை விலக்காது உடன்பட்டால் அவன் துயர் அறும். மேலும் தானே பெரும் பேறு பெற்றது போல் சுடரும். அவன் துயரறு சுடரடி............
எங்கே முடிக்குமுன்னால் தொழுவதில் தோய்ந்துவிட்டாய்.
தொழுவதோடு நின்றால் அவன் துயர் முடிவுறாதே! ஒரு ஆத்மாவும் விட்டுப்போகாமல் அந்த உயர்நலத்தை பெறவைத்தால் தானே அவன் துயரற்றுச் சுடர்வதைக் காணமுடியும். எனவே எழு! என் மனனே!!

யார் அந்த வேறொருவர்? அவர் மனதா? அவர் மனம் மட்டுமா? உங்கள் மனம். என் மனம்.நம் மனம்.

உயர்வற உயர்நலம் உடையவன்
யவன்
அவன் மயர்வற மதிநலம் அருளினன்
யவனவன்
அயர்வறும் அமரர்கள் அதிபதி
யவன் !!!!
அவன் துயர் அறு
சுடர் அடி
தொழுது
எழு என் மனனே !!!

நம்மாழ்வார் அவர் மனதோடு பேசிக்கொண்டு இருந்தது காதில் விழுந்தது. உங்களுக்கும்சொல்லிவைத்தேன்.

(படத்தில் அமர்ந்திருப்பது ஸ்ரீ உ.வே. கிருஷ்ணஸ்வாமி ஐயங்கார், ஸ்ரீவைஷ்ணவ ஸுதர்சனம் அவர்கள். நிற்பது இடவலமாக மாமி(ஸுதர்சனர் அவர்களது மனைவியார்), எனது நண்பர் திரு.மகேந்திரன், நான்)

THOUGHTS IN THE RAIN

2005-11-24T21:47:00.000+05:30

Why rain is always faced with troubles? Why are we unprepared most of the times when the rain comes?There is progress in many fields but why this chaos in civics?

We can say what we mean. What we say can mean. But what we say and what we mean must be the same.

Rain is essentially water. But water is not rain. So rain is something happening on water, thru water. Is it the force, the pouring, the quantity?And water is not sufficient to talk of the rain.

A phonecall is made. Somebody picks it up or nobody. But the phone call is made always for somebody.

Life is in the living. Living is in the body. Body can be in life or not.When the body is in life it is called the person. When the body is not in life it is called a body. When in life the body is there and the person is there.When not in life the body is still there and the person is not there. So the body is not sufficient to mean the person but the person is always denoted by the body. Who is the meaning essentially of the person to connote whom the body is not sufficient?
If the body survives the person, does the person go out of existence and did the person come into existence when all along the body is in life or the body is not in life. Life is in the body or is not in the body. When life is in the body the person is. When life is not in the body the person is not.
Is life the person? Is the person life? If the person is life how can he die? Or if he dies how can he be the person? If the person doesnot die who dies?

KITH AND KIN AND KINDRED FRIENDS

2005-11-14T19:30:00.000+05:30

In this entry I propose to write about my friends, family members, the persons of note I have met and things like that interspersed with literary and philosophical implications of day to day life.
Take for instance my mother, Mrs Anasuya Venugopal. She is a masternarrator in that, you can hear her without fatigue hours at stretch. The matters may be trivial but the buildup
will be multimediaic and of course her laugh will camouflage the words sometimes.
And there is Geetha, my elder, for whom to tell is to act that too with a digital quality. To hear her read Thillana Mohanambal has been a family repertoire with us. And there is Shanthi,the compu girl. So thorough is she with computer world that she is given best company by Aravind, Geetha's son, another computer wizard. When these two begin to talk I usually jump over the backyard and make good my escape. But if you have any comp problem these two are the medicare, proper. And there is the youngest of us Raghu, or Raghuram, who will impress as the eldest, for, he is the most responsible in our domestic contexts and can you guess who is the least responsible? He has an uncanny knack of read-create the mood of the passage, esp, Bharathi and Jerome K Jerome. If you come across him coerce him for a read of Kaunda thirucchabai of Bharathi and 3 men in a boat of JKJ.
And here comes the star, the new entrante VedaSri. Only a couple of years has passed before she utters words so precisely and forms sentences so succinctly. Geetha and myself are members of her fanclub already. VedaSri is the daughter of Raghu and Deepa, who again is another computer and websavante of note. Aravind, Shanthi, Deepa- the list of computer-wise people is adding on in our household. I think Raghu is also culpable, not in the least, though he downplays his e-versality. There is another one, calm and of genial temperaments and silent accomplishments--I mean Anuranjani, daughter of Geetha. Till recently, I was assured that , at least there is one person who doesn't frighten people with ' compfire-works '. But I cannot be so sure now.
Coming to friends there are Ramesh, T.Mahendran, and others. What we did as a team in study tours to Srirangam and other places will find an entry some of these days.
Mr.Mahendran was asking me often about the western philosophy and esp. Aristotle in the light of Ayn Rand. I was explaining how the reality-concept takes precedence in Aristotle, which was excellently brought out in the writings of Ayn Rand. At that time he asked me if there was any thinker of the east comparably who gave importance to the reality of the world and based his system of thought on that. Only SriRamanuja came to my mind and I was explaining to him about SriBhashyaa and the nuances of Vedantic thought and epistemological premises of pramaana-nishkarshaa( deciding the authority and epistemological standards accepted). It was his spontaneous suggestion that we better go there where the original thoughts were discussed in the pristine climate of Srirangam and continue my explaining the history of the thought in its original settings and as a matter of fact he forgot about his suggestion when we actually embarked on the study tour and when reminded he commented with a smile that I was taking emotional words at their face value. But, given that, it was his spark plug that we pulled the motor on. He has done enough proddings on his own that he is able to travel along with intricate points once explained and he keeps me good company for my chats on abstractions. He has unique talents in travel and trekking by scooter into unchartered paths and locales around Madras and also in many other places and he is a past master in narrating the topography and the gives and takes of people he meet in his outings.
Ramesh is very perceptive and calm and receptive. But he has his own calculations to make and likes to come to the point rather than tarrying about the aesthetics of doing it. But he is his own equal in chipping into an urgency. His instincts work overtime there. I have disturbed him a lot in my rounds in search of books and I have failed so far in breaking his patience(of course I have to admit my failure in this regard to the three viz., Mahendran, Ramesh and my brother Raghuraaman). Ramesh is yet to come out with his part of the study tour to Srirangam regarding the economics of the SriRamanuja's period of SriVaishnavaite history.

FISH OUT OF WATER

2005-11-13T23:21:00.000+05:30

Water is thick, limiting freedom
What do you know of the air and space?
Water once dried up vanishes your life. Is it not?

May be ; you are welcome to your own thoughts
And those are your own thoughts only.
You talk as if we are not in space
And there is no air inside. How come?
And more so it is queer you think That you are free of water really.
I have my own doubts on both to say.
But I thought you will corner me saying
That I have neither tongue nor reason like thee
Nor can I write on any thing frigid or flowing free
My fins I flap my mouth I open and shut all in vain
Why can't it be universal to talk and think
If not to write...

I wonder how you give up for writing
When you wish to talk and think ..!

Hey.. what if you write.. all you people wrote
Your own people dumped in flowing waters these
Or threw the written into flaming fires lit
You are all still alien to the writing world
Troubled by the pen or troubling by the pen.

I was in silence cornered
glancing the gliding fish
A fish out of water sure
it was not.

MEDIA , TRUTH AND SOCIETY

2005-11-06T19:00:00.000+05:30

Media are intended to play only a representational role in the exchange of ideas, fashions,
feelings, trends, clarifications and reportings. By any stretch of imagination they can never come to have a normative role in the society. Whether they are text based or visual rich
they remain only an intermediary and can never assume a leading role. Even by way of editorials, they can state only their biases, inclinations, and perceptions. They can and should never assume the leader's role, never by way of intention, though it happens by way of tone and situations. Any theory of media encompassing the possibility and justification of extra-representational role of the media, say, the paper, the TV channel,
the e-journal or any future avatar of the media will be self defeating in their role of theorising the subject in terms of its essentials.
'But is it the prevalent state of affairs that exist?' is a good question, only stressing the foregone observation in default. What is available is not what should have been there is criticism by way of observation and not a sanctioning of the available. The guiding motto of the media should be TRUTH and FACT and not what anybody likes to have. But this links to the problem basically whether Truth is considered a value and if, how far.

BURNER'S FANTASY

2005-11-04T19:46:00.000+05:30

The milkpot sits docile on the burner
Stickey drops of water
Trickle down the sides
To the bottom on the flames.
The burner's flaming tongues
Raise resenting hiss' and tchas;
Knowing fully well
The anti-stance mutual
Why the watery drops
Should touch the flames in bad spots
Or perhaps.. a wooing
For a silent shimmer of intercoursing heat.

BIRTHDAY OF FIRE

2005-11-01T06:06:00.000+05:30

Human beings shivering in rains, shrunk in cold, scorched in summer and eating food raw and unbaked was the picture till the advent of fire and light. Light ofcourse they had thru the sun in the sky, but it was not mostly light, the friend but often some phenomena from the above beyond one's purpose. Heat almost they had none except the sun's heat. What would they have thought of the sun as the source of light and heat? Did they have concepts of light and heat as seperate? Without fire in the life of mankind, would any form of civilisation have been possible? Cold and darkness seem such domiciled creatures now; but not so in the pre-fire ages of mankind. Food was raw, tools were rough, climate a dictator colluding with the wild- the picture is already bleak. There was only a spark in the brain pulling him thru all the untowardness in the surroundings--the spark of cognition, the spark of thinking, the spark of understanding.
Somehow fire came to man or man learnt to make fire. Many mythologies cherish some story or another about the fire's coming to mankind. The whole Rig Veda seems a mystical register of the biography of fire, the Agni. Prometheus brings fire from Heaven and incurs the wrath of Zeus.

Fire the external spark in the outside world enhanced the human life in innumerable ways. Civilisation and culture were but consequences; religion became a possibility;
story-telling was born, technology sharpened--man could taste what was freedom.
All because this ancient seer- agni, FIRE came to reside among men as the messenger between men and gods, as the bridge between the past and the future.
Some day should have been the birthday of this most important guest of mankind,
the strong friend, the sagacious guide and the sublime philosopher of physical
inspiration. Maybe Deepavali is one such day, the birthday of light, the birthday of
heat, the day of advent of the FIRE. Let us wish him a happy birthday !!

SRI KRISHNA

2005-11-01T00:47:00.000+05:30

A stray arrow from the wilderness
To an illusive target
Of an untrodding foot
Could prove the finale
Of a narrative begun
Before the beginning of the sun
And moving on and on, way beyond
Even after the earth has come to an end
Bearing the holocaust on its honed tip
To the nested peace of the pained bliss;
Perhaps the arrow,
The self-same one
Rent by the hunter
Into the bird and bard of poesy
Bereavement cursed breaking the word
Into flesh of sounds
And breathing the meaning into the forest of the soul.

LANGUAGE AND ANIMOSITY

2005-10-25T19:14:00.000+05:30

Language is communication. Is it enough to end with that? Does it consist only of communication or something more? What about thinking? While thinking, do we not differentiate and classify and if it is not by language then by whatelse do we do that?
Language is used as communication, while communication is transfering understanding,
encoded into and decoded from language.
Language, if it is only communication, i.e., the encoding and decoding functions, is but a social tool and assumes only social importance independent of any individual status.
Who is able to encode large and fast decides what to be encoded and what to be
decoded. But the nature of language scarcely allows such a monopoly.
Language is also the self-reading of thinking. Thinking operates on universals and as such metafunctions on language as the structure of symbolism. It is this very fact that the thinking houses the language as the system of symbolism makes it independent of any given language. Also we saw that what is encoded and what is decoded is not language really but understanding, for which language is only a server.
In understanding occurs communication rather than in language to be precise. Understanding is the alter-function of thinking and hence the whole process of language
is only subservient to thinking and understanding. If you go in for thinking, then you
will give importance for understanding and necessarily, your approach will be universal.
Rather, if you choose to consider language as more primary than thinking and
understanding, then you get the whole system wrong side in and what is turned out
in the place of communication is only opaqueness and estrangement. Social elements
out to reap unearned priveleges encash on such inversions and aberrations and animosity is the tool they maintain to sustain and increase the said opaqueness.
Eventhough language is intrinsic to thinking, you can never enter thru language to
thinking but only thru thinking to language for the sake of sanity.

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

2005-10-20T20:01:00.000+05:30

Never before mankind owed so much to a single person, as in the case of Aristotle; this is paraphrasing an important observation of Ayn Rand. To know what is that great debt is to study the history of man's ideas and terminology. When faith and imagination were ruling the conceptual world he rigorously chartered the rules of logic and syllogism. When meta-narrations were put forth in the place of philosophy , he boldly spanned out the obscure field of metaphysics. When poetry was shown the way out from the so called republic of man, Aristotle established Poetics in its essentials. When the world was dichotomised into ideas and things, into prototypes and its corrupt copies, into world of essences and things, he openly repudiated such unnecessary and dangerous dichotomies, be it even from the mouth of the teacher. Instead, he advocated the existence of things and accomodated the essences as epistemological. In the field of ethics , man is yet to write his own revised book updated. Politics still prefaces itself with the Stagirite's handbook. In zoology he is but the recently retired head of the department.
He has erred in some places of his huge output. Men were not lacking in trying to adjust their burdens of debt by shifting over critically on his errors. But the change of shoulders underlines the debt rather than undermine it. Say whatever one likes, no one can deny the immense clearing he did in the field of methodology.
Last but not least, is his unassailable contribution of the law of identity, which says that the existence and the non-existence of anything can never be true in the same instant. Simple ! you think ! But do you know the whole logbooks of human destruction and repeated sacrileges on life and thought the world over can be zipped into a mere footnote of ignoring this seemingly tautological law. The more I study Indian systems of thought, western philosophies, logics of Nyaya and navya nyaya, the literary theories of the east and the west, systems of China and Persia, the intellectual output of Syrian, Hebrew, Arabic and Latin aristotelians of Middle Ages, the more I perspire in reverence towards this Master. He has taught me that this wide world is my home.

TAMED TEMPEST AND THE UNTAMED SAILOR

2005-10-14T00:29:00.000+05:30

Tempests have a mood and try to impress on us their identity. For, they destroy the identity of any thing that comes in their range. Trees are fallen, traces eraced, paths are removed, towering buildings tumble to the ground and what to speak of barges and boats on the seas, when even the fleet are smashed into smithereens. Tempests are symbolic and they recur in multi levels of life in multivarious forms. Man is made into a boat and swayed as a barge and sometimes by chance he manages to reach the land holding on to a log of wood, which was god-sent. This is the mood I was thrown into when I went thru the Tamil novel shown here, viz., 'Puyalilae Oru Thoni ' ( A barge in the tempest ), written by P.Singaram (picture) and published by the trend-setters in Tamil modern publications, viz., Tamilini. Actually the book is long out of print and is on the eve of being brought out in the nearest future.

The novel speaks about 1950s and especially the days of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and more so of the dimensions of Tamilian participation in the freedom army of Netaji. Netaji makes many people of politics uncomfortable and he was a hot potato, in his own times, in the hands of the congress leadership. When Gandhi was adopting a pro-British policy in the second world war, Netaji was pursuing the Nazi patronage and the turn of the war twisted the fate of the partisans. The later revelations of the Hitlerian orgies in mass destructions sealed the fate of whoever sided Nazis for whichever reason it may be. But Netaji as a social leader of India, capable of hosting an independent India in exile, need not be shoven so slovenly into the bin of historical miscellany and more so the unsung bravery and patriotic committment of the usually ignored Tamilians.

But the novel is again not about this history and it uses the historical verocity, which it possesses to a considerable extent, only as a backdrop to the story of valour and love heroic. For, the novel is actually two novels within a single cover and aptly they breathe the same mood and browse the same times, sharing between themselves the onset and the close of a single saga, the saga of proverbial valour and pure love of the Tamilian heritage, the puram and the aham of the protogonists Pandian and Chelliah, staged betwixt the Tamilian youths' dedicated joining in the freedom army of Netaji and the disbandling of the mature fervor in the wake of disappearence of Netaji and changed political scenario of the war. Pandian, resembling the Matt Helm of Mickey Spillane, never changes line and crucifies himself in the self earned image of a war hero. Perhaps he was intended to portray the pure concept of valour, puram of the Tamilian literary grammar. Whereas Chelliah , in the novel in tandem, leaves the accounting desk of his guardian Chettiyar in the name of the unaccountable call of freedom, not knowing the call will foot the bill atlast, costing him marriage with his beloved, the daughter of his employer Chettiyar. The novelist's portrayal of Pandian, while resembling the heros of the famous thrillers of Mickey Spillane and others, reaches a rare depth towards the end in the portrayal of Chelliah, calling to mind the character sketches of the victorian novelists and the penmanship of Kotthamangalam Subbhu in Thillana Mohanambal.

Interestingly, the novelist doesn't drive his character Chelliah to drinking alcohol , eventhough it would have been justifiable, rather allows the character to taste the raw love nonconsummated in marriage, the intensity of love in its loosing. This , the sanskrit sahityakaras will classify as vipralamba sringara, romantic moods in seperation. The character, cherishing the sanctity of his pure love towards his beloved, rather wants to suffer the pangs of unfulfilled love silently on the wayside bench in total seclusion. Our reason will question this self chosen agony, as indeed questioned by Manikkam on the basis of pragmatism, but the novelist perhaps tries to convey that there are reasons for the heart and they are various too.

The novel seems somewhat prosaic in portraying the relationships of characters and the novel borrows speed in significant places from the historical background rather than sailing on its own. Also the fact that the novelist has not written anything else in his long lonely life except this duo on second world war times of Netaji's endeavour provides a basis for the opinion that the novelist is more an historical novelist than an artist in his own right. But the main characters are structured with care and the story is tempestuous and somewhat tamed.

The novelist as a person is also interesting in that, I was surprised to see in him an adoration for the Trichy saint Tayumanavar , matching my own involvement in the same. Also the enormous involvement in Tamil Sangam Poetry and the agility with which he is able to create an ambience of hoary Tamil culture in the totally radical modern contexts. It is an irony that the novelist who tried to register attention on the much forgotten leader Netaji, should share the same fate of obscurity and neglect in the modern Tamil scene.

For the book you can contact Tamizhini Royapettah #9884196552, 9841583912

THE SACREDNESS OF COSMOPOLITANISM

2005-10-11T23:51:00.000+05:30

Man born into a group, continues in a tribe, developing his identity on nation, religion protyping on the basis of his racial felt meanings. The group identity in the earlier stages, which was pro-food gathering , on the tribal level assumes survival systems faiths, beliefs, and notions. On the national level, politics shares the hardware part of the transactions of man , whereas the software of cultural moorings is assumed by religion and trans-instituted as the shared world-views of the community.

Word, acting as the spiritual thermostat of man all along ,rehabits itself as the literary transactions of men. Only when man wakes upto the Literature , he is able to see himself for once as a being of no barriers. He then but smiles on the wasted efforts of ages and the smile constitutes Philosophy. Suddenly he finds the newly rediscovered universality as sacro-sanct and this forms the sacredness of cosmopolitanism.

Cosmopolitanism is but an overture to the unavoidable world society, however much detested by barrier-mongers in the name of religion, nation, language, race and ethnicity, if at all man has to survive from himself. The only religion meaningful would be the Poetry and all religious outpourings will seem but failed overtures of the movement. We can put in our mite by voting for cosmopolitanism in whatever form, in whichever place, to our capacity and resourcefulness. We but work now for our future safety.

THIRULOKA SEETHAARAM

2005-10-11T18:46:00.000+05:30

Thiruloka Seethaaram occupies a unique place in Tamil poetry. He came after Bharathy, after Bharathydasan. He was born in 1917 to Thiruvaiyaru Lokanathier.
He was named Seethaaram. His early circumstances compelled him to go for employment even at the age of 14 and his innate taste for letters took him to the world of print and press. In 1929 he was editing Bhalabaratham from Villupuram. In 1938 he became the editor of Graama Oozhiyan in Thuraiyur. In 1944 he went to Trichy as the editor of Shivaji. In a couple of years he became the owner of the magazine and was bringing out the weekly without fail till 1969, when it was made into a monthly after much coercion from friends. And as a monthly and under his editorship it was coming out regularly till 1973, when in August 1973 he passed away. So as a weekly for 25 long years and as a monthly for rest of the time it is the only Tamil small magazine to have ranged over 3 decades and more.
As a weekly it had to carry the editorial and the frontice page and as a
result we see 2500 printed pages of literary, social, political and cultural commentary
scanning the whole seminal period of nation building in India and especially Tamilnad
from 1947 to 1967. Many times his editorials were reproduced by leading magazines
as pieces of much relevance and repetition.
He had a unique style in his prose and it is the only style to my
knowledge suffused with fresh thinking and vivacious spontaneity. And for all these,
our great Tamil literary historians have never mentioned his name, his paper or his
contribution even in the passing, whereas they euologise unjustifiably all the 2 bit
magazines which came to light one day, only to disappear forever the next day.
Even those who were associated with him and nurtured by him, eventhough they
realise their own low worth in comparison, take great pains not to mention Thiruloka
Seethaaram's name and contribution, or the unique value of the three decade tabloid.
Mere canker of envy and carelessness confounded rule the Tamil literary world and more
so of small magazines.

WEST CHITRAA STREET SRIRANGAM

2005-10-11T14:21:00.000+05:30

A street is a row of houses, bordering on either side of the pathway running thru.
The pathway links together the thresholds of residences. People come out into the pathway and from the pathway they go back home. Till the time the helihop from the
rooftop becomes the common mode of transit, the street remains as a symbolism of the society. We play, transport, communicate, carry things and matters, come together, confront and congregate in the street.
The street, the most public place, is also sometimes the most private corner. This
'streeting' philosophy suggests to my mind, when I think of our West Chitra Street,
Srirangam, Tiruchirapalli. West Chitra Street sneaks itself into various mental contexts,
providing the slip-in default background , irrespective of whether I am reading Homer,
Hugo, Shakespeare or any thriller. Nearly all the unknown and unfamiliar streets are
West Chitra to me. Amumma of chettiar household, two gates off from our home,
sometimes peeps out from the Shylock of Shakespeare, spitting on the garbadine. When I first took to Shakespeare, inspired by my father, Venu (Venugopal), I had a vague feeling that somehow this fellow, Shakespeare, knew closely our street and he
but journalises his impressions of this very street only.
Our house belonged to the priest of Hanuman temple, Kallukkuzhi. My father and
he moved like two close brothers and their exchanges between themselves were
always delightful. My father used to refer him as 'my veettukkaarar' [ veettukkaarar--as a
pun means ' house owner' and 'husband' ]. The priest treated my father as the seeming
owner of the house in such a way, that when we took off from the place and town
after nearly 30 years people exclaimed, ' what! ' ' is it not your own house?'. Yea,
the people had such warmth in themselves exuding out into contexts. I mean not to
generalise; but such instances were always available and by no means rare. There
was an apology for idealistic non-utilitarian approaches to life. We used to refer to
the households by some familiar names and the names impressed at the early years
as if from some roll call of ages down. For example, we used to call our
next left house as ' Tyagu's home ' and our next right as ' ST's home '. The opposite one was ' cattle-tied house' (madu katti veedu). And there was Sengudi's home, and
again 'rayar's home' and yet again 'Rangaachu's home' like that. ' Pandu's shop' ,
' Kannaiya's shop ' ' Theppakkulam ',( the lotus pond of Float festival of the Grandsire
Ranganath ) ' Vadakkuvasal ' ( northern gate ), Therkkuvasal ( southern gate ) are some of
the landmarks used in the daily run of life at Srirangam, chitra streets. ' Going to
Vadakkuvasal ' connoted doing some domestic scores, buying little things, going to bathe in the river, and so on. Whereas ' going to Therkkuvasal' connoted going to office,
going on some business purposes, going to buy some bigger purchases and like that.
Chitra streets, west north east south, forms a circular square, skirting the
inner ring of concentric square, viz uttara streets, w n e s respectively. Within the belt
of Uttara streets is the Temple proper, the Periya Kovil. In SriVaishnavaite parlance
if you say simply Kovil , it always means Srirangam, Kovil or Periya Kovil, the
Temple proper or the Temple Great. Srirangam, is a place stringed with ritualistic- festivals of the temple week after week, month after month, annual and thruout the
year. The local adage was, ' vizhaakkolam anrri vaeru kolamae kaanaatha thiruvarangam'
( Srirangam, which assumes only the festive getup and never any other social mood )
The people go to the temple to see Ranganath in various roles and makeups, on
various corresponding festivals. It is not over there. Ranganath also comes out thru
the streets to meet the people at their doorsteps. You can't escape ' That Old Man'
we used to exclaim often and as a matter of fact. Sometimes the evening shift
workers of some factories around Trichy, coming very late in night, are astounded
to see the Deity encounter them in the Therkkuvasal with a swing in steps of the
bearing palanquin, as if to mock them, ' what you will do now, come tell me '
That is why, perhaps , the Thondar adippodi Alwar ( the Alwar who stressed on the
devotion towards devotees ), while expressing unwillingness in being born again,
craves for, at the same time, to be born again and again and yet again on the
streets of Srirangam, refusing even the much coveted Salvation, viz Paramapada, the
Highest Abode of attainment.

VENU -another version

2005-10-09T01:35:00.000+05:30

Drama was the extrovert front of Venu’s talents. His introvert mode of aesthetic realization was with poetry in the form of say, reading closely Kamba Ramayanam with the exegetical interpretations of Sri Vai.Mu.Ko swamy . I still remember the nascent glee when he bought the Sundara Kandam, Kamba
Ramayanam with VMG’s urai in the Nambillai sannidhi in the south gate Srirangam. ‘Aandakai aandu av vinnnor Thurakka naadu arukil kandaan’—‘the manly one then beheld there the yonder world of heaven celestials well nigh to his watchful gaze’ so began the SK and there began my coaching in expounding Kamban on stage.
Twenty hymns with the VMG’s explanations were targeted to my memory to be recited and narrated at any time on demand.
A following Sunday found us in Dr. Vas’ stores in Thennur in the house of Sami Periyappa(eldest of my father and his brothers) I still hear the baritonical gurgling laugh which greeted me at the threshold. After a hot coffee I was commissioned to do an extempore exposition of Kamban - in – memory . Dr. Vas was jubilant and
immediately commissioned all the inmates of the stores. There were ‘aahaas’ and ‘see this small boy’ in liberal measure. The forum informal then reminiscenced about the days when my father was one of the inmates when he was a bachelor. There were lot of stories for the picking.

For instance, there was the story about one Brhamma Kabaal swamigal, a mendicant noted for his coin –toss gimmick. The swami used to keep some rupees exchanged into brand mint coins and by a sleet of hand used to toss coins on the prostrating devotees giving them to believe that he had nothing to do with such divine signals. Venu was the ‘sando’(boxer) in the complex and sometimes argued a point with the hands when persuasions were pooh-poohed. So people brought now and then domestic cases to his panchayat. His judgements, decisions, lead and tacklings were always appreciated by Dr and others.
The swami , perhaps fearing Venu used to placate him by saying that Venu had shed off 10 of his births by showing respects to him, the swami, whereas Rajappa , of the Dr.’s household increased 10 more by his disrespect towards him. Dr was a religious man and firmly believed in saluting the ochre robe wherever and whenever seen. Somehow the swami was made to abscond by himself, Venu’s hand in that not to be ruled out.

Then there was the story of waiting for the Mahatma. Venu took the boy Ramakrishnan to see Gandhi. Dr Ramakrishnan still narrates with the nascent relish, the story of the waiting.

Those were simple days and people were simple. The thatched roofs and the rustic porticos invited the people in , induced the people to go out, mingle among themselves and meet the strangers. The raised up vertical streets nowadays cleave even a single man into his sleeping part and waking part. He is now in the predicament of meeting himself first before beginning to come out. The generation at present is one
which has not done its homework. The integration of the past , the interpretation of the present, and the intuitive construction of the future is a sadly neglected task . Heaping the blame on the modern way of life is but a meaningless excuse. The modern life has complemented what was lacking in the past only towards the materialization of the dreamt of bettered human conditions. What we do with the goodness of conditions
is a matter of creative organization of effected good things from various specializations, the name for which faculty in the days of old , is wisdom.
[a draft of this title was irretrievable till yesterday; hence this version]

THINKING ABOUT NONVIOLENCE

2005-10-04T17:12:00.000+05:30

A living being sustains itself by adopting patterns of food acquisition, self-protection, and self-preservation. Any living being is expected to do that. In the animal world, birds' world, reptiles and other species one species feeding on the other is seen quite commonly. Some species are there which feed only on the vegetations . In this world of animals , birds , reptiles violence does not arise even though there is recurrent preying of one over the other.
You can say that this is not the opinion of preyed upon species but of an onlooker outside any possibility of sharing the common fate of the species in question. Quite true ! But the idea of violence is also meaningful only in the excluded world of us, the human beings and not of the other species. What makes the idea of violence solely a terminology of the human world is also the measure by which we judge what is violence and what is non-violence . That which makes violence predicable of any situation or person also presumes the possibility of freedom to engage in or abstain from violence of the agent of action and also remains as the faculty of understanding the situation and context as a field of given possibilities.
What is this faculty if it is not the mind , the unique feature of the human species ? What is this mind , if it is not the articulated awareness of the given world, which awareness again rests upon the identification of the nature of things in the world? So ,' violence' is a mental auditing on the actions and happenings outside in the world, conditioned and coevented by the feelings
of the emotional states of human beings.
You could have seen here, we have silently broght in two words without prior
introductions relevant to the context. i.e., feelings , emotions. What are these ?
We can call 'emotions' as the mental states in which the agents of actions inhere
before and during their active and passive response of feelings. That is, feelings are
active coordinates of mental existence , whereas the emotions provide the potential
states corresponding. We have in sanskrit an apt term avasthaa - 'state of being in' .

A fundamental question now crops up. What this ' feeling' or 'emotion' has as the
content part in their classification. Surely it is not the denotated or ascribed or
ascertained meaning - world of concepts and perceptions. You can say that
comparatively, the world of ' words and things correspondence' is somewhat discrete
and 'digital' whereas the ' feelings -emotions-external/internal factors contributive'
is a world of analogous scalings raised on the primitive and primordial givens of
susceptibilty of the human beings . That is, the unit of the scale is the given category
not open to question, but on which questions have to be raised.

The foregone dilation on 'feelings' is only towards focusing on the importance of
structure of emotions rather than the content of emotions , which is but the given
and apriorically available from the start. Emotions as content do not generate
meanings and feelings as reactions do not generate justifications and it is only the
structure and purpose, formatting and forwarding the same towards things and
contexts ' outside', which network the relationships of meanings.

So 'violence' viewed in this context has no innate meaning and is expectant of
justifications from what structures it and towards what.
Saying that violence, which seems at the outset as an outrage on the physical
domain and concrete form, is more mind-dependent, is not to shrugg off the gruesome
aspects of violence, which are mind boggling. But it is better to clear at the outset
the much neglected aspect of mentality in violence. This is not a way of highlighting
mental violence over physical violence but an argument for the essential 'mentalness'
of any type of violence involved. For, to shed off certain types of violence as physical,
in contrast to certain types which are labelled as mental, is to remove the problems from
the focus range of solvabilty and comprehension.

INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF LIVING

2005-09-29T17:36:00.000+05:30

Living is always multifaceted in that there is social living, individual living, family living, peer living, workplace living, academic living and so on. All these are interconnected in more than one way. Each subsumes the other. But the living man out of necesiity or negligence, concentrates on one facet to the exclusion of others.

When we come to the political life we complain of the increasing trend of bribery and rottenness in the comparative aspects. That is, we hoist one party over another saying the one is not as bad as another, maybe out of affliation and mostly out of argumentation. Maybe, we add most of the times , a remark like ' what to do, you have to choose from the given ', ' who is perfect ', ' whoever comes is going to be like this ' and something like that.

When we come to managing our domestic economics and finance, it is the self-same we who righteously become angry that things do not carry the value promised and billed. We blame the shops, the businessmen, the profit-hungry traders and the whole set up of commerce which has failed to deliver the goods to us. Do we ever stop and think that we contradict our own selves, supporting our looters on one platform and one pretext, and crying hell on other pretexts.

If the politicians keep the political context for the businessmen to compulsarily bribe them to carry on, where the businessmen will account for those 'carryon charges' other than the ultimate buyers. If the economists who understand this vicious circle give a false and silent nod to the feverish vagaries of politicians, and if the economists who are ready to expose such things are ignored by the media, and if the media expose it and the people, that is you and me, simply turn a blind eye and brandish banal excuses to show off our argumentative skill, on whom can we rent our righteous anger.

Living is interconnected and inter-rooted. To view it comprehensively and to interpret it integratively is what is actually doing philosophy.

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VENU, THE GENESIS OF A GENIUS

2005-09-25T00:00:00.000+05:30

This picture contains my father R Venugopal when he was a small boy in 1930s-Venu, as he was then called and thereafter, is in the middle of the three brothers. To his right is the eldest Srinivasaiyengar, Sami periyappa, of Thennur. To his left is his immediate elder Appu, Padmanabhaiyengar of Kottaiyur. Sami was a railway employee and also an amateur dramatist of his times. Appu was a school teacher in Banadurai school Kumbakonam and an ardent reader of SriVaishnavaite literature and an involved narrator of the hagiographic past.

Venu was nurtured by both and of course , how far his precocious genius was recognised in those times is a matter of question. A boy, left fatherless early in life, under the care of the elder brother, found himself in a situation of self-dependence and in a necessity of self-making. About those times he narrated always with a sense of joy, eventhough some memory-burns were hard to forget.

He cultured himself in physical buildup with the ardent aim of joining the army. But it was not to be. He was rejected on a pretext of some missing beats in the heart. He joined the railways and he more than enough compensated in his active devotion towards thespionic and literary arts.

He was an amateur, viewed commercially and a master, viewed artwise. He developed the contact of Shakesperean Professor C S Kamalapathi, formed the Shakespeare Headplayers and as a duo staged more than a dozen plays of Shakespeare thruout Tamilnad in 1960s and 1970s.

Besides, by himself, with the help of a genuine artist and a thespian activist, Meenakshisundaram or Daram, as he was liberally called, Venu staged more than 10 plays in Tamil on more than one stage. Daram now lives in Andal Nagar, Chennai.

Railway weeks were a practice ground for their artistic spirit and they believed in living literature in life, unmindful of the commercial neglect of oppurtunities in life.

He taught me rhetorics, acting-art, the art of reading a text, the manners of men and women and much else. Sometimes he took me in as his assistant director, prompter in the stage-offsides. He was a master of presentations and remained always a mind reader of Shakespeare.

He and Appu Prpa, whenever they were together overnight, their nocturnal talks would shimmer thru and thru with the narrations of the hagiographic past of SriVaishnavism.

All the three are now nomore but the mini bench on which my father and Appu prpa are sitting is still with me with 8 decades past thru its four legs.

So much we take for granted in Time!! So much we loose, sitting on the evanescent plenty!!

PEEPS INTO THE PAST

2005-09-23T14:17:00.000+05:30

THE PAST SURVIVES IN SOME LINGERING
MOMENTS
Can we reach back to the past ? The past lost in time, can it be stored in some backups ?
Or the images as pulses of light, why images ?, active VRS (virtual reality scenario -dont refer, my
nomenclature) maybe on the sail with the speed of
light. Maybe some gadgets in the future may transport us to those mobile space-time backup-holes(courtesy-myself). That it's not so impossible
is the idea evoked by the 1885 picture of Mowbrays
Rd here, which resembles the road from Tiruvallur
to Sriperumbudur of our times. Domes of tree-locks
clustered by the luminent shreds of the brighted sky, shelling in the occasional puffs of sandy air,
sheltering the quadrupeds and the bipeds all the same in the soothing shadows of the singing green,
the animal-extensive of the elemental care. In 1885 the great Bhagavat Vishayam in Telugu lipi
was already out, which was print-assisted by seven widows of dedicated bhakthi-bhagavatammas.
It started in 1869 and completed by about 1875. The devotion of the seven is visible by the fact
that the whole set contains printing errors not reaching double digit in number. This set incorporated
the modern concept of windows opening even then in the book mode. The commentaries of any
hymn containing references to the other hymns of Divine outpour of the four-thousand ( Nalayira
Divyaprabhandham) will open windows of the said hymns with the relevant commentaries. The
idea was - the reader sitting before the expounder should not be driven every now and then to
refer other text places. The year of this picture found Sri Ramakrishna lying ill in Kasipore garden house. In 1835 Indians were permitted by an enactment to publish their own books in their
regional languages. The road has changed but the path remains the same !

After 21 years , what Mylapore looked like, you can see in the picture.

THE ONLY JAGATGURU( WORLD-TEACHER ) TRUE TO THE NAME

2005-09-21T16:38:00.000+05:30

This is a good portrait of Aristotle in my view,

because, I look verymuch the same rawish with

similar beard and hair-unstyle. With a specs on,

Ile Philosophous will look like me. I got this from

some site I am not able to locate right now. Do you

know this man? Maybe some of you can say

'Plato's student'. But if at all you want to see a man,

who was the real 'Jagatguru', 'Lokacharya'--

'World Teacher' here you see. Never before the world owed so much to any single person,

maybe never after(adapting Ayn Rand's comment)

VENU IN THE ROLE OF ASVATTAAMAN

2005-09-21T14:45:00.000+05:30

This is the picture of the actors in the sanskrit play
'Asvatthama' staged in Trichy way back during 1950s !!
You can see my father, the indomitable VENU, in the
role of Asvatthama--standing, Ist row, right extreme.
The sacred thread is conspicuous. It has a bearing on
the character-on-stage. My father used to say that he
was able to bring full force into the acting by taking the
proverbial oath of Asvatthama stretching the thread
taut by the left hand while gesturing the oath by the right.(Asvatthama is the son of Drona, the brahmin
teacher of military arts to Pandavas and Kauravas in the story of Mahabharatha. When Drona was becoming
invincible in the war-field he was downed by a trickery
of words. By the by, the great epic is available in English translations. In Tamil, the entire epic inclusive was
brought out after 20 odd years of effort in 1930s and 1940s by the great M V Ramanujachariar swamy thru
his Mahabharatham press in Kumbakonam. After 1955 it was long out of print for nearly 50 years.
Luckily, now,it is being brought out in 9 tomes, already 4tomes are out, by one Venkataraman, my friend)
You should have seen my father acting out various characters even while reading out. A genius of a
genuine thespian was lost by Tamilnad unawares.

ON POETRY AS OUTLOOK

2005-09-18T21:05:00.000+05:30

Is poetry solely a particular type of formatted text available in more than one
meaning level to imaginative reception? Does poetry consist in encodings of words alone?
In the start, in the past it was considered to be such. This 'start' and 'past' are of
cyclical provisions and need not have always to do with the universal temporal downline.

The question raised above indicates a non-verbal, extra-text availability of poetry somewhere
in and in-between nature and cognition. This upshoots another question that should have been asked
fundamentally.-What is poetry?

Is it reading of words,perception,expression or communion? Or a remembrance?
Asking like this doesn't negate all these aspects, for poetry does consist of all these and
also a challenging somethingelse.
Thiruloka Sitaram, a unique Tamil poet,says that poetry is a message. Message of what?
Of the bliss begot of a vision in a moment; the vision beheld in the aesthetic rapture of an
evanascent moment.

Poetry roots itself in the outlook if at all it has to fill itself up. Going from the effects to the cause,
from the verbal format to the poetry doesn't work out to the essential qualities.

2005-09-15T09:36:00.000+05:30

Peripatetic thoughts while coming from the railway station
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Usually on returning from the day's work, traveling miles, tiredness happens to be the sole companion.
But if the thinking takes on, the system is flipped to a different mode of vigour.An illustration of this is what
follows.
What are computers? Are those simply machines? If yes, what is the difference
between machines like grinder, vehicles, power motors and a machine like computer.
The difference is one of intelligent interaction. Non-intelligent machines are non-interactive.
If you place some dirty clothes over new yamaha bike it is not going to say anything,
nor comment any thing. It functions(can we say function) back in its constituent substance
order of existence. It doesn't interact as the structured utility of a vehicle.
When used as the vehicle the substance mode is not phased out but is still there
as a costate of the contrivance. The handle, the rubber, and various parts do not begin to
give different meanings, different from their static state. Whereas in computers the constituents assume different meanings during the on-state. The intelligence is encoded in the structure and queing of functions. Interactiveness is the bridge between the signposts interlaid in the traffic

and mobile junctions of meta-functional space and the being's cognition.

So the thoughts were surround-walking me till the gates and now transit across to the screen.

2005-09-14T00:36:00.000+05:30

Hello Friends!
I want to talk to you about something important culturally
philosophically, and by way of the quality of life.
Maybe about some poems, some thought systems, events,
books, and whatnot!

take for example religion. Everybody will jump at the topic
as one of faith or useless bundle of opinions. 'It is not rational'
'It is one of faith' will be the views popping out. Why cant
a person of no religion still study the religion as a study.Studying
the religion is not subscribing to religion but being concerned
about the cultural transactions of humanity. We will see more
like this with the ensueing discussions.